Struggling to grow and capture new logos? You’re not alone. The software sector has experienced a seismic shift in recent years. Sales, marketing, product – top to bottom, the path to growth that software companies are taking looks unrecognizable from the strategies deployed five years ago.
In this article, you will learn how a growth-minded software company has generated 7,000 leads per quarter through its commitment to product education.
What is Product Education?
Product education is the process of educating your customers to better understand and engage with your product. You can think of product education as the evolved descendant of the user manual.
It is a business tool for growth, using both sales and marketing tactics. Companies can raise awareness, deepen engagement, and boost retention by providing users with educational content about a product.
The more informed your customer is about your product, the more likely they will continue to see your product’s value.
Product education can be an especially valuable tool when folded into an organization’s product-led growth (PLG) efforts. If your product is already being used as a tool for acquiring users, educating people about your product becomes an additional way to grow your market beyond free trials and freemium models.
Who Uses Product Education?
Almost any company can use it, but the primary benefactors are companies that sell complex products or have products that regularly roll out new features or updates. Software and technology companies are the primary sectors driving the product education upswing.
Think back to the user manual. What types of products require you to review the instructions rigorously? Complicated ones. If you’re building a shelving unit from IKEA, you’ll spend more time pouring over the instructions than you will for your new phone.
Every company should use this kind of marketing, but the more complex your product, the more invested you should be.
How to Implement Product Education
Like the ghost-filled baseball field in Field of Dreams, implementation of your new product education strategy starts with building it.
It helps to begin your strategy by ideating the portions of your product that demand your customer’s attention.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What are the elements that new users miss?
- What are the core components that are imperative for a positive user experience?
Create learning-based content around these topics and show your customers how to be successful with your product.
Content can take a variety of forms, including:
- Blog posts
- Guides
- Webinars
- Videos & podcasts
- Gamification
- Tutorials
- Self-paced learning
- Instructor-led workshop
Real-Life Examples
Ok enough hypotheticals. You’re ready to see product education in the wild, aren’t you?
Here are a few examples of outstanding SaaS companies that are committed to providing tremendous product education for their customers, and are seeing their products, by direct result, generate growth.
Kasten by Veam
Kasten is a business unit within Veeam that offers enterprise operations teams a secure and easy-to-use system for Kubernetes backup.
They deploy product education through their learning academy.
Their vast online collection of learning labs is built to provide users with Kubernetes training.
Expert instructors teach users everything they need to know to grow their skill sets. As they navigate through the coursework, they earn badges to showcase their progress.
This has created over 7,000 leads in a single quarter!
Solo
Another company that effectively uses product education as a sales tool is Solo, a modern service connectivity company that delivers API infrastructure software.
Their approach to product education is centered around providing educational workshops to customers and prospects. These large, interactive workshops allow users to see the value of their product first-hand. In these workshops, hundreds of developers receive hands-on product experience simultaneously. They are asked to complete tasks as a Solo employee watches their progress in real-time. When a user is encountering an issue or taking longer than expected to complete a task, the Solo employee can jump into their machine and help them out with live feedback.
This personalized and interactive approach to product education has been a stunning success for Solo, in their pursuit of boosting their software adoption.
Their workshops have attracted 8,000+ learners with a raving NPS of 75!
Put Your Product in the Driver’s Seat
By educating users on the complexities of your product, you’re placing your product in the driver’s seat of your sales strategy – enabling product-led growth. Through education, the value of your product becomes more and more apparent to your customers.
Unlike your Sales team, your product can work around the clock to reach new prospects and deepen relationships with existing customers.
In conclusion, as software companies take on the challenge of generating leads and boosting product adoption, deploying product education enables them to make their product an engine for growth. Creating educational content accelerates a customer’s path to seeing the value of your product, which sets them on a successful customer journey.
