To build a moat around their business, countless SaaS companies have switched from a sales-led to a product-led strategy over the years. Many well-known software companies, including Slack, Grammarly, and Dropbox as well as academic writing service have adopted this strategy. The only constant in this world, according to Albert Einstein, is constant change; however, organizations appear to ignore this in their business practices (eazyresearch, 2022).
Product-led organizations are distinguished by the fact that they drive the product in all departments. Product-led businesses can create a consistent customer experience across all departments by involving the product team throughout the business. A product-led business is distinguished by the fact that all teams rely on the product to achieve their common goals. Although the product-led strategy can position your company to conquer your market, it is not without risks. It is difficult to implement an effective product-led growth strategy.
Giving customers the chance to check your product before buying is not the only step in implementing an effective product-led strategy. Your entire organizational approach must change. Instead of starting with sales and then moving on to the product, make sure that each and every team member is involved in assisting each customer in becoming successful.
If you can successfully implement a product-led strategy, you will reap enormous benefits. Here in this blog, you will learn what product-led marketing is and why businesses need product-led growth marketing from the expert of HND Assignment Help services.
What is marketing for product-led growth?
For all those who are unfamiliar with the concept, here is a simple definition: Product-led growth marketing refers to using the product as the main acquisition driver. Marketers are also involved in growth and retention with this type of marketing (not just acquisition).
In most cases, this indicates that your product operates under a freemium model or provides a free trial. Rather than being forced to use specific tools by the IT or operations departments as in the traditional top-down method, this disruptive bottom-up sales model lets employees of an organization choose the products they want to use.
Reason to use product-led growth marketing strategy
There are four reasons why a product-led growth marketing strategy can help your company survive and thrive.
1. Growing a startup costs more money
In some ways, this is perplexing: building a SaaS company has never been cheaper. (HackerNoon even claims that you can create a SaaS product for $0.) However, there is a lot of competition due to the low entry barrier. As a result, acquiring customers is becoming more expensive.
Of course, there are other channels, but these figures suggest that, well, marketing isn't getting any cheaper. According to ProfitWell, CACs increased by more than 55% in the five years preceding 2018. During the same time frame, customer customers willing to pay for features fell by 30%.
In other words, while costs are rising, people are less willing to pay. It doesn't take a financial genius to realize that this means your costs rise while your profitability declines. If your company has a high churn rate, this could be disastrous.
2. Buyers today prefer to educate themselves
This isn't just for the business-to-consumer (B2C) market. According to Forrester, three out of four Business to Business (B2B) customers would prefer to educate themselves about a product before making a purchase through an app as opposed to speaking with a salesperson. Consider the following two questions:
- Would you prefer to examine and test-drive software before making a purchase?
- Or would you rather experience a drawn-out sales process to determine if it's a good fit?
If you're like most people, you'll decide to use the product on your own before using it on others. This is not limited to small and medium-sized businesses. Even enterprise buyers expect to be able to easily and frictionlessly test out and evaluate software, according to Gain sight.
A user can make an immediate decision about a product by using a free trial or freemium model to test it out. Additionally, it is easier, which users value highly right now. According to Forbes, 89% of customers said ease of use is very important or even somewhat important when making a decision of this nature.
3. Product experiences have evolved into an essential component of the purchasing process
If you've used Netflix, you've seen this firsthand, you didn't need to contact a sales rep or schedule a demo before you could watch and possibly purchase the service. The product handled every aspect of the upgrade and onboarding process.
There is no requirement for human intervention. Now, this is not to say that sales representatives are not necessary for product-led businesses. However, when it comes to bringing new customers up to speed, your product must do the heavy lifting.
These difficulties aren't going away anytime soon. They're not going anywhere. Customers expect it. One of these difficulties may be manageable for your SaaS Company, but do you want to roll the dice on overcoming them all? The best way to ensure that your SaaS Company succeeds is to choose an approach that will put it in a strong position.
4. Marketers use it to drive revenue
One of the most significant advantages of a PLG strategy is that it provides a good source of information about who is using your product and how information marketers can use to improve a company's bottom line. Marketing can gain valuable information about a customer's purchasing intent by leveraging usage data. This usage data, when combined with other objective signals marketing tracks, can provide immensely useful indicators about when a customer is willing to engage and buy (Conant, 2021)...
Wrapping up
Product-led growth could be the latest "it" acronym, but it's here to stay. And it's critical for marketers to understand what PLG can do to them as well as what they can do for PLG.
Marketers can turn a popular global trend into a successful and sustainable strategy by representing the market's voice, driving a top-notch product experience, and maximizing revenue from PLG motions.
Reference list
Conant, L. (2021, December 20). Council post: Why companies need marketing for product-led growth. Forbes. Retrieved July 27, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2021/12/16/why-companies-need-marketing-for-product-led-growth/?sh=2672dfce5e26
- (2022). Traditional Marketing vs Digital Marketing. Online Available at <https://eazyresearch.com/blog/traditional-marketing-vs-digital-marketing/> [Accessed on 5 April 2022]