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Episode 27

Reducing Cognitive Load and Enhancing Delight in PLG

In this episode of Good Data Better Marketing podcast, Morgan Norman, Chief Marketing Officer at Dialpad, discusses the importance of onboarding, product-led growth models, and marketing AI products in a saturated market.

Guest speaker: Morgan Norman

Morgan is the Chief Marketing Officer at Dialpad. Morgan is returning to Dialpad where he led go-to-market and global marketing as CMO from 2015 to 2017. Prior to Dialpad, he held Marketing Executive roles at Copper, Zuora, NetSuite, and Microsoft.

Episode summary

This episode features an interview with Morgan Norman, Chief Marketing Officer at Dialpad. Previously, Morgan was a marketing executive at Copper, Zuora, NetSuite, and Microsoft. He has spent his career marketing for both startups to scale-ups and has helped companies grow to more than $1 billion in revenue.

In this episode, Kailey sits down with Morgan to discuss the importance of onboarding, product-led growth models, and marketing AI products in a saturated market.

Key takeaways

  • Getting users to adopt AI is all about presenting them with features that work best for them. Instead of throwing all of the features at them, educate them on a few options that are interesting to them and will help their business thrive.

  • When a user is moving to a PLG model, it’s important to consider their cognitive load. In order to avoid overwhelming them, scale back the number of questions you’re asking them and the number of decisions you’re asking them to make. Then, confirm with the user that they feel confident and successful in the choices they’ve made.

  • When users are onboarding you have to balance when to engage with them and when to let them learn the product on their own. Figure out what type of user they are, what segment, and what industry to decide which type of engagement will work best.

Speaker quotes

“The way I really think about PLG, at the top level, is cognitive load. Are you overwhelming the user? How many decisions are you asking them to make? The first thing is to reduce the cognitive load as much as possible from a visual perspective and also a step perspective. The next piece on that is user confirmation. Confirming to the user that they've done the right thing and that they feel successful.” – Morgan Norman

Episode timestamps

‍*(02:19) - Morgan’s career journey

*(08:41) - How Dialpad is implementing AI

*(19:25) - How PLG is being used to educate users and build marketing programs

*(23:26) - How Morgan defines “good data”

*(29:41) - How Dialpad is increasing conversion

*(34:36) - An example of another company doing it right with customer engagement (hint: it’s Airtable, monday, Asana)

*(41:13) - Morgan’s recommendations for upleveling customer experience strategies

Connect with Morgan on LinkedIn

Connect with Kailey on LinkedIn