Social Media SMB Advertiser Experience

*I'm unable to share screenshots and some specific details due to client / employer NDAs

Context:

I worked with a well-known social media company that monetizes primarily via ad revenue. One of their core offerings is a self-serve advertising platform that small and medium enterprises can use to build and deploy ads. Despite being self-serve, many small organizations struggle to create and deploy ads for the first time, so the client utilized a team of onboarding reps to engage with new users to guide them through the process of creating their first ads.

Business Challenge:

Assigning onboarding reps to engage with prospects is expensive and doesn't scale well with a large SMB pipeline. So the client wanted to improve their self-serve platform experience for SMBs. I was tasked with leading a team to better understand the SMB journey and pain points, and creating a set of recommendations on how to improve the experience.

Deliverables:

A list of recommendations to improve the platform / experience for SMBs

An E2E SMB Journey Map detailing the creation of a business account through first successful advertisement

A set of common SMB personas - affiliate marketers, mom & pop shop owners, millenial / gen z marketers, etc.

A list of common pain points

My Process

I led a team of four in a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the experience

We created several ads ourselves and documented the process

We recruited 5 folks to create ads and talk us through their thought process

We reviewed case data from customer interactions with onboardinng reps

We interviewed onboarding reps

We listened to recordings of calls between SMBs and onboarding reps

I facilitated several workshops to uncover key personas, insights, and co-create the journey map

We created a set of recommendations for the client

I facilitated a 2-hour readout session sharing our findings, presenting the journey maps, and having onboarding reps talk through the various steps in the journey - readout attended by approximately 20 folks from product, engineering, and marketing

We consolidated our insights into a 10-page readout for the CEO

Outcomes

Two of our recommendations were built into the platform / SMB experience