Unlocking Exponential Growth for Your Product Through User Advocacy with Asya Kuznetsova - Productized 24 TalkInTen

We’re excited to bring you more exclusive content from Productized 2024, our third major event of the year! This series continues with our engaging TalkInTen format, featuring quick yet impactful conversations with industry leaders who are driving innovation in product management and business agility. Whether you’re looking to elevate your product strategy or embrace new ways of scaling your teams, these episodes are filled with actionable insights and practical frameworks to help you thrive.

In this episode, we’re joined by Asya Kuznetsova, a growth leader from Wise (formerly TransferWise), who dives into the often misunderstood but highly effective world of user advocacy. Asya reveals how product managers can tap into the power of Word-of-Mouth (WoM) marketing and referral loops to drive organic, sustainable growth. She explores how to design dynamic growth loops, implement successful referral programs, and convert your users into enthusiastic advocates.

Asya on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/asya-kuznetsova/

Here is the synopsis of Asya's Talk:

In today's competitive landscape, achieving growth requires more than traditional marketing. In this talk, Asya will reveal how product managers can leverage Word-of-Mouth (WoM) and recommendation features for sustainable, organic growth. You'll learn to move from standard funnels to dynamic growth loops, create impactful recommendation journeys, and use referral programs to turn users into enthusiastic advocates.

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Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to a very special series of episodes of the Product Agility Podcast, broadcasting for two days, direct from Lisbon Portugal, and product ties 2024. This year, we're bringing you more exclusive bite-sized wisdom with our Talks in 10 format, where we're going to be diving into actionable insights from some of the best and brightest minds in product leadership. And attendees this year are being spoiled with talks and workshops from the likes of Radakadat, creator of radical product thinking and rich Moronov, author of the art of product management, helping us all find some joy in what we do. But it would be a pretty shitty conference if it was just two people. There are so many more people here and we're going to be getting as many of them as possible on here to share their talks in 10. Now before we begin, a huge thank you to our sponsor, Sheev Limited. Sheev is the company which has bankrupted this podcast pretty much since day one. I want to take an opportunity just to share with you and make you aware we do some awesome stuff. Whether it's training your product teams or coaching your product teams with clarity and alignment, or you know just a simple thing of actually making OKRs work in organisations, these are all things that we are very good at. So do head over to www.sheev.co.uk, see what we do and get in contact with us. Also check out the show notes for a tasty little discount code over any of our courses. Grab a notebook because the next 10 minutes are going to be packed with action tips from the best in the business. And here begins a talk in 10. Hello, Asya. Asya. This is like correctly. Yeah, that's correct. I think the listeners of the podcast got to say bored of me saying someone's name, getting it right and then being all nervous. All English. Oh, did I say that right? So I said it right. Welcome to the Prodigy podcast. I met you last night by some desserts. Yes, you were advertising for me to take some not really good fruits, I think. Garbage, shit fruits. Yeah, I mean, fruits got its place. But when you surrounded by lovely desserts, you don't want to be left as the shitty truth. Yeah, but we end up chatting. And when we were chatting, all the desserts were gone. And all your left was the fruits. So there we go. All part of my cunning plan to make you eat. You're an evil. I'm an evil person. However, I'm standing in the way of you and relaxation because you gave your talk earlier. Yeah, just half an hour ago. Half an hour ago. Oh my God. How was it? It was actually really inspiring for myself as well. I think like for every expert out there, you're so used to do stuff over and over again. And when you actually have time to structure your thoughts and share it with everyone. And then you see like several hundreds of people like looking with you and listening and making photos. It like makes you feel that what you do is actually important. Like for yourself or your company, for community out there. Awesome. That was a nice bit validation. Yeah, yeah, definitely got some validation today. Like when people hold their phones up to take a photo or something, you put up on the screen. I always liked that. It makes me feel important. I could take a photo. You know, it's like, oh, I feel like a pop star or something. Oh, I feel like Taylor Swift. However, your talk, catchy title, unlocking exponential growth via user advocacy. Yeah. So first of all, just because I am not very good when it comes to words, the meaning of words, when you say advocacy, what do you mean by advocacy? Yeah. So user advocacy is when your customers actively promote or recommend your product to others just because they actually love it. And they want people around them start to use it. And that sounds like a really great idea. But no one actually knows how to influence it and grow and measure. And this is what my talk is about. First, to highlight how important it is and then show how you can actually build it because it's perceived like a bit of a dark matter of growth. Like no one knows what it's about actually at the end. So you've got some real world experience in making this a success. Yeah. So I'm glad you said yes then. No, I just I'll just take a guess. I just read one book and put, okay, I can present. Yeah. So I think I tested this through several companies. And of course, at every place, it kind of expanded my experience with different options. Currently, I'm responsible for product let grow with advice, former transfer wise, where my main responsibility is to make sure that the companies growing through recommendations and referrals. And there we are able to attract more than 70% of our customers each month through this type of mechanics, which is like two sorts of our growth, which is like really, it's significant. Yeah. How? How? Okay. Sorry, blood question, but like you can't understand how you how to do it. Yeah. So before we start to move into how, let's first establish why I guess as we are product managers, it's really important for us. So nowadays the competition is fierce. And we see that most of the companies fail, not because they have bad products, just because they fail to grow. And most of the companies under this pressure, what they start to do, they start to throw money into the paid marketing, which is of course an important part of growth. But if you rely on it too much, you end up a lot of risks of just spending money on just trying to fuel your growth. And then when money would end, your growth would end as well. So you need to think strategically how you can achieve growth without burning through your budgets. And user advocacy comes really handy. You start to acquire customers for free, significantly reducing your acquisition costs, and reinvesting this money into making your products even greater and then getting a higher competitive advantage. So have we covered the why? Can I move to how? Okay. Okay. So how as a very interesting thing, because most of the companies avoid investing in user advocacy. Again, as I said, it persealed like a dark matter of growth. So to do it is actually quite simple. You need to enable your customers to recommend your product through simple in-product mechanics. This is what we product managers do. And there are actually just three types of them that makes it really simple and easy to implement. The first one is organic recommendations is when your customers notify others around them about your product just simply by using it. For example, someone when they use Spotify, their share is sung with you from Spotify, you became aware that Spotify exists and that this person prefers to listen to music via Spotify. So that through these organic recommendations, people around your customers start to become very well aware about your product and that their closed ones prefer to listen to music or use it. So that way you save a lot of money because it happens for free without you actually investing tons and tall winders or brands. And right? There is another way how you can do it called network effects. It's when customers benefit from having others inside the product. So for example, when people get PayPal, just because people they're transacting with also use PayPal. So as a result, transacting together makes it much easier. Because of the features like that, customers automatically benefit from having others inside the product. So they are much more likely to recommend a product to just things like that. And the third one would be referrals. I think it's the most widely known way how you can prompt your customers to refer. It's actually one of the most powerful tools out there. It's usually every company out there has a referral program. It's mostly hidden, abandoned somewhere. But actually if you work on it and optimize it, it could be one of the most significant drivers of user advocacy because you actively incentivize your customers to recommend, meaning that you have the most power there, how to prompt them and how to multiply your growth. So what has been the mix of those things and for you in your job at the moment? Oh, we have a lot of them. So let's start with this simple example. Why started with money transfers, making it much very easy to send money in different currencies between countries. So the first thing in organic recommendations, if you send money to someone who is not unwise, we would notify this person that they received money via wise. How much money they were able to save with us and what are the benefits of our product? So again, a lot of people, our customer says things since thousands, hundreds of thousands, messages like that, every day just by using our product. So millions around them start to get to know that wise exists and it really puts awareness really high for us. Then network effects, it's sending money to each other if you're both unwise as much easier, you have a person in contact. And final is referrals is one of our cheapest and largest acquisition channels that we have. And for example, if you invite someone through referrals, this person would automatically be in your contact list, for example. As a result, we interconnect all these features together. So one recommendation type drives another and this is how we achieved exponential growth at the end. Now it's really fascinating because I hadn't really considered it so heavily before. But then I look back at my daily life and the messages I get, particularly when you say that's Spotify, that's so prevalent, it's so easy to share a song through Spotify. Even though I know people haven't got Spotify, I'm just like, well, you can put the effort in together. And it really works, I suppose, doesn't it? Yeah, the same happened with me, I guess. I never understood how powerful user advocacy can be for a business. Again, it's a very nice idea, kind of, to play around with. But when and why I could see that it drives 70% of new customers, each month, you could understand that this is the main reason behind our success. Amazing. I wish I could have seen it. Have you had many people approach you after the talk or have you managed to go dodge that? Almost directly came to speak to you. So I guess now, when we finish, I will go and go around. And several people already texted me on LinkedIn that they have questions and they want to chat after all. I should go and meet a public. Actually, if I can say much for coming along, it's been genuinely interesting and really got me thinking about ways that perhaps I could use some of the advocacy, the word of mouth, aspect of it. So they've been really, really interesting. If people did want to find about you or contact you, I guess LinkedIn is the best place. The best one. Yeah, I'm super passionate about growth. I'm kind of a nerd. I'm always sharing my insights there. And I really passionate about talking about what worked for people were not because as product managers, the main stuff how we learn is through experience of each other. So I really love to chat about growth. So if anyone wants to reach out to me, I'm more than happy to answer questions or chat. Nice. Now it's really interesting. And I wanted to let you know, would you be up for people asking questions about, I mean, it's tangential, perhaps, but if they have a business and they're looking to grow it, and they kind of view their business as a product rather than actually being like a digital product, as an example, would you be willing to field questions from those people as well? Obviously, I think the practices that I apply works literally for everyone. It's just the perspective how you think about it. But more or less, every product is driven by user advocacy. Every product would have customers that would love the product and want to recommend it to others. You just need to find the way how you support and inspire them to do that. Amazing. Well, thank you. It's a lovely way to end it. Again, thank you so much for coming on. Everyone, thank you so much for listening. If you do have questions for Asir about growth, do feel free to message her or reply to a post that maybe you've seen on LinkedIn that's made you aware of this episode with your questions and should be more than happy to help. So everyone, thank you for listening. Asir, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. Love you. We'll see you soon. Thank you. We'll see you in a moment.