In today’s climate, we see a lot of companies making the switch to a product-led growth strategy. With customer acquisition costs being where they are, and the market constantly brimming with competition, (not to mention decreasing willingness to pay for your product), it’s never been harder for businesses to stand out and grow. And when flourishing companies like Dropbox, Slack, Shopify, Zoom, and Canva have had such great success with this strategy, how could businesses today not make the switch? Stay tuned to learn more about product-led growth and how Mopinion feedback can help you with your product-led journey.
In this article, you will learn:
- What a Product-Led Strategy Growth is.
- Why a user feedback strategy is essential for product-led companies.
- How to create a culture of feedback within your organisation.
- How Mopinion can help you leverage user feedback to inform your entire organisation.
Let’s dive in.
What is Product-Led Growth?
First, let’s look back at how we got here.
Over the years, we’ve seen a gradual shift in how tech companies approach their selling strategy.
The early days of the internet were seen as the CIO era, when, sales reps usually met with the CIO in person. Then, in the early 2000s, we progressed to the Exec era, when marketing-led sales targeted the non-technical executive. Now, for the past decade, we’ve shifted again to the End User Era.
Blake Bartlett explains,
There is an inexorable march toward the End User Era that simply can’t be stopped. As a software company, you can’t opt out of this secular shift. It’s pretty damn obvious that you wouldn’t build an on-prem product geared for the CIO Era. While you can still get away with building your business for the Exec Era, that wave has already crested and its days are numbered. The End User Era is here. Product-led growth is how you thrive in it.
Source: Open View Partners
Essentially, companies that are product-led see their product as the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion. And since the focus of power has shifted from buyer to user in recent years, it’s essential that software companies rise to meet the demands of the market. That means making a product with the end users in mind, and distributing that product straight to those same end users. In other words, the product is not just one part of the customer experience; it is the experience.
As Allan Wille, Co-Founder & CEO, Klipfolio puts it:
Product-Led Growth means that every team in your business influences the product.
Your marketing team will ask, how can our product generate a demand flywheel. Your sales team will ask, how can we use the product to qualify our prospects for us? Your customer success team asks, how can we create a product that helps customers become successful beyond our dreams? By having every team focused on the product, you create a culture that is built around enduring customer value.
Although associated with the viral freemium model, being product-led means so much more than that. The main idea to grasp is that you view your product as the forefront of your business.
Source: product led
No matter the size of the company, big or small, your product can be the driver of everything. From how you communicate and align your teams internally, and how you talk to your customers, to how you fine-tune your product roadmap. It all stems from the product, and your users.
So, where does user feedback come in?
Why a user feedback strategy is essential
As we’ve already mentioned, the market is constantly changing, but one thing that’s stayed consistent is the steady rise of consumer expectations. And you can bet that they’ll keep rising as the years go by. Especially after the shift towards digital experiences caused by the pandemic.
The PLG Flywheel (pictured above) is designed to generate higher user satisfaction and increased advocacy, which in turn drives growth of new user acquisition. Basically, it provides a framework of turning prospective customers (Evaluators) into fans (Champions) who, in turn, introduce the product to new Evaluators, restarting the cycle.
So, if consumers are more likely than ever to ditch a brand after a bad experience, how can you keep your PLG flywheel turning? If your strategy is based around your users, how can you stay aware of their needs? The answer: user feedback.
User feedback is a great way to gauge how your product is doing, and discover whether you’re falling short somewhere along your user’s journey. There are many ways you can collect user feedback to boost your product-led strategy.
From feