Loved

Chapter 3Ambassador: Connect Customer and Market Insights

When Julie Herendeen was VP of Global Marketing at Dropbox, her team thought they knew their customers. With users in the tens of millions and all the data that came with them, they felt confident customers were divided broadly into two categories—consumers who acted like microbusinesses and larger companies that had more enterprise-style needs—and marketed accordingly.

She decided it was important for her entire team—not just the product marketers—to get out of the building, pack their bags, and visit customers at their home offices or office parks. Similar to the jobs-to-be-done framework, she had her team focus on what customers were trying to accomplish and what was motivating the why behind their choices.

Julie immediately got calls from her team saying, “This is amazing. I'm learning so much” and “I couldn't see any of this in the data.” When they got back and crunched through their learnings, they realized some of their assumptions missed the mark on why customers valued Dropbox.

Yes, they were smallish businesses, but they needed to easily collaborate on big jobs—like sharing daily video shoots with a client on a commercial production—and Dropbox gave them the way to do it.

The customer visits also revealed important aspects of how Dropbox customers liked to feel. They valued the freedom to work with whomever they wanted, however they wanted. These much more nuanced insights made clear how her team needed to ...