Communicating your value is the unshakeable core of a successful product-led growth strategy. If you have simple pricing tiers and plans, users will upgrade on their own. If you have complicated pricing or users have to reach out to understand your “unique” pricing model… game over, you’ve lost a ton of sales you didn’t even know you could win.
In this course, we’ll cover:
Wes Bush:
This is really all about building a product bumper. So how can we use these product bumpers to make it easy for our users to upgrade? If you're thinking to yourself, "Wes, what's a product bumper?" Just bear with me for a second. Here's the first example: so this is, for instance, whenever someone has their trial expired within ChannelReply.
Wes Bush:
So what I like about this is if my trial has expired and I log in to the trial experience, all I see is, okay, my subscription has been canceled. There's some text there. And what we're doing is making it really easy for someone to activate now. It says, "Enterprise plan canceled. If you'd like to keep going, activate now."
Wes Bush:
So it's really straightforward. What do I need to do? Even if I look up at the logo, it says 'Upgrade'. The whole plan of the bumpers is really just to create a very simple experience for someone to take that next step and upgrade.
Wes Bush:
Now, sure, we could have more copy around the main benefits around what ChannelReply does, but I do think this one's very effective because it's just white pretty much everywhere else. Sure, there's a little orange in the bottom left-hand corner, but I'm really paying attention to those green lights in the upgrade experience.
Wes Bush:
Now there is the Upgrade CTA. They have that by their logo throughout the whole trial, so it was easy to see. When I wanted to upgrade the product, I knew where to do it.
Wes Bush:
And then we think about Spotify. Okay, so what do we see here? There's lots of music and there's My Library, there's Search, there's everything. Then I look by my name and my photo on the top right-hand corner and I just see 'Upgrade.' So once again, this is just thinking about within your product, how can you make it easy for someone to upgrade?
Wes Bush:
And if I go to Active Campaign, well, it's literally just an alert. There is my name once again, and there's a number there. So I'm going to check it out and see what it is. And lo and behold, boom, I have to upgrade active campaign, yay. And go from there.
Wes Bush:
So think about this. How can you create a seamless purchasing experience where you're prompting people where they need to go in a nice way that's not too forceful but when they're ready, they know how to upgrade.
Wes Bush:
And for Slack, for instance, they are always nudging me, especially with a product like a Slack community, which is on the free plan. Reminding me, "Hey, you are going to lose access to 49,000 messages," which is a lot of messages. "And so are you okay with that?"
Wes Bush:
And if it is, which in this case I am, okay, it doesn't have as much appeal. But if that's for your organization, you're thinking of, "Oh my goodness, there's so many files in there and important documents that we probably haven't saved elsewhere." Absolutely, that's a convincing call to action.
Wes Bush:
So just reminders of value is a very nice way to nudge folks to think about, "Hey, maybe I will check out those upgrade options because I don't want to lose access to all that stuff."
Wes Bush:
I guess another example here is the upgrade banner for Spotify. If I go to my account, it's really just prompting me to jump on this once-in-a-lifetime deal. Now, I'm laughing because I'm like, "Ah, it does feel a little salesy here." But nonetheless, whenever someone is visiting their profile page, it's an opportunity that can be used to get people to convert, especially when it comes to freemium models.
Wes Bush:
So what other ways can you make it easier for your users to upgrade within your product? Think about this buying journey. Yes, it starts with identifying your value metric, but it doesn't end there. Because once we get people into the product, they start experiencing the value.
Wes Bush:
If we do a good job of that onboarding experience, because we built that straight-line onboarding experience, the next thing they want to do is purchase. And so you have to understand this piece and make sure that we create an experience that's easy for people to get to the next step.
Wes Bush:
So I want to ask you, what products have the best upgrade experience in your opinion? Which ones stand out the most to you? And then why? Why is that the case? What products have you recently signed up for where the upgrade experience was so seamless, you just plugged in your credit card and continued using the product. It didn't feel like it was a big deal. It felt really straightforward and easy. Think about that product.
Wes Bush:
And maybe even go back to that experience. See, what did they do? How did they prompt you to eventually pull out your credit card and pay for that product? Because this stuff is always changing. Sure, someone might invent a new kind of product bumper to nudge you in the right way, but it all comes down to what feels natural, what feels organic in your product when it comes to the upgrade experience.
Wes Bush:
Because we don't want to create something that's very Yankee, feels like you had to jump 10 hoops. "Oh, fill in all this other information too because we didn't ask for it ahead of time." And just creating a terrible upgrade experience. Because this is where people are going to start losing motivation. They're going to say to themselves, "Do I really want to spend $2,000 on this or could I just do things the way I'm currently doing them?" Which is doing nothing, and going with that solution. So this is very important if you want those self-serve users to turn into paying customers.
