Editorial
The Gist
- User-first approach. Product-led growth strategies prioritize end-user satisfaction.
- Onboarding optimization. Smooth onboarding boosts user retention.
- Data-Informed design. Customer feedback shapes product development.
Product-led growth is a hot topic these days. Product-led organizations desire a deeper connection with their customers and users. They attempt to understand their problems and anticipate what the customer wants.
Let's take a look at product-led growth strategies.
“Product-led growth means that every team in your business influences the product,” says Wes Bush, author of "Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself."
Consider your traditional sales-led growth model that consistently needs more: more business development reps to cold call prospective customers, more salespeople to demo to them, and more marketing budgets to generate the leads to fill the funnel.
Instead, product-led growth strategies rely on the product to drive customer acquisition, activation, retention and expansion. Regardless of if a company uses a free trial or a freemium product to drive sales, product-led growth companies always focus on one thing: the end user.
If all this conversation of product-led growth has you thinking of Dropbox, Slack, Calendly, Zoom, DocuSign, Canva, or HubSpot, you’re on the right track — these are all examples of companies that have embraced product-led strategies to growth.
If you’ve purchased from any of these companies, you didn’t have to request a demo to have a salesperson show you how any of those products worked. You just tried the product out for free, and if you experienced success while using it, you likely upgraded to a paid plan.
Product-Led Growth Strategies: It’s All About Adoption
Customers have come to expect a frictionless product experience. They don’t want to contact a salesperson to upgrade or purchase. They want a seamless experience driven by the product.
In product-led growth strategies, users need to get value from a product as quickly as possible, because it’s the customer onboarding experience that will convince them to activate or continue beyond a free trial period.
However, with many products, it can be challenging for customers to set up teams on a new platform or access the features necessary to accomplish their goals. That’s where customer success comes in. Customer success managers help educate customers about the solution to help speed adoption and increase customer satisfaction. This can help ensure that customers are using the product to its fullest potential and that they are achieving their desired outcomes.
If you’re considering more of a product-led growth model, who better to help your product management team than your customers? (Well, in this case, your customer success managers, who have extensive experience running kickoff calls, sharing tutorials and answering customer questions.)
Customer onboarding can make the difference between a customer successfully adopting your product the first time they use it, or churning before they realize the value your product you can deliver. Reducing customer churn rates can mean over 2x more revenue for your organization, so the more you can build your customer success team’s knowledge into your product experience, the better for your customers — and your bottom line.
Related Article: From Acorn to Oak: Transforming the Customer Journey With Product-Led Growth
Marrying Qualitative and Quantitative Feedback
It used to be that all we needed to design a good product was gut instinct. But now, we must get as close to our customers as possible. And that means one thing: obsessing over data.
By aligning customer feedback with product data, product managers can make data-driven decisions about product development and improvement. Product management teams have data on product usage, sales and other key metrics. Customer success teams have data on customer feedback, behavior and preferences. By sharing data and insights with each other, both teams can make data-driven decisions about product development and customer success.
But quantitative data only goes so far, and that’s where customer success comes in. Customer success teams can help drive product-led growth with their understanding of the customer and their needs.
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3 Ways to More Empathetic Understanding of Customers
Here are three ways customer success teams can help the product team supplement their quantitative feedback with a more empathetic understanding of the customer:
- Bring customer experience tools to the table: One of the most important things that product management and customer success teams can do is to develop a shared understanding of the customer. This includes understanding the customer's needs, preferences, pain points and goals. Teams can use traditional CX tools like customer personas and journey maps to gain a deeper understanding of the customer.
- Get a deeper understanding of how customers use the product: Customer success teams are in regular contact with customers and can provide valuable feedback on product features and functionality. Product management teams can use this feedback to develop products that meet customer needs. In addition, customer success teams can be involved in user testing and provide feedback on product prototypes to ensure that they meet customer needs.
- Tap into your most passionate customers: Your CSMs know who your “power users” or brand evangelists are. They can help you close the feedback loop with these high-value customers, building greater loyalty and fueling their passion for your product. (For more information on customer advocacy and customer-led growth, check out this blog post by Influitive’s Ari Hoffman here.)
When your customer success and product management teams are working together, you’re giving customers what they want, while making their experience frictionless and enjoyable. It’s why the product is no longer one part of your customer’s experience; it is the experience. Everything you do should lead back to it.
But that focus on product-led growth strategies doesn’t mean you can forget your customers. Customers should be at the center of everything you do, and your product managers should be taking advantage of their insights to drive product design and development. So start thinking about your customers as more than just people who pay you for your services; they could be your forgotten product manager.
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