Your website is the entryway into your product. It is where you show the value of your product and entice your prospective users to try it. Your website is nothing less than the point at which your product-led strategy starts, and it can act as a propeller or as a bottleneck to your activation process.
In this talk you will learn: How do you make a website that helps you sell your product? How do you turn your website into a fine-tuned machine that helps you scale? How do you bring prospective users that want your product?
Eduardo Esparza:
Hi, everybody. I'm Eduardo Esparza. Thanks for joining me today. I'll be talking to you about how to make a website that supports your PLG strategy. So, a few things we know about PLG. Product is how new users get value and how they learn about the product, essentially getting their hands into it. Product is a primary means of acquisition, expansion, retention, and some form of product by virality is going to be driving growth. So it's like if you put the product in the center and all those things start building around and driving growth for the product itself. So wait, so does that mean that organic and paid campaigns are at odds with PLG? There's no SEO, no PPC, nothing but the product? To know this, I mean, you can ask this question, can built-in by virality be the primary source of growth? Just like what Dropbox did.
Eduardo Esparza:
So, if not the case, then you're going to need some website or landing page of some sort as an entry gate into your product. So if you look at the PLG funnel, lead, PQL opportunity, revenue. The website's primary role is going to be to acquire those leads so they can get them into into the PLG funnel and get them into the process of getting product qualified.
Eduardo Esparza:
So the goal of your website is you need to be to help you sell more software. Okay. Yeah, but more specifically is to get users to start experiencing your product is that entry gate. And not any user, but the right kind of users. So let's explore how conversions happen to begin with. Conversions are about driving behavior. And to illustrate that, let's just think about this for a moment.
Eduardo Esparza:
Let's say you want to eat healthy. You're highly motivated. You learned all that There is to know about healthy food. But you're hungry, and all you have in your kitchen is fatty muffins. Your motivation is not going to be enough to drive the desired behavior. It doesn't matter how motivated you are, how much you know about healthy food, if you don't have healthy food in front of you, all you have is muffins. You're not going to drive that desired behavior, so it's not all about motivation, which is something that BJ Fogg concluded for many years of studying behavior and persuasion.
Eduardo Esparza:
So at the beginning, it was so much focus on motivation, motivation. Motivation is a primary driver. [inaudible 00:02:30] for people to act, they have to have the motivation, the ability and be triggered. So then he came up with this behavior model, which he charts here. This chart motivation in the Y axis from very low to very high, and the X axis ability or simplicity, the ability to act from very difficult stuff to very easy stuff. There's going to be an excellent threshold after which action, if appropriately triggered is possible and below the threshold, this is simply going to be no action possible. So for example, think about something that is very difficult, even if you're very, very motivated, it's going to be driving no action. It's going to cause frustration. Think about if you're a climate change activist and you want to drive policy, well, it's very difficult to drive that kind of behavior even if you're very motivated. So it leads to a lot of frustration.
Eduardo Esparza:
On the other side of the spectrum here you have, let's say things that are very easy to do, but your motivation to do them is so low that it just doesn't get done. It's just like that dirty window that basically just continues to be an annoyance, because it just never makes it to the top of the list. So there's not enough of a powerful trigger there to make you go and clean that window. It's just going to continue to annoy you. Unless you're going to get visits then, okay, your motivation goes up because now you have to have a clean to have a presentable home, right?
Eduardo Esparza:
Okay. So in the no action red zone, there's no trigger whatsoever that will work to drive behavior. Because a combination of motivation and ability is just not at the right place. After the action threshold, however, the effectiveness of the trigger is going to increase as motivation and ability increases as well. So is that something that is very easy to do, like eat when you're hungry? Hunger is a trigger, and the motivation is very high to eat healthy. And you do have the ability because you have healthy food at home, then it's going to very easy. All you need is that signal trigger, "I'm hungry" and you will eat healthy.
Eduardo Esparza:
So looking at it from a SAS standpoint, let's look at ability in terms of how easy it is to engage with your product and how easy it is to buy. So on the left side of this chart, we're going to have this high-touch B2B enterprise SAS where it's very difficult to drive action just because it takes many people. It takes time to evaluate all these different aspects of the solution. On the right-hand side is the low-touch SAS. These are things that the user can come into a landing page and in 15 minutes make a great decision and dive in. Regarding motivation as it relates to SAS is, well, how important it is for me to act right now to solve this problem? So the top layer you're going to have important and urgent stuff and lower bar, you're going to have not important, not urgent stuff.
