Valuable product and solid acquisition channel in place, the Autobooks team knew it was time to invest heavily in landing more new customers.

Chris Spiek, Autobooks Chief Product Officer

So Chris Spiek, Autobooks’ Chief Product Officer (and prior to Autobooks, one of the pioneers of the Jobs-to-be-Done theory), led the team in running interviews with their most engaged customers: those who were using the product frequently and loved it.

Out of those interviews came something surprising.

Up to that point, Autobooks had emphasized that their platform was “all-in-one”: invoicing, bill pay, bookkeeping, accounting, and so much other good stuff.

But the research showed that only one feature set actually got small business owners through the door: online invoicing and payment processing.

Because the team understood internally how powerful the all-in-one platform was, their messaging had been throwing all of Autobooks’ features at customers all at once. But customers didn’t understand and didn’t have time to sort out an all-in-one finance management platform.

And that was Autobooks’ key takeaway: they needed to narrow down their messaging and highlight the one feature that made their customers’ lives easier.

Everything about how they talked to small businesses needed reworking.

Autobooks brought in Claire Suellentrop (Forget the Funnel co-founder & COO) to lead the messaging overhaul: “Give your customers a way to pay you by credit card, right into your bank account.” That most-desired feature became the only thing the new messaging highlighted.

Once customers grew more confident, then Autobooks could introduce its additional features, one at a time, in a way that addressed customers’ next most pressing need.

The team went from focusing on customers’ presumed pain to their real pain. They went from believing which features created value for customers, to knowing which features created value. This allowed them to plan which features to introduce second, third, fourth, and beyond. They could leverage their invoicing and payment processing as a gateway feature to the rest of their suite of features.

Marketing and product onboarding became more of a curated, coursed meal than a super buffet.

The messaging overhaul worked.

Thirty days after changing the customer experience to match customers’ actual needs, the team saw a 64% increase in the rate of small business owners signing up for Autobooks after first learning about it (from 14% to 23%).

What’s more, they saw a 300% increase in the number of customers accepting credit card payments through their platform on a sustained basis.

Given that processing payments is how Autobooks generates revenue, these were pretty exciting outcomes.

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Autobooks’ messaging went from “all-in-one finance management” to highlighting what their best customers cared about most: “Give your customers a way to pay you by credit card, right into your bank account.”

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