The 4 Ideas of Onboarding for Product-Led Development Platforms

Because the product-led progress (PLG) movement turns into more and more extra common, the method will mature as will the strategic technique of buying prospects. The levels of buyer acquisition have gotten ever extra obvious according to 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. Every of those spins quicker the extra you study, check and iterate for long-term success. But none of those displays the rules of product-led onboarding in my thoughts.

Associated: How Buyer Enablement Drives Product-led Development

The levels of onboarding for B2B PLG organizations

To set the scene, onboarding doesn’t begin on the level somebody indicators a contract or inserts their bank card particulars. Onboarding is broadly agreed to start out on the first touchpoint in any channel your group owns. This could possibly be an advert, a social media put up, an occasion or a speculative electronic mail, for instance, and every of those should set the tone or development for the next actions and actions. So, what are the 4 rules?

• Advertising onboarding: making the unfamiliar acquainted

• Platform onboarding: acquainted to the freemium consumer

• Worth onboarding: freemium to paid consumer

• Peer-led onboarding: paid consumer to product champion

For every precept, there are corresponding techniques and methods — a few of which will be utilized in silos, and others carry out finest when utilized in a cumulative or mixed strategic method. Let’s talk about these in additional element.

Advertising onboarding rules for PLG firms

The very first stage of onboarding for product-led firms is advertising and marketing. From right here, there’s a pure circulate to take strangers to champions. However 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 us take a look at among the channels you’ll be able to undertake:

You possibly can dominate a single channel alone, however that won’t show useful to your longer-term objectives. For a lot of, content material advertising and marketing is the worth of admission to sit down on the desk, however for content material to reach right now’s overcrowded on-line world, you want electronic mail advertising and marketing to assist it, paid promoting to market it and social media advertising and marketing (each natural and paid) to distribute it.

Subsequently, a multi-channel persona-led inbound advertising and marketing technique is the one alternative. Except, after all, 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. Past this, you want a powerful messaging technique in your web site’s copy that can drive your new events to begin to attempt your platform.

Associated: Inbound Advertising — What’s it and Why Does it Matter?

Platform onboarding rules for PLG firms

As soon as you have totally optimized your advertising and marketing technique (which might solely occur over time as you gather and use your knowledge) you need to totally optimize your onboarding course of. To do that, you have 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 am not accomplished but.

Worth onboarding for product-led SaaS

The articles I’ve shared with you within the hyperlinks will provide you with and your group extra worth steerage and context for positive, however there’s one other stage to optimizing onboarding and that requires instruments. These instruments come within the type of:

• Pendo

• Userflow

• Chameleon

• Heap

• Amplitude

• Mixpanel

• FullStory

There’s additionally an entire host of different instruments that can assist 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.

Hold optimizing to ship ongoing worth and to grasp tips on how to construct and concentrate on future product and/or function releases.

Peer-led or peer-to-peer onboarding for product-led organizations

The ultimate precept of onboarding is to optimize your platform’s capability on your champions or cheerleaders to ask their mates and colleagues. While incentives are all the time good, in the end, you need to construct a product so good, so useful 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 for those who nail the primary three, this one takes care of itself. Nonetheless, 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 consumer group, not a gross sales group.

You possibly can add the flexibility to ask and share from their account, that is just about commonplace today, however ask your group this query: How will we allow our greatest customers, the champions and cheerleaders, to simply invite and onboard new customers on our behalf? Determine that out by a champions committee or one thing related, and you’ve got nailed the 4 levels of PLG onboarding.

Associated: How one can Flip Strangers into Loyal Clients With Consumer Onboarding

I hope you loved this tackle the 4 precept levels of onboarding for product-led progress platforms and that I’ve given you adequate so that you can return to your groups and refocus your efforts. Utilizing this framework will permit your group to grow to be extra embedded and cross-functional, which might solely show useful for your complete go-to-market movement.