Eduardo Esparza:
So as you can see, if we go back here for a moment, low-touch SAS where it's very easy to engage with your product and easy to buy it. You're going to have the ability to play with a wider range of motivations just as if your product is very easy to... Sorry, if you're dealing with a very motivated audience, you're going to have... they can cope with a wider range of simplicity to engage with your product.
Eduardo Esparza:
So let's break it down a little further. Motivation, it's about talking to the ultimate reason. And this is usually going to be a polar opposite combination of hope and fear, pleasure-pain, social acceptance-rejection. These are the kind of things have to have into consideration what polar opposite are you playing with in that landing page or website.
Eduardo Esparza:
The ability is about making it simple. Now, here the user starts asking questions like, does it take too much time? Can I afford it? Is there a risk associated with, do I have the ability to act now? Does it require too much thinking? Does it make me feel uncomfortable? Does it look legit? Does it feel familiar or expected, or is it something completely new that I feel kind of uncomfortable doing?
Eduardo Esparza:
Triggers is about the hotness of the trigger. So it's putting hot triggers in the path of motivated people is the way to do it. And hot triggers are those that invite you to act now and get a benefit now as opposed to later. So triggers take the form of an offer, call to action, prompt, hyperlink, or some request to do something.
Eduardo Esparza:
So conversions are all about number one, motivation. Be highly relevant. Number two, the ability. Make it simple. And number three is a trigger, like hot offers to act on now. So being highly relevant requires number one, getting the right motivated audience and number two, giving them the ability and a trigger to act. So how do we find a motivated audience, those motivated users that want to act on a solution now? So for this, we have to consider the customer-centric journey. And the customer-centric is looking at that funnel but from the customer standpoint. That means what is he going to, I mean, what is he going through? So you have status quo, then some experiencing problem. At some point in time there's a threshold where that problem becomes a priority [inaudible 00:08:28]. And [inaudible 00:08:32] looking for a solution. That's the needing a solution stage. All these things are happening in the customer world. This is outside of your properties. This is the social media space, search, and offline conversations.
Eduardo Esparza:
Next stage is considering solutions. Considering solutions is going to be that area where it's like users were accessing your store. And this happens in your website landing page in the simplest of the cases. But there's a wide range of things going on here depending on how difficult is it to engage and buy your product. Like, B2B enterprise SAS is going to take a long time and a lot of people in this stage. And this is going to be, probably, a lot more steps than if it's a low-touch, simple to engage with type of solution where it can be just a simple visit to a landing page. But anyway, this stage exists of considering the solution.
Eduardo Esparza:
The next steps, trying solution, is I'm trying to get a buyer to activate it. Hopefully, they start loving it and recommending it to their friends. This is users as your guests. Like, if you had a bed and breakfast and you get out of your way to make them happy and satisfied and make them successful. So this happens in your product and contextually around your product, all the things that you build around it, like the customer success teams, support and communications to train and to drive value.
Eduardo Esparza:
So your audience's motivation depends on their stage in the journey. And so those are the kind of trigger you put in their path. So what I mean by that, so let's look at the dub three areas before they enter your planet. Needing a solution is by far the hottest. It's like, there's certainly guys that are out there looking for a solution like you. They have made it a priority to solve this problem. This is your hottest segment. Therefore, getting the right trigger in front of these guys is going to give you the lowest CAC and the highest return on that initiative that you're running.
Eduardo Esparza:
Second priority. If that does doesn't exist, you're going to have to go through the next level up, which is experiencing a problem. So those guys that are feeling the pain, they know they have to solve it at some point, but they just have not made it a priority to solve it. Still motivated because they're feeling the pain, but it's passive.
Eduardo Esparza:
And the last priority will be those guys that are just living in the status quo. Yes, there's a problem, but they don't really consider the problem there, because they don't know what they don't know. That's the hardest segment to crack into. This is like when chat bots first came into the market. Like, well, do I really need this? I mean, there's other means to solve this problem. It's working right now, so if it's not broken, why fix it? So you have to deal with a whole other set of problems in the status quo level.
