UserLeap spent a couple of years focusing on building a really great product but they were not doing a lot of marketing. Now that they are confident that their product is exactly what their customers want and need, the time has come and they are ready to start ramping up their marketing and they have decided to focus on a product-led marketing strategy.
Katie Mitchell recently joined the UserLeap team as the VP of Marketing. Over the course of her career, Katie has experience with both business-to-consumer and business-to-business marketing and is excited to take on this new role leading a product-led marketing effort.
ProductLed’s Ramli John recently chatted with Katie about some of the aspects of marketing for a product-led company and the differences in the roles and responsibilities.
The Difference Between Sales-Led and Product-Led Marketing
Katie feels the biggest difference when marketing product-led instead of sales-led is more control.
“You're not making the jump from the marketing that you're putting out into the world, then you're transitioning over to sales, working on that handoff, making sure it's really seamless... you're in charge of acquisition or you are making sure that you're driving users to sign up, and you have full accountability and responsibility”
In some ways, product-led marketing is more similar to direct-to-consumer marketing. The website becomes an inside sales representative that customers can access themselves but getting people to sign up for a free trial is just the first step.
The next challenge is getting them to use the product, adopt it and then buy into a higher tier plan.
Product Qualified Leads
It is important to develop a strategy for determining when the customer is product qualified and then how the organization is going to proceed from there.
- What are the different actions and attributes that give a sense of if someone is product qualified?
- When is the right time to approach those free users and do you approach from a sales perspective or a customer service resource?
- Who should go into those accounts and nurture them?
Katie and the UserLeap team are looking at what they can do, proactively, to engage with customers before they become a PQL. They are looking at how they can approach from a customer success or support touch instead of a sales touch.
With a product-led approach where the customer can get their hands on the product and try it out, they can self qualify. The quest then becomes, how can UserLeap introduce themselves so that the customers feel that UserLeap is invested in their success so that when they become a PQL they are more likely to convert?
How The Marketing Strategy Changes in a Product-Led Org
Transitioning from a sales-led organization really changes the marketing playbook. When Katie started at UserLeap the primary way they were obtaining leads was still very much in line with a sales-led company. They were promoting their product via paid advertising and offering a free download. Prospective customers could download a PDF document of templates that could be used with their product as a brief overview of what they did. They collected leads and put them in a nurture stream but a very small percentage were converting.
Since they wanted to be more product-led, UserLeap changed their strategy. They took the same information from the PDF document and used it to build an architecture of website pages instead. URLs and links were added to direct people interested in getting more information to sign up for an account for access to the templates.
“We were getting higher conversion rates into the product, which was our ultimate goal… bridging the gap and we’ve seen a lot of success with that. People are proactive, giving us feedback and letting us know that they’re using that functionality to see traffic to those pages as well. It’s just a less friction-filled experience to get to the ultimate desired outcome.”
The templates are still gated behind creating an account but giving away a lot more content on the web pages has lead to higher quality leads. When everything was in the e-book and they were paying for traffic to the download they were having trouble getting good leads. Potential customers didn’t always understand the value of the product, they didn’t have enough context from the ads to see if it was really relevant to them.
Providing the information that was previously in the e-book lets the acquisition review the website and self-select. They see a really high-quality page, get a lot of value upfront and the intent is there before they even sign up with an account. They already know the product has value for them and they want to extract that value, they are a higher quality lead from the start.
Katie and the rest of the UserLeap are looking ahead at how to use their marketing plan to establish themselves as a leader in a new space in 2021. They are focusing on their messaging and explaining their product line well. Without an extra layer of sales, they need to nail the messaging on the website to get sign-ups.
Testing different approaches is important, trying different strategies to see what works for user acquisition and what doesn’t. In addition to the template report they offer, they are working with different influencers and communities.
“...in some of these product-led companies, there are, you are talking to end-users and end-users are out in the world. It's a lot easier to get access to the people that we're talking to than if you were in an enterprise company and you were talking to a CIO.”
Since you are selling to an end-user, you need to direct your marketing efforts where they are spending their time. You need to find the communities they are in and what influencers they are listening to, what events they are going to. Everything maps back to the behavior of the end-users and what is the most effective way to get the message to them.
How Sales and Marketing Work Together at UserLeap
Although the marketing is mainly focused on free user acquisitions, UserLeap still has a sales team that does some personalized outreach to larger companies. Marketing still works with sales to facilitate bringing together some of the relationships with larger enterprises. They then repurpose some of that content, figuring out how they can put that out to advertise to smaller organizations that wouldn’t necessarily be directly touched by sales. The two different approaches achieve the ultimate goal in two different ways, sales and marketing leads to free account sign-ups.
Even the larger organizations still want to get their hands into the product, they want to test it out. The product is still leading the motion whether the customer comes from an introduction by the sales team or if they knock on the front door after seeing some marketing and are going through the website.
UserLeap recently had over 500 users sign up for free accounts in the week following their series A announcement. All those new users were able to jump right into the product, they didn’t have to fill out a demo request and wait to be contacted. There was no delay, no missed opportunity when they didn’t come back. That one-click access to the product is vitally important.
“Understand your audience and really create messaging that speaks to them…. create your strategy, whether it's product-led or sales-led, that works for your audience.”
Katie's Advice to Other Product-Led Marketers
Katie’s biggest piece of advice is to make sure you are marketing to the right audience. With a product-led motion you are marketing to end-users and that might be the wrong direction if you are selling to a high-level decision-maker. You are going to need additional marketing tactics to influence those decision-makers.
You can find more information about UserLeap at their website www.userleap.com. Sign up for their free trial today. You can contact Katie through the site as well or find her on LinkedIn.
Show Notes
[00:44] Her main responsibilities right now
[04:07] Difference in her roles and responsibilities
[06:47] He definition of PQL
[08:29] What has been working in terms of her transition into becoming product-led
[13:16] What their plans are for 2021 in terms of marketing
[15:26] The role of salespeople in their product-led journey
[19:20] Her advice to those who want to go product-led
[20:16] Where people can find out more about her and UserLeap
About Katie Mitchell
Katie Mitchell is a curious problem solver and a DC-based marketer. She is also the Head of Marketing at UserLeap. For over a decade, she has worked at various SaaS-based companies across B2B and B2C. She helps them elevate their brands and accelerate their growth. Before that, she has worked with large consumer brands like Campbell’s Soup Company, PBS, and BB&T Bank.
Profile
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