Introducing: The Mehdeeka Method

Season 8, Issue 13: 🙊👀📖🐛I wrote a book

📬 In this issue:

• Finally announcing my book! Available physically, on Kindle, and on Kobo

• A bit about how it came to be, and how to use it

• What I’ve learned about “book marketing”

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Hi Mehketeer,

The day has finally come, where the EPUB file format is finally displaying how it’s supposed to, boxes of printed The Mehdeeka Method are in my apartment, it’s been announced via Startup Daily, and I’m able to share it!

This has been a project two years-ish in the making. Basically, it all started when I was working in-house, establishing product marketing within the business and had to convince a bunch of really difficult stakeholders what product marketing was and then actually start doing the product marketing.

Then I went freelance, as detailed in this post, and kind of turned that “setting up the foundations” into my go-to service that I did for all customers as the baseline for working with me. Through that reptition, I honed the process and documented it for myself so I could be more efficient onboarding new customers and products.

When the Google Doc got to 50-60 pages, I was like ok this is worth sharing but feels like it should be more than just a newsletter issue. So I kept adding all the advice and knowledge I wish I’d known at the start, formatted it into instructions anyone could follow, and finished it off with some “what next?” chapters.

That took about a year, writing it in bits and pieces, after also writing regular Mehdeeka issues, and avoiding the temptation of publishing chapters when I didn’t have a newsletter prepped for the week.

This year, I had the goal to get it out. At the beginning of the year, I sent the Google Doc to close friends and colleagues for feedback, and sent it out to several PMMs to test it on their own and refine it so that it’s applicable in a broad range of businesses and industries (including B2C!)

On June 14, I started an email chain with Ara Generoso (who has done all the Mehdeeka branding!) to officially start work on the print and ebook files, and engaged the artist and illustrator Francis from Bailey Christine Studios a month later to start on the cover and chapter illustrations.

I practice what I preach!!!

Artists and advertising, where did the golden era go?

Here’s what the mood board for the Mehdeeka branding is, in case you were curious:

And here’s what the mood board for The Mehdeeka Method is, with a clear vibe consistency, but wanted it to be its own thing:

I wanted to express the concept of lining up your teams, your stakeholders, and putting structure behind product marketing, and this culminated into the “parade” motif which is present through the book. Which, by the way, looks like this!

After that, it was prepping print files and getting quotes for printing while we worked on the ebook files. All in all, that part was pretty fast!

And here’s the pitch for it, I guess that’s important too:

Product marketing has established itself as a key player in any business’s strategy. But almost every product marketer will agree - it looks different in every business. “It depends” is the de facto answer for every question. 

But how does a business, or team, or individual, transition from whatever the “before” is to the “after”, where product marketing is established? 

This is a step by step guide to that transformation. Before you’re able to roll out playbooks for product launches and do the well documented parts of product marketing, there’s messy silos, differing opinions, and the question of where to start that you’ll have to navigate. 

By the end of this book, you’ll have your key stakeholders, teams, and individuals bought in, aligned, and ready to march in the product marketing parade.

And a short excerpt from the intro:

The problem

Lots of companies, early and late stage, find it hard to nail down a succinct description of what they do. Sure, they can go on and on about their product, its features, all the things it can do… but they struggle with getting to the heart of the product quickly, and in a way that makes the audience “get it”. 

There are a lot of pitching formulas, but if you haven’t laid down the foundations of your product, these formulas are still hard to complete. You know this is true when you’re revisiting your pitch over and over because it’s still not quite right. 

This carries over into: 

• Underperforming marketing teams — not enough leads, low quality leads, ineffective spend, spinning the wheels but the car’s not moving

• A “wild wild west” sales culture with every rep having their own frankenstein pitch (which might not represent anything close to what you do)

• A frustrated product team who are getting unengaged users and no feedback loops

• An exhausted customer success team that’s fighting fires all day, every day, instead of doing strategic work

Cue product marketing.

By the way, I only have 200 physical copies so… if you want one, better get in there:

So yeah, if you are wanting to transition (yourself or your team) into product marketing, this is really focused on that transitional journey and not so much on checklists for product launches and that kind of thing. It’s about building relationships with the right stakeholders, bringing them along for the ride, and setting up the whole function of product marketing with solid foundations. From there, the sky’s the limit. With shaky foundations, or skeptical stakeholders, you won’t be able to go very far.

The book is structured in a 12-week style program, designed to be done along side your day job (i.e. the 12 weeks is pretty flexible) and gives you exact steps to take, and ways to overcome common or possible challenges you’ll face at each of those steps. At the end, you’ll have a few core documents that you’ll use to actually do the product marketing, as well as a clear roadmap of what to do next, totally custom to you and your company!

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What I learned about marketing for the book industry (which can be used for B2B ebooks/whitepapers)

Disclaimer: I did all this research but did almost nothing on this list because of laziness/dislike of promoting myself.

I took the self publishing route, which has similar book marketing tactics around launching the book, but skips everything to do with getting an agent, winning a publisher deal, and all that stuff. We’ll focus on the self-publishing promo.

Here’s the promotional to-do list, in terms of announcements and organic (or paid) social media posts to build hype, in chronological order:

• Announcing it exists

• Revealing the cover

• Revealing the release date

• Announcing pre-order is available

• The actual day it launches

• Sharing quotes from the book to keep momentum going

• Running a giveaway

• Sharing early reviews of the book

At any point, these can be shared as posts, profile or bio updates, newsletters, even updating a LinkedIn profile banner (note to self… do this)

I skipped…. everything prior to launch. The book is live! This is my announcement, cover reveal, and release date all in one.

I decided to go with the “bang” strategy of trying to get press coverage of this rather than leading with social content. If I were to post about this (which was really hard, apologies for being annoying for WEEKS about “this thing is coming, I swear!!”) it would dilute the exclusivity of the press coverage.

The idea (dream, tbh) is to have rolling press coverage, podcast talks, and speaking events centred around this now that it’s out. If you want to invite me on your podcast, or host me at an event please do tell me! Or tell someone you know who organises tech or marketing events about me!

Speaking of: My talk at Generate Summit will be an anecdote from the book, but it won’t be the methodology itself (and there’s only ~20 tickets left.)

The last marketing thing I did was get stickers of some of the chapter heading illustrations made. Look how cute they are! If you purchase a physical copy you’ll get a random sticker out of these, plus a bookmark with more illustrations on it.

I need to get it listed on Good Reads, but if you do purchase a copy please leave a review wherever you get it from! It would mean so much to me.

Once again, available physically, on Kindle, and on Kobo.

Thank you for reading this far, and being a Mehdeeka reader overall. Having somewhere to publish my thoughts, share my research, and find some solace in being a small team/solo marketer truly means a lot to me.

With a huge amount of gratitude,

Kayla

P.S. This marks the end of Season 8, and it’s also the 100th issue of Mehdeeka! How fitting. I’ve already got a list of topics for Season 9, and another “big project” idea, but if you’ve got any requests let me know!