7 steps for creating the ultimate product-led growth strategy
A practical guide for B2B product leaders
Mickey Alon, Former CEO and co-founder of Insightera, CPO and co-founder of Aptrinsic (Gainsight PX).
2. About Me
2
• CTO and Founder of Gainsight PX (Aptrinsic) - A Product Growth
Platform
• CEO & Co-founder of InsightEra (Marketo RTP), GVP at Marketo
• Co-Author of “Mastering Product Experience”
4. MARKETING LED GROWTH
• Scaling using marketing automation,
focused on top-of-funnel to MQL for
increased sales efficiency
• Marketing & sales owns customer
acquisition and growth metrics
• Handoff from marketing to sales
using buyer intent and from sales to
success – less customer experience
focused
4
Sales driven buying
experience
5. PRODUCT LED GROWTH
• Scaling by providing access to the
product earlier in the buying cycle for
increased sales efficiency
• Product teams increasingly more
responsible for customer acquisition
and growth metrics
• Customer experience delivered by
the product throughout the customer
lifecycle, (Awareness -> PQLs)
5
Consumer grade buying
experience
6. Why Now?
6
Consumerization of customer expectations,
experience counts
Economics behind fast growth – it’s a
competitive advantage
Proliferation of SaaS vendors and low
switching cost
The TAM is constantly growing – sales,
marketing & success need to scale.
Shorter cycles to launch new features,
experiment & learn = faster innovation
8. [Case Study] Slack – Exceptional Product Launch
• Delivering better communication experience for
companies
• Great product experience
• Strong messaging / PR: “Email Killer”
• Strong execution of online content, videos,
podcast to target different buying stages
• Iterative, data driven, growth process
8
9. [Case Study] Slack – Exceptional Outcome
• Record high usage 8 million DAU (free & paid)
• Having the highest conversion rate (30%) among
B2B freemium software products
• Being used by 43% of Fortune 100 companies as
well as reaching corner markets
• Reported valuation of $7.1 billion (08/2018)
9
10. [Case Study] Slack – Product Strategy
• PLG: Using features & usage as primary drivers of
customer acquisition, retention and expansion
• Transparent pricing – freemium, no upfront
commitment, differentiated by premium features
• Viral - Slack is used as part of the daily routine. Easy
to onboard new users.
• Frictionless onboarding: ungated and quick time to
value
• Sticky: adds value over time and hard to replace
with enterprise grade ecosystem.
10
15. Define the North
Star Metric
15
Measure the success of your product by the
value it provides to your users
#1
16. #2 Accelerate time to value
• Understand & Optimize the first mile
of product towards the moment of
value experienced by the user [Initial
Value]
• Identify challenges and improve the
usability and discoverability for core
features.
• Prioritize product roadmap to
support exceptional product
experience – demo/trial/onboarding
17. 17
#3 On Boarding Experience
• Master The First Interaction: set user expectations as they
onboard to your product, engage & guide users consistently
to the first moment of value
• Capture the desired outcome: understand the customer’s
desired outcome as part of onboarding.
• Nurture track: map the user journey and nurture with best
practices / webinars / community
19. #4 Feature Activation
• Raise feature awareness through
outbound/inbound efforts
• Promote in-context based on who they are
and what they do
• Increase discoverability using shortcuts or
in-app engagement
22. The TRUST framework
• Timely: trigger engagements based on what they do, be contextual. Guide and
feedbacks should be tied to a desired action performed.
• Relevant: trigger engagements based on who they are, address different roles
and desired outcome with different product journeys
• Useful: help users learn something new, reduce time to value.
• Straightforward: be clear and concise - “Verbosity is the enemy”.
• Track results: validate your hypothesis, measure the impact on feature usage
uplift, iterate and experiment.
22
23. #5 Focus On Product Adoption
• Adoption is the best cure for retention, helps drive sustainable
growth and advocacy
• Understand product market fit (PMF) & go-to-market fit (GMF)
• Tie usage to retention analysis of the different cohorts
24. Avoid The Product Death Cycle
24
https://brianbalfour.com/landing/p-100m-frameworks
26. #6 Closed Loop Feedback
• Capture user feedback to connect directly with end users rather
than extracting feedback from multiple layers.
• Stay close to users and close the loop instantly using tools like
Slack/Calendly.
• Capture the desired outcome (survey) as part of the on-boarding
experience
• Targeted NPS driven by usage
• Feature/release rating
28. Marketing Focus
• Product Launch & positioning
• Driving trials/demos
• SEO & Paid media channels
• Social/Podcast/G2Crowed
• Product oriented PR and thought leadership
29. MQL to PQL
• Product-qualified lead represents a lead that signed up and
demonstrated buying intent based on product interest, usage,
and behavioral data.
• PQLs provide a more accurate method of tracking customer
journeys from signup to x-sell/upsell.
• PQL is a key metric for companies that’s transitioning to a tech
touch / product-led GTM strategy.
30. Sales
• Show me vs Tell me – using the product to demonstrate value
• Product oriented sales team – where the buyer tends to be in
control of the process
• Using usage and features as levers
• Land & expand strategy, incremental spend
• Strong understanding of the competitive landscape
32. Product
• Product road-mapping is shifting from feature-
centric to outcome and growth driven
• Drive cross functional alignment around growth
• Prioritizing usability enhancements to drive
adoption
Marketo was one of the leaders around marketing led GTM
We built new products and launched them to market
AND in that process I came to realize that some companies are using a more effective GTM, leading with their product.