Eduardo Esparza:
Today I'm going to dive into examples of how you can go after users needing a solution and experiencing problems. So let's start with the first one. Top highest priority, users needing a solution. So here, because I said the motivation is super high, they're searching a solution right now. They're looking for you. So the playground here is going to be search engines. This is people, they're looking for solution in Google, typing in ways to solve it, or solutions for their problem. Search intent is super high. That's something I forgot to mention. Retargeting is super important here as well, because, I mean, because they're searching and they're coming to your landing page. It's important to stay in front of them, because they're very active in their process right now. So the search intent is high intent.
Eduardo Esparza:
Keywords. It's things, like they're just going to start typing stuff like project management software, accounting software, competitor commercial searches, like Zendesk alternative, or leader of your category alternative.
Eduardo Esparza:
Review. There is articles, it's like solution A versus solution B, seed reviews, review engines, and then marketplace listings. These are things that are happening outside of your websites, certainly, but you can still control them to some extent. So Salesforce, AppExchange, Shopify marketplace, or things like G2 Crowd. And so you have to make sure for the ability component, you have to make sure that the offer is clear. Make it simple to engage. And the trigger is only be a variation of solve your problem today. Get value immediately and try now.
Eduardo Esparza:
So let's look at a couple of important conversion points here. So the first key conversion is that from needing a solution to considering it. That's the conversion from the ad search result to the website landing page, where they can initially learn about you and sign up. And then the second key conversion is that website landing page to the trial start.
Eduardo Esparza:
So let's look an example of this high intent solution keywords. That's mean people are searching actively for your solution and they want what you have right now. So as an example, you have somebody looking in Google for accounting software for small business. They go and find a listing, whether it's an ad or a search organic result. And it says that. Accounting software small businesses, that matches my query. That sounds great. If you look at this, it's very important to maximize this area, whatever capabilities Google is giving you, you just maximize that area because that's important real estate. This is an important trigger here and you see those star ratings? You can achieve that with independent trust. So trust sites like Trust Reviews, or there's many that does this kind of things, and you can syndicate those and feed that into the schema, or your search result.
Eduardo Esparza:
But I mean, it looks very sexy, that listing with the stars there. That leads you to a landing page that hopefully has the same kind of cadence in terms of copy and messaging. So you have accounting software for small businesses as the search. The search result is telling the same thing. And then the landing page also starts with small business accounting software, so that's great. There's great coherence here.
Eduardo Esparza:
Let's dive into the above the fold components of this landing page. What makes it great is, well, they ad copy, like I said, matches the ad. Then, if you want to use this layout of having the three columns, it's something very popular. Users are familiar with it. Just make sure you use it right. And by that, I mean that you make it real, tangible, not fluff and jargon. So in this case they say keep accurate records. Okay. That's something that I, as a user, can understand. Get paid faster. For sure is something that I can understand. It's something that I can relate to.
Eduardo Esparza:
Offer an easy way to try it for free. He place a button here that drives me to another landing page. I think my personal preference here will have been to put the field, enter your email, click button, and you start process. You have a lead capture already without that additional friction of having to go to another place. And then you also have a overview video. Video with a view is great. Also, my personal preference here will have been to just show a frame of the video with a play button, because just the link may be easy to me. I don't know to what extent it's being missed there. And then show the product to give the signal that, hey, this is a software product. you're in.
Eduardo Esparza:
Scrolling down a little bit in that page, these guy's from Zero decided to use features cards. I remember these kind of pages, they started getting users needing a solution and looking for a solution already. So there has been some formulation of that problem in their minds already. So this is not necessarily bad because, I mean, there's another line of thought that said that you should drive with benefits, not with features. But if the problem formulation has been already... is matured enough, and they're down to looking at what they can do with the software. This is not necessarily a bad approach. The key thing is that this matches what the user wants to do. Like, invoicing inventory, and it relates to the bank reconciliation. Okay. Yeah. That's a pain right now and this can help me. Dashboards. Pay bills. Yeah, I do that. Expenses. Sure. Great.
