Let’s face it: Successful SaaS companies don’t operate the way they used to. If you’re a product manager or leader, it’s up to you to embrace change and dive into the most effective product growth strategy for the era. And in the modern SaaS world, that means mastering product-led success.
Ready for a primer on becoming a product-led growth pro? Read on for an introductory taste of product-led success and a preview of our in-depth guide, “Product-Led Success: The Professional’s Handbook.”
What is product-led success?
Product-led success taps into a growth strategy called product-led growth. Within a product-led growth strategy, you use your product as the fundamental tool to acquire new customers, retain users, and grow. Currently, this approach is skyrocketing in popularity. One Gartner report found 80% of IT companies will adjust their mission to account for product-centered models in the next three years.
Why?
One reason is that it fits perfectly into a SaaS market that has undergone a massive shift in recent years. There was a time when traditional sales or marketing strategies made sense for product growth. Those were days when software was sold as one-off packages. But for the most part, the SaaS world doesn’t work that way anymore.
Now, as technology booms and the SaaS market has become more and more competitive, companies rely heavily on retention and need to deliver value through the product experience. And with the rise of freemium models, trials, and subscriptions, users usually dive into the product long before they make long-term investments.
In order to succeed in this product-focused world, you have to prove value through your product, and growth depends on how well you can continue to deliver valuable experiences through your product.
Why is product-led success important?
Product-led success isn’t just a popular approach. According to a Forrester study, the median enterprise value of companies that follow product-led growth strategies is twice that of the public SaaS index overall.
What’s driving success from product-led plans?
As technology booms and customers are exposed to more options than ever, the pressure is on to connect with new users quickly, prove value as soon as possible, and keep users engaged. Product-led success tackles that challenge head-on by focusing on your product’s performance and inspiring upgrades that show users their voice is being heard.
How can your company benefit from product-led mastery?
By anchoring your growth strategy in your product, product-led growth shifts your focus to building the best product experience for your users. Here are a few ways you benefit:
1. Cut acquisition costs.
A product-focused approach to growth reduces the amount of money, time, and resources you spend reaching out to new, underqualified leads. Instead, it hyperfocuses your efforts on product qualified leads who have already proven they’re interested in using your product. At the same time, product-led growth enhances the product experience for existing users—opening the door to higher net dollar retention (NDR) and more ROI.
2. See the product from the user’s perspective.
Customer experience has become the beating heart of most modern businesses. Gartner found more than two out of every three companies are now competing primarily on a customer experience basis.
Plus, more customer focus tends to turn into more revenue. According to Dimension Data, 84% of companies that work on improving the customer experience report an increase in revenue. Product-led success strategies dig into in-product data, such as customer surveys, behavioral data, and customer feedback loops, to point out the path to a better user experience.
3. Back your product roadmap with data.
As a product leader or manager, you’re constantly getting sprayed with feedback from all directions. Product-led strategies use metrics to lay out a clear set of priorities that you can lean on when it comes time to create product roadmap decisions. It can also unite your teams under a single set of KPIs and connect the full scope of your company’s stakeholders.
Take a look at ‘Product-Led Success: The Professional’s Handbook.’
As important as product-led success is, it’s not easy to perfect in one go. That’s why we put together an in-depth guide to help product leaders and managers squeeze the most out of their product-led success strategies.
In “Product-Led Success: The Professional’s Handbook,” you’ll learn:
- How product-led growth impacts your company on a deep level.
- All about the product-led flywheel and how it fuels growth.
- A tactical guide to increasing onboarding, adoption, retention, and product growth.
- How to use Gainsight PX to unlock product-led growth.
- And more.
Download your free copy of Product-Led Success: The Professional’s Handbook now.
