6/29/2023 0 Comments Tidal logo photoshop![]() ![]() ![]() If you’ve used Slack or Dropbox, you’ve witnessed this first-hand-you didn’t read a lengthy whitepaper on the benefits of strong internal communication or cloud-based file sharing. To sell to the modern buyer, you need to decide: Are you going to be product-led? Or will you be disrupted? Chapter 1: Why Is Product-Led Growth of Rising Importance?įirst off, what the heck is Product-Led Growth? Initially coined by OpenView, Product-Led Growth is a go-to-market strategy that relies on using your product as the main vehicle to acquire, activate, and retain customers. Product-Led Growth is how you turn that approach into an executable business strategy. You need to let people try before they buy. Today, a strong brand and social proof are no longer enough to build trust with the modern buyer. The company, in turn, focuses on helping the buyer become so successful using the product that upgrading to a paid plan becomes a no-brainer. Instead of helping buyers go through a long, drawn-out sales cycle, they give the buyer the “keys” to their product. Product-led companies flip the traditional sales model on its head.These companies want to take you from Point A to Point B in their sales cycle. It’s complex, unnecessary, expensive, and all about telling consumers how the product will benefit them. Sales-led companies represent the old way.Companies that embrace Product-Led Growth align their business model with an undeniable consumer trend that is not going anywhere.Īs the SaaS industry evolves, I believe there will be two types of companies: When it comes to software, consumers demand the same experience. Trying a product is and always will be an essential part of the buying process. Whether you’re contemplating perfume, a new shirt, or even a pair of sunglasses-you want to try it before you buy. In our day-to-day lives, we expect to try products before we buy them. You don’t have to be a genius to come to this conclusion. This one experience reinforced something I have long believed: Truly great software companies are built to be product-led. By making it easy for people to experience the value of our product, we transformed it into a powerful customer acquisition model. It wasn’t until I helped launch a freemium product that soared to over 100,000 users in less than a year that I realized something was wrong with the old marketing playbook. But why a whitepaper in the first place? We were using the same-old marketing playbook that everyone else did: Create content use landing pages to capture leads and nurture those leads with automated emails until, one day, they converted into paying customers (or unsubscribed). Obviously, the outcome was to generate leads for a hungry sales team. But after spending a stupid amount of cash, I began asking some hard “Whys” about customer acquisition-like why did I invest $300,000 promoting a whitepaper? I spent a small fortune on countless acquisition channels. Since gaining access to capital wasn’t an issue for this software company, the team was “blessed” with the opportunity to put some serious marketing firepower into promoting its new video hosting technology to the masses. As a result, smart investors wanted to pour money into video companies to accelerate their growth and ride the wave of demand. At the time, this behavior was considered a bit weird, but video was quickly becoming a thing for businesses around the world-it was an exciting time. Inside this startup, it was common for everyone to use video to communicate with their family, friends, co-workers, customers, and even prospects. In one cozy loft, over 50 hard workers plugged away on their laptops side-by-side on long plywood tables. It all started in a cold, gusty winter in Waterloo, Ontario (a.k.a. One of the main reasons I decided to write this book was because I witnessed first-hand the power of Product-Led Growth. Just like Blockbuster couldn’t compete with Netflix by selling the same digital content, you need to decide “when” not “if” you’ll need to innovate on the way you sell. History tells us that “how” you sell is just as important as “what” you sell. Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself By: Wes Bush ![]()
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