As you know, a satisfied customer can become a worthy advocate of your product! The overall relationship between your product and your customer has never been more important. Product experience has become an imperative part of the buying process, so the question is how to build a product that sells itself…and the answer is, by being Product-Led!
What is Product-Led?
Over the past decade, technology has not only advanced but leaped like a frog, forcing us to adapt and change the way we approach product, design, marketing, and strategy. A product-led strategy relies on the product itself, including its features and performance to do the selling. This sparkling strategy involves bringing your entire team together (such as marketing, engineering, and sales) to create appealing, sexy products which are user friendly, attractive, more powerful and more affordable for customers, which in turn improves user experience, achieves customer loyalty, increases product purchase and lowers costs.
A product’s intention is to solve a problem along with delivering the solution. The aim is to focus on making it easier for users to manage their day-to-day workflows and therefore have a sense of an achievable goal. By giving the user these key tools and offering a personalized experience to find value in the product, you can encourage a customer to commit, whether using a free trial or upgrading to the paid version. Basically, by leading with the product you can achieve awesome benefits, reduce churn and offer sustainable growth for your business.
Product-Led Companies We Love
Survey Monkey
Survey Monkey provides data to show how your customers feel about the latest features you released. By clicking on a link, customers are able to share feedback when taking a survey. The product makes the users experience the product itself, so clients are exposed to the brand, quickly and simply turning them into power users. This method of acquisition is one of the amazing benefits of product-led growth.
Koan
This company began its product-led growth strategy during the pandemic, transitioning from a sales-led to a product-led business. By using part of their product functionality, ‘Reflections’, a weekly status generator, customers received communications directly from the product team to see the value in Koan. These customers increased their brand loyalty and became repeat users more than 90% of the time. Helping users discover the “a-ha moment” on their own through product education versus being told the value by a sales team, allowed the company to change their go-to-market strategy to the product first, and create loyal, returning customers.
Miro
Miro starts their product-led approach from the moment you enter their site by using the CTA ‘Start a whiteboard’ in the hero section. This is a great way to showcase what exactly your product does and is a good indication of how easy it is to onboard users with Miro.
Once you have signed up, you immediately start a product tour, highlighting the benefits and features of the tool – reducing time to value. As you continue the tour, you receive product updates, articles and other material that educate you on how to get the most out of the product. So there’s very little need to contact support.
Product-Led Summary
Adopting a product-led growth approach to your business creates a customer-centric mindset that in turn makes for a more viable and valuable product. Outstanding customer experience has always been the key to success, so by putting the customer first and improving the user experience for your brand, you can ensure loyalty, lower customer churn, and achieve business growth.