Although slow and steady wins the race. But what happens when you add positive reinforcement along the way?
There's no doubt that it will hasten your goal to win the race. In other words, you do not have to just follow the pattern but rather, adopt strategies, techniques, and models that will assist in helping you achieve your goal.
Do you know that most of the successful businesses in industries now are product-led?
Talking about product-led, it is important to know that the customers, in this case, are placed in high priority. In other words, they are the center of attraction because they make use of the product you develop and determine if its potential has been well delivered.
Although these products are developed by a cross-functional and empowered team, yet, they are not perfect in driving the right sales funnel to the company.
Why?
Well, that happens because it is important to know that there is no one-size-fits-all since it is not about the product but the customer loyalty and trust derived from the product and the business as a whole. The availability of a large market where you can scale rapidly and also switch low cost without any barrier makes it a successful strategy.
Product-led companies have several benefits in contrast to those that are marketing or sales-led. They use different strategies to ensure the business's growth and development.
Before we dive into those strategies;
What does Product-led mean?
A lot of business personnel and product developers seem to be unaware of the fact that product-led is based on the value a product brings to its consumers.
Nevertheless, these product-led companies must see the product as a competitive advantage and ensure that the product has value to deliver.
In numerous industries like technology and design, they employ the use of data analysts and scientists who assist the marketing sector which is known to be the roadmap of a product. Money is constantly being invested in the acquisition of the right methods and formulas even with the introduction of big data, all in the name of garbage-in, garbage-out monetary wise.
Hence, the introduction of product-led in these industries has proven to increase the customer's lifetime value without spending so much and following the same old marketing process.
Product-led companies are those companies that adopt the use of product-led strategies in a company or industry by targeting their customers and ensuring growth.
What are the Benefits of a Product-led Company?
Product-led companies are known for their fast action in bringing out a company or industry from its marketing mess by making a difference in the product and promoting revenue and business growth.
Some benefits of a product-led company are:
- Product-led companies have better economics because of automation and APIs around the product itself.
- Startups that are product-led tend to have higher multiples in their valuation because of the economic efficiencies
- Product-led companies usually rely on product analytics to build their roadmap which often leads to faster Product Market Fit (PMF)
- Product-led companies perform research on the new value to provide.
- They also help to differentiate your products from others in the economy.
- They help to solve the problem of your company by concentrating on delivering more value than your competitors.
- To promote a customer-centered level and flexibility, they change the pricing of the products to suit that purpose.
- Product-led companies delve into the various steps like engagement, acquisition, and retention loops of the business or company to solve the problem.
When it comes to some examples of a product-led company and platform to build product-led companies there are a few platforms and tools out there:
- DevRev
- Slack
- Asana
- Jira and so on.
The above-listed product-led companies all have a unique yet common goal and that is to ensure that customers do not fall into the waiting arms of a sales representative.
But rather they can get the product firsthand and experience a whole new level of onboarding and in-app messaging which has the sales and marketing information embedded in the product.
Moving on, let's take a look at the go-to product-led strategy that industries like tech can utilize:
1. Product-led Growth
Product-led growth is a product-led business strategy that focuses on its users or customers and leverages its products to give satisfaction and scalability.
It is of due importance to note that any large enterprise or industry such as technology and finance with various operating niches can employ the use of product-led growth to increase their active users and ensure efficiency in the market.
The use of this strategy centers around your business resources like the product, sales, and marketing. Such that its implementation allows your business to create revenue retention, and customer loyalty by providing a personalized product experience that drives users or customer loyalty and revenue retention.
Certainly, a significant benefit that a business gets while using product-led growth is scalability with a low cost.
According to OpenView, the market has shifted power from the buyers to the end users and in terms of software, the users need to get good experiences from the tools they utilize. Therefore, software companies have to step up their game in providing just that.
Likewise, while using the product-led growth strategy, you need to establish a way for users who are potential customers to experience value from your product before they eventually make a purchase. Through this process, the product itself brings in sales as your outbound sales team.
Some benefits of utilizing a product-led growth strategy are;
- Freemium or free trial
- Survival in a hyper-growth mode at scale.
- Ease of use
Thus, to guarantee your business growth, you need to invest in the product itself and less investment in outbound sales motion.
2. Product-led Support
Have you ever wondered why your customer is not using your product at a point in time?
Moreover, there are situations when a customer or user of your product gets stuck during the use of the product and needs help. As a product-led company, you should be able to provide assistance and contextual support to your customer or user during that period.
It is in this case scenario, that product-led support comes into play.
Product-led support is a business strategy that involves leveraging the product as a form of assistance to the customers and users for the effective use of the product.
In this case, features are added to the product to promote better customer interaction which creates bespoke workflows that allow the proactively fixing of issues that arise.
Let's take note that employing product-led support is not taking the job of support or customer service. Because their roles cannot be completely performed by in-apps some of which include, helping with troubleshooting or diagnosing technical challenges, and also reporting issues to the right teams, and identifying widespread problems.
Specifically, it involves;
- Stitching systems like live chat widgets and ticketing systems
- Customer identity
- A backend work management tool like Jira
In addition to the aforementioned, product-led support does allow them to self-serve resources, whenever they need them.
Users and customers do not have to leave the product to find answers to their questions.
The support services help you deliver answers almost instantly, without urging customers to wait for assistance from their customer success manager (CSM) or support team.
In Conclusion
Product-led strategies benefit industries in much more expedient ways than sales-led, marketing-led and engineering-led.
When you take a look at pricing plans, and generating revenue, among the three strategies, you will discover that product-led has a direct correlation to revenue, growth, and business value which overall helps to determine business growth.
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