A product-led growth strategy is already proven a successful GTM strategy for SaaS. It's not surprising that SaaS companies like Asana, Dropbox, and Slack have generated most of their leads from the freemium and self-service models (almost half of the customers come from self-service). Now you’re asking, how can you execute your product-led growth strategy?
Establish Self- Service Model for Product-led Growth
Establishing a self-service model is the first step if you consider a product-led growth strategy. When you offer a free trial, you need to carefully think about how you can drive your new user to the 'Aha' moment. The 'Aha' moment indicates when users discover how your product or service can solve their problems.
So, when you build a self-service model, you will need to understand the specific steps or number of clicks that users will need to follow to get to the 'Aha' moment. The best practice to optimize the user experience is to check the current user experience in the product. You can measure user behavior in your current product and see how many steps will be needed until they get to your product's value.
Re-engagement
Once you have figured out the best steps toward a successful user experience in self-service, it is time to think about how to reengage your user. Users who signed up for self-service might not have as strong an interest in your product as you thought and could be distracted by your competitors. Even a new window tab can make them forget, so you should be reminding them, "Hey! We are still here for you". The best way to keep their attention and make them reengage with your product is to email them or let them plugin a feature and remind them of how it can solve their problem.
Make them paid users.
It is no surprise that one of the biggest hurdles to overcome is in converting your free users into paid users. And yes, it helps to approach this using an intelligent and psychological strategy. First, you will need to determine what you will offer “free” features to your prospect to entice them to sign up. Second, you will need to expose the paid feature constantly while they are using your product. Lastly, when they decide to become paid users, the price table will help them provide the best option. Most Saas companies offer a subscription model, and in this case, the pre-check boxes for the subscription plan will help them choose the best value. Psychologically, showing pre-check boxes can assist the user in getting the most suitable benefits because people are often deterred when it comes to complicated decision-making processes. They will not manually compare your product features, and if you provide a default subscription package, they will follow it.
However, this only works when users are ready to buy from your self-service model. Keep in mind that most customers would not consider buying your product. Tracking user behaviors will help you understand the overall user conversion journey and see where users get stuck and when users would like to pay.
Based on user behavior, you can create a plan to reach out to the free users to help and convert them to paid users, tracking x amount of page views and send an email, or monitoring the points where users get stuck and send them user onboarding emails.
Plan your strategic Product-led Growth
Product-led growth strategy reduces the friction from long process sales. However, it is never easy to transform free users into paid users. Start with making a list of the benefits of your product and finding ways to lead them effectively to the “Aha” moment.
Also, you need to have a strategy to bring the users' attention to other destinations and keep them in a loop.
Lastly, carefully look into the user experience of your product and provide appropriate help at the points where they need it most.
Before prospects join your freemium service or free trial, do not forget to show your product's value with an interactive product demo. It will help them understand how your product works ahead (before they sign up and download your product). Once they know about your product, your product-led growth journey will start.
