Product Marketing: Closing the Perception Delta
Make users perceive the value you actually delivered — close the gap between done and perceived
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
Customers often receive real value but don't register it, so it never drives advocacy. Peiris defines product marketing as closing the delta between what you've actually done for the user and what they perceive you've done — inside the product itself. Making the invisible benefit vivid (a savings graph, an instant-transfer animation) converts silent value into visible, shareable proof.
Origin
Nilan Peiris at Wise, credited to a 'pretty creative PM' on the refer-a-friend team who spotted that users believed they saved money but didn't believe the number.
Core principles
- 01Delivered value that isn't perceived generates no word-of-mouth
- 02People may believe they saved money but not believe the specific number
- 03Iterate the artifact on real users until belief clicks
- 04Surface proof at the moment of success, paired with a share action
- 05Perception work is a discipline in its own right, distinct from building the feature
How to run it
- 1
Find the unperceived value
Identify a real benefit users receive but don't register or believe — e.g. they think they saved money but don't trust the number, or a transfer is instant but they don't notice.
- 2
Prototype a proof artifact and test it on real people
Sketch an alternative (the PM and a designer drafted a new email), take it to real users — literally the coffee shop downstairs — and iterate until they believe it.
Pro tip Iterate the exact visual until users react viscerally ('oh my god I've been using my bank... this is crazy') — that emotional click is the signal it lands.
- 3
Place the proof at the moment of success with a share button
Show the proof (savings graph, instant animation) on the transfer success page and attach an 'anybody your friends' share button right there.
- 4
Propagate the winning artifact everywhere
Once it works, push the proof into marketing and onto the homepage so the same clarity drives acquisition, not just referral.
In the wild
A PM realized users believed they saved but didn't believe the number. He and a designer iterated a graph showing bank cost (with the fee hidden in the exchange rate) versus Wise, tested it at the coffee shop downstairs, and placed it on the success page with a share button.
→ Sharing rate roughly 3x'd (300% increase); the comparison spread into marketing and onto the Wise homepage.
Wise was already doing instant transfers but customers didn't realize it, so a 'wizzy' end-of-transfer animation was added to make the instant delivery obvious.
→ A big jump in referral rate once people could perceive that the money had arrived instantly.
Common mistakes
Assuming delivered value is perceived value
If users don't register or believe the benefit, it can't drive referral; the feature exists but the advocacy it should produce doesn't.
Designing the proof artifact from the desk instead of on users
Belief is the goal, and belief is empirical — the winning graph only emerged from repeatedly showing drafts to real people and iterating until they reacted.
Is it for you?
Best for
Product and growth teams whose real value (savings, speed, quality) is invisible or hard for users to quantify at the moment of use
Not ideal for
Products whose value is already obvious and immediately felt, where extra in-product proof would be noise
From the transcript
“he realized that people believed they saved money but they didn't believe the number”
“they went down to Coffee Shop downstairs they showed it to people”
“put a share button anybody anybody your friends button and that's what really drove it”
“closing this Delta between what you've done and what you perceived to be done is what I call product marketing”
From the episode
How to drive word of mouth
Nilan Peiris (CPO of Wise)