Sales led: classic enterprise sales, human driven, pitch deck, higher ACV, longer decision to buy
Marketing led: enabled scaling by using the digital channels, nurturing leads until they are ready to buy
Product led: is the emerging GTM which is about using your product as the most effective GTM tool
Scaling using marketing automation, focused on top-of-funnel to MQL for increased sales efficiency
Marketing & sales owns customer acquisition and growth metrics
Handoff from marketing to sales using buyer intent and from sales to success – less customer experience focused
Scaling by providing access to the product earlier in the buying cycle via demo, trials or freemium for increased sales efficiency
Product teams increasingly more responsible for customer acquisition and growth metrics
Customer experience delivered by the product throughout the customer lifecycle, (Awareness -> PQLs)
Consumerization of customer expectations, experience counts – I will advocate or be less tolarent
Economics behind fast growth – it’s a competitive advantage
Proliferation of SaaS vendors and low switching cost
The TAM is constantly growing – sales, marketing & success need to scale.
Shorter cycles to launch new features, experiment & learn = faster innovation
Delivering better communication experience for companies
Great product experience
Strong messaging / PR: “Email Killer”
Strong execution of online content, videos, podcast to target different buying stages
Iterative, data driven, growth process
Record high usage 8 million DAU (free & paid)
Having the highest conversion rate (30%) among B2B freemium software products
Being used by 43% of Fortune 100 companies as well as reaching corner markets
Reported valuation of $7.1 billion (08/2018)
PLG: Using features & usage as primary drivers of customer acquisition, retention and expansion
Transparent pricing – freemium, no upfront commitment, differentiated by premium features
Viral - Slack is used as part of the daily routine. Easy to onboard new users.
Frictionless onboarding: ungated and quick time to value
Sticky: adds value over time and hard to replace with enterprise grade ecosystem.
Eloqua was the 800 pound gorilla, the first mover!
Hubspot adopted the low-touch/tech touch model and multi-product early.
There are many great examples of the new generation of companies
Consumer grade product with Enterprise grade ecosystem
Weather you’re sales-led, marketing-led or product led – the moment your customer starts using your product is the moment the rubber meets the road.
The North Star metric is the one that shows the true success of your product.
A good North Star metric is driven by the value your product provides to your users.
Focus everyone on moving it – product, marketing, sales, success
This metric differs from business to business. Uber might focus on the number of drivers hired and the number of rides given, whereas an operational app like SFDC might measure Daily Active Users (DAU)/Monthly Active Users (MAU) focusing on retention and expansion. Then again, a fast-growing startup will usually focus on New Users (i.e., customer acquisition). In most cases, the North Star metric is a combination of user behavior correlated with core feature usage and business results.
Understand & Optimize the first mile of product towards the moment of value experienced by the user [Initial Value]
Identify challenges and improve the usability and discoverability for core features.
Prioritize product roadmap to support exceptional product experience – demo/trial/onboarding
Master The First Interaction: set user expectations as they onboard to your product, engage & guide users consistently to the first moment of value
Capture the desired outcome: understand the customer’s desired outcome as part of onboarding.
Nurture track: map the user journey and nurture with best practices / webinars / community
Great example of setting expectations is part of the onboarding flow
Engaging users in a consistent way
Raise feature awareness through outbound/inbound efforts
Promote in-context based on who they are and what they do
Increase discoverability using shortcuts or in-app engagement
Zoom provides a great example of applying product experience as diffrent
When building in-app engagements at Gainsight, we’ve developed the TRUST framework as guidelines.
Adoption is the best cure for retention, helps drive sustainable growth and advocacy
Understand product market fit (PMF) & go-to-market fit (GMF)
Tie usage to retention analysis of different cohorts
Add New Features: Team adds new exciting product features.
Launch: Features are launched with some press.
Spike: A short term spike in growth occurs.
Growth Flattens: Within weeks the growth flattens off.
(repeat) Add New Features: Team ends up back where they started, adding new features to get another spike.
Know how well your product retains its users
Measure product market fit and avoid leaky bucket
Measure release impact on retention
Discover account of user profile of your growth cohorts
Discover your golden features
Adoption is the best cure for retention, helps drive sustainable growth and advocacy
Understand product market fit (PMF) & go-to-market fit (GMF)
Tie usage to retention of different cohorts
Know how well your product retains its users
Measure product market fit and avoid leaky bucket
Measure release impact on retention
Discover account of user profile of your growth cohorts
Discover your golden features
Product Launch & positioning
Driving trials/demos
SEO & Paid media channels
Social/Podcast/G2Crowed
Product oriented PR and thought leadership
Product-qualified lead represents a lead that signed up and demonstrated buying intent based on product interest, usage, and behavioral data.
PQLs provide a more accurate method of tracking customer journeys from signup to x-sell/upsell.
PQL is a key metric for companies that’s transitioning to a tech touch / product-led GTM strategy.
Show me vs Tell me – using the product to demonstrate value
Product oriented sales team – where the buyer tends to be in control of the process
Using usage and features as levers
Land & expand strategy, incremental spend
Strong understanding of the competitive landscape
Scaling Onboarding through the product
Focused on outcome and expansion
Drive Adoption Plays
Leading product teams are moving from feature-centric to a more outcome-driven approach.
Instead of tracking vanity metrics, like how many features a product team has shipped to focusing on driving customer value, measured by outcomes and longer term metric like customer lifetime value (CLTV).
Product road-mapping is shifting from feature-centric to outcome and growth driven
Drive cross functional alignment around growth
Prioritizing usability enhancements to drive adoption
Data driven decisions tying bookings & revenue to product investments