Eduardo Esparza:
Now the bottom of the here, they have a proof, but these are, if you see, this is not copy-pasted and formatted nicely. It is an independent, trustworthy source. They use Trustpilot here, as I said earlier, there's also like Trust Reviews and things like that. But the cool thing about this is that they let you syndicate the content, and it's an independent source. So it's trusted, and you can use it in your search engine listing with those five little stars. [Inaudible 00:17:40] great. Should give it a try.
Eduardo Esparza:
Also, I found an example here that [inaudible 00:17:46] pretty bad. And I want to show you why is this so bad. It's a page that is trying to do the same thing, but the message is not conveying value here. So they're saying powerful and easy to use. And these are objectives that make the copy pretty useless because it doesn't tell me anything about how it's powerful and how is it easy to use. And they keep going down here. I mean, this is a bad way of using those three columns layouts. Easy, flexible, and collaborative it doesn't tell me anything about why and how is that easy. Why and how is that flexible and collaborative? And also the image here in the background. It acts more like a distraction and noise than conveying a positive feeling about Smartsheet, in this case. So this violates the golden rule of a PLG website, that is show not tell. All right. PLG websites and landing page should show not to tell. And this is telling, but not showing me how or what.
Eduardo Esparza:
So another example, competitor commercial searches. These are guys that are looking for your top competitors already. Like in this case, Zendesk alternative goes to a listing Zendesk alternative. Goes to a landing page, looking for an alternative to Zendesk. Okay, great. Great cohesive cadence there. Let's look at this landing page above the fold. So say the value proposition matches the ad copy. That's great. Second one, second important element of this kind of page is you have to tell immediately what is it that they do so differently than the competition. In this page, it's here. Although, I will have highlighted that a little more. It's time to start treating customers like people, not tickets. That's the primary difference. Fundamental difference that you're going after. Easy way to try it for free. That's great. Email address. Get started. All right. That looks easy.
Eduardo Esparza:
The image here, I want to make an additional comment to the graphic. After looking at this many times, I kind of got it that the guy on the left is a support ticket and looks kind of bored. And the guys on the right are having a fun conversation. So I guess this is what they were trying to say build that contrast there, but then there's better ways to do it. Because I have time to think through this. This is like a painting art. And you don't have time for painting and art. You have to make it super obvious. So probably will have chosen a different graphic of the software, like getting a customer service support, being serviced through chat, which they do below the base. But I mean, this is a super key area. Leverage that.
Eduardo Esparza:
And if you scroll down the page, what do you expect? A comparison table, right? One of those where your column is all green and the competitors columns are a bunch of red exes. Well, CEB and Google ran a study very recently, pulling around 9000 users in the context of looking at methods like this and asked: Do you see a real difference between suppliers and value the difference enough to pay for it? Well, 86% said "no". So in essence, these things are not effective in communicating differentiating value. So how do you do it right? I mean, this has been the traditional way for some time.
Eduardo Esparza:
So instead of that, well, let's continue to tell the story. What makes you different? Keep hammering on that and make it vivid and real. So, delight your customers by being personal. Okay, that's great. Continue to build contrast and sharp contrast. Sharp, stark contrast. Do this. Don't don't do this, and do this instead. Show the product to illustrate that, and then show some proof.
Eduardo Esparza:
So through the page, you're going to continue to give reasons to switch, or choose you and kill reasons to stay, or stop considering the guy. Kill reason is important. You look at what your competitor weaknesses are and seek to make those your advantages, or your strong points.
Eduardo Esparza:
So a competitor landing page must-haves is show the product, engaging sorting design, avoid comparison tables, and hit the four forces, which are the problem with a current solution, what's attractive about the new solution, address any anxiety of an uncertainty of change and break existing habits. And it doesn't need to be a short page. You're telling the story. So as long as that's well-built, you're building contrast throughout the page and you're hitting on these four forces of eliminating uncertainty. I mean, you're going to be right. Something to test for sure.
Eduardo Esparza:
So we have seen that top priority of users, top layer of users needing a solution. Most of the one level up users experiencing a problem. As I said, these guys are feeling the pain. So the motivation is high, but it's passive because they're not actively looking right now. So you have to go out into their playground and get in front of them. We have that outbound campaigns like LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook display even. Intent is going to be high-temperature. How to solve issues with, or how to integrate mid-temperature is like 10 best tips to solve X problems, or 10 best apps for this particular problem, situation.
