The 4 Principles of Onboarding for Product-Led Growth Platforms

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As the product-led progress (PLG) movement turns into more and more extra fashionable, the method will mature as will the strategic course of of buying prospects. The levels of buyer acquisition have gotten ever extra obvious consistent with the flywheels of each the PLG course of and the inbound advertising and marketing technique.The PLG flywheel has 4 levels; activate, undertake, adore and advocate. The inbound flywheel has three; appeal to, interact and delight. Each of these spins sooner the extra you study, check and iterate for long-term success. Yet none of these displays the ideas of product-led onboarding in my thoughts.Related: How Customer (*4*) Drives Product-led GrowthThe levels of onboarding for B2B PLG organizationsTo set the scene, onboarding doesn’t begin on the level somebody indicators a contract or inserts their bank card particulars. Onboarding is extensively agreed to start out on the first touchpoint in any channel your group owns. This might be an advert, a social media put up, an occasion or a speculative e-mail, for instance, and every of these should set the tone or pattern for the next actions and actions. So, what are the 4 ideas?Marketing onboarding: making the unfamiliar acquaintedPlatform onboarding: acquainted to the freemium personValue onboarding: freemium to paid personPeer-led onboarding: paid person to product championFor every precept, there are corresponding techniques and methods — some of which will be utilized in silos, and others carry out finest when utilized in a cumulative or mixed strategic method. Let’s focus on these in additional element.Marketing onboarding ideas for PLG firmsThe very first stage of onboarding for product-led firms is advertising and marketing. From right here, there’s a pure move to take strangers to champions. But what does that seem like, and what’s the finest technique specializing in B2B SaaS? For me, it is the inbound advertising and marketing technique, however let’s take a look at some of the channels you’ll be able to undertake:You can dominate a single channel alone, however that will not show useful to your longer-term targets. For many, content material advertising and marketing is the worth of admission to take a seat on the desk, however for content material to achieve immediately’s overcrowded on-line world, you want e-mail advertising and marketing to help it, paid promoting to put it on the market and social media advertising and marketing (each natural and paid) to distribute it.Therefore, a multi-channel persona-led inbound advertising and marketing technique is the one alternative. Unless, of course, your PLG platform additionally sells to the enterprise, after which you’ll require each an inbound and account-based advertising and marketing technique for continued success. Beyond this, you want a robust messaging technique in your web site’s copy that can drive your new events to begin to strive your platform.Related: Inbound Marketing — What is it and Why Does it Matter?Platform onboarding ideas for PLG companiesOnce you’ve got totally optimized your advertising and marketing technique (which may solely occur over time as you accumulate and use your information) you need to totally optimize your onboarding course of. To do that, it’s good to use a acknowledged framework or mixture frameworks like:Nail this stage of the onboarding course of and your buyer acquisition program will probably be heating up. Not solely have I given you the playbook on PLG onboarding right here, however I’ve additionally given you the instruments to do it — and I’m not finished but.Value onboarding for product-led SaaSThe articles I’ve shared with you within the hyperlinks provides you with and your crew extra worth steering and context for certain, however there’s one other stage to optimizing onboarding and that requires instruments. These instruments come within the kind of:PendoUserflowChameleonHeapAmplitudeMixpanelFullStoryThere’s additionally an entire host of different instruments that will help you perceive in case your product is delivering the worth you got down to ship, the place the bottlenecks are and how one can take care of them. Optimizing your PLG platform for worth is the way you decrease the time that your freemium customers take to acknowledge the true worth of your product.Keep optimizing to ship ongoing worth and to grasp how you can construct and concentrate on future product and/or characteristic releases.Peer-led or peer-to-peer onboarding for product-led organizationsThe remaining precept of onboarding is to optimize your platform’s capability for your champions or cheerleaders to ask their associates and colleagues. Whilst incentives are all the time good, in the end, you need to construct a product so good, so precious and so vital that your finest customers can not help however discuss you and hype you up.You need these customers to inform their tales and have your platform as a hero within the story. So, how do you try this? The chances are if you happen to nail the primary three, this one takes care of itself. However, your job is to not grow to be complacent however to deal with this onboarding section like a partnership channel — one that’s pushed by a person group, not a gross sales crew.You can add the power to ask and share from their account, that is just about normal nowadays, however ask your crew this query: How will we allow our greatest customers, the champions and cheerleaders, to simply invite and onboard new customers on our behalf? Figure that out via a champions committee or one thing related, and you’ve got nailed the 4 levels of PLG onboarding.Related: How to Turn Strangers into Loyal Customers With User OnboardingI hope you loved this tackle the 4 precept levels of onboarding for product-led progress platforms and that I’ve given you adequate for you to return to your groups and refocus your efforts. Using this framework will permit your group to grow to be extra embedded and cross-functional, which may solely show useful for your entire go-to-market movement.

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