The Product-Led Growth conference was an eye-opening exploration of the concepts that fuel business success through a Product-Led growth strategy. The conference was split into segments featuring industry experts and tech leaders that are driving success through Product-centric Go-To-Market methods. Girish Mathrubootham, CEO and Founder of Freshworks, was introduced to share his insights on “The fundamentals of Product Led Growth” and kickstart the event.
Strategic product execution and management is the key to facilitating Product-Led growth, Girish said. He built Freshworks to become a powerhouse of innovation that continues to deliver exceptional products for workflow automation. The success of Freshworks is the basis upon which Girish kicked off the SaaSBOOMi conference, to educate the audience and his fellow associates on successful entrepreneurship. In this article, we have tried to break down the concept of Product-Led Growth into easily digestible nuggets.
What is Product-Led Growth?
In conventional business strategy, sales and marketing teams work together in an enterprise to nurture and convert prospects into customers. Sales-Led Growth involves dedicated personnel constantly chasing after potential customers with a product. In this event, the customer doesn’t have direct access to the unique selling point of the product. A customer only knows what the sales representative is trying to sell. This is where Product-Led Growth can be leveraged to introduce a new solution to the customer’s need, in the form of a product that’s designed to be self-served in nature.
Girish Mathrubootham states that Product-Led Growth utilizes the product as the marketing asset required to nudge prospects through the marketing funnel. Customers gain direct access to the features of a product and thereby make a more informed purchase decision. By eliminating cold calls and meetings, you can give customers hands-on access to the various features of your product. You can enable effective product execution in the market of your choice from there. The product design will determine whether the customer continues to use your product or not.
The success of Freshworks was attributed to constantly nurturing the customer with product features. Businesses can gain a better grip on the user experience through a Product-Led growth approach. Girish implies that the application of Product-Led Growth is expansive, especially for start-ups with limited investment capital but a good product to offer.
So how is the Product-Led Growth strategy employed?
How to use a product for every step of the marketing funnel?
If you can showcase your product’s features well, you will gather more interest in your brand. Product-Led Growth leverages internet services and remote marketing practices to generate leads. Girish Mathrubootham ornately ran through the conceptualization of business strategy in line with product management and execution of his company, Freshworks.
He mentioned that today, it’s easier for teams to invest in an idea that they think is brilliant. You don’t have to go through the CEO to sell a product that helps customers. Building a SaaS product can be done from anywhere in the world. The approach of Product-led Growth strategy caters to a unique segment within an enterprise. Online marketing has enabled access to this niche market and technology has automated many enterprise functions.
With access to specific teams, Product-Led Growth strategy is more likely to reach your target market quicker than Sales-Led Growth that targets the decision-maker in a company. Girish went on to explore how Product-Led Growth benefits businesses and the end-consumers as well.
Identifying the niche within an organization
Product-Led Growth is a model of scaling your business by using the product across multiple business verticals. You pitch the product to a customer and analyze their response. Once they use your product, the chances of them doing business with you are higher. You can find out what’s lacking and how to improve along the way. A business can implement new features and configurations while the user is getting familiar with the software. Since the product is designed for a specific business function, the teams involved are the decision makers. Buyer power is translated to varying functions within the company and not just the management. For instance, the introduction of Freshdesk as a Free Helpdesk Ticketing system achieved massive success due to the clear identification of a team within a company that required a specific product.
With the right niche on the horizon, it becomes easier to identify business demands as well. With the aim to resolve a problem that a specific end-consumer faces, businesses can create a product that delivers quality. This was the secret of Freshworks. Every product is hell-bent on customer experiences, and the quality it requires for the customers to become brand advocates. Targeting the team spirit of an enterprise proved more valuable than pitching an idea to the CEOs and board executives. Through increased familiarity with the product, the business nudges a user to take action and refer their colleagues. A business can then realize their ideal customer and pursue those leads with more valuable and contextual services.
Product management enabling increased connectivity
The biggest win for startups is when their product can enable increased connectivity. Girish Mathrubootham credits the growth of his product into a million-dollar revenue stream, to the product management of Freshworks. They pursued the team workflow automation with a vigorous inclusion of newer product features during the customer’s experience.
With a clear understanding of customers requirements, you can tailor the features of your product to stand out and meet their exact demands. With an increasing number of companies and individuals adopting technology for improved workflow, product execution is crucial to their experiences. Businesses developing SaaS products should be aware of the multi-purpose functionality of Product-Led Growth. Another aspect of product management that the CEO of Freshworks explored was the pricing strategy. Without the correct pricing strategy, the product cannot be expressed well enough.
A winning pricing strategy!
The pricing strategy should reflect the ease of access your product enables for users. Making a free trial available can be used to introduce new features along the way. Users should recognize the value of the product step by step, until they reach a point where they become a customer. Freshworks made the product interface simple and attractive. When professionals were offered a free trial, they couldn’t get enough!
When your product has the end-user in mind, you will think of increased connectivity. By making your product design focused on increased connectivity, you can cover more ground in the target market. The real power of Product-Led Growth is when more people collaborate on a product to make work easier. With a Product-Led Growth strategy, you can lead more people to collaborate with each other, utilizing your product and its many features as the bait.
Data-driven strategies for improved user-experiences
From the launch of any product, every aspect of user behavior should be thoroughly analyzed. This keen eye for detail revealed the leadership of Girish Mathrubootham’s success with Freshworks. At every point across a marketing plan, the company gained direct access to user data and user experiences. The users are kept in the loop with new features that make their lives easier.
The goal of effective product management is to stay updated with every user’s experience and implement strategies that are specific to the user interest in your brand. Your product may start as a personal download and end up being used by an entire team. A team might adopt the product and inspire their colleagues to invest in the technology. This is what ensued with Freshworks when they introduced a simple workflow management system that evolved into a full-fledged CRM. In fact, the popularity of Freshworks and their products is taking the market by storm with an innovative Product-Led Growth strategy.
Essentially, a great product design shows the understanding of user experiences. SaaS products should build value along the customer journey with unique and worthwhile features. According to the experts from the SaaSBOOMi conference, your goal as a SaaS entrepreneur is to maintain quality and generate favorability among users. Outline the objectives of your product execution and streamline the interface to suit user demand. Constantly improving the user experience will increase customer retention.
The more that people want to interact with your product features, the more your product gains momentum in the market. Freshworks under the founding leadership of Girish Mathrubootham is a clear indication of the success that Product-Led Growth can enable businesses worldwide.