Eduardo Esparza:
Ability here, your value proposition is to be focused on pain relief. Whatever the pain, hey, there's a solution for that. Make it simple to act. And then consider persona based positioning, because different types of users are going to experience that problem a little bit different.
Eduardo Esparza:
So the trigger is going to be some variation of, hey, that horrible problem you have, there's a solution for it and here is it. So experiencing problem campaign number one is, let's look at high-temperature campaigns. These are addressing a problem the user has, although they're not looking for a problem yet. And the outreach, these are outreach campaigns to get in front of them. These are LinkedIn examples, LinkedIn ads promoted to a specific target audience. So the one right there is: Stuck with Exchange 2010? Well yeah, this is an old technology. We're stuck with it in our company, and we still need to sync the Salesforce, and there's not many options for me. Well, that's what the landing page is going to tell you. The only email to Salesforce sidebar integration for exchange 2010.
Eduardo Esparza:
So let's dive into some of the elements here. Very simple. Value proposition that focuses on relieving the pain. Prove that it has worked for somebody else and offer an easy way to engage. A couple of fields, click, engage. Very simple. The you have another example here, it's segmented position, use when you craft different messages for different types of users. In this case, I have I can message for sales managers. Salesforce is no force if reps aren't using it. And for users on the country is your days of Salesforce, data entry are over because users are being asked by sales managers to enter data into Salesforce. And it's a absolute pain and a waste of time. So that message resonates first for the managers is a different story.
Eduardo Esparza:
[inaudible 00:25:25] to the manager landing page, above the fold a little bit. So you have the value proposition, again, addressing the pain. You know, we're paying for Salesforce, costs a bunch of money, but I'm not really getting a lot of benefit out of it. Proof. And then linking the solution, solving that pain to a desirable gain and make it very tangible. Look, 30% more selling time. Okay. Yeah. That sounds like something I would want. More meeting activity. Yep. I mean, that relates to numbers and easy way to engage. I mean, you have first name, email, request a demo. That's great. And then tackle top concerns. Kill reasons to stay. Implementing minutes is a absolute top concern. I don't want to waste my salespeople time and works with my platform. All right. That's great.
Eduardo Esparza:
So, all right, so a few takeaways to make a website that supports your PLG strategy, it's about maximizing exposure, being relevant and trigger highly motivated users to act and make that easy. So if you were to look at this, it's a Venn diagram, you have a bunch of wrong, unmotivated users. And you have a subset that are the right motivated users. And then you get conversions. So your goal is to maximize this interstitial where the right motivated users are converting. And you do that by targeting them properly, making it easy to engage, and then placing hot triggers in their path.
Eduardo Esparza:
So as a recap, how to make a website that supports your PLG strategy. Number one, SEO and SEM can be used to feed your PLG funnel. SEO and SEM are not at odds with building. Number two, user's motivation level depend on their journey stage. Number three, place call triggers in the path of motivated users. Number four, make it easy to engage, eliminate all kinds of friction points. Number five, create special pages specifically to support this. That means that you cannot bank only on your homepage to do all this work. You have to craft different messages for different situations.
Eduardo Esparza:
Two bonus takeaways. The top priority is users needing a solution right now. So go after those first. Number two users experiencing a problem right now. That means they're experiencing a problem, but even if they're not looking for it, they know it's a problem. So get in front of them. Embrace testing and experimentation. All what you saw here, has to go through some process of testing experimentation. No one's going to get to optimal on the first round, expanding with different messages, different graphics, different structures of the page, different value propositions.
Eduardo Esparza:
This was Eduardo Esparza. If you want to continue learning about how to make a website that supports your PLG strategy, you can reach out to me via email. LinkedIn is great. You can go to www.marketing.net, and you can also get the slides to this presentation at marketing.net/askconversions/PLGsummit2.
Eduardo Esparza:
I'm also offering a 30-minute live site evaluation. I can help you find out why your site isn't converting, and then benchmark against a SAS website conversion system, that's widely used by top SAS firms through accelerated acquisition. You can request it at marketing.net/siteevaluation. And thanks for joining me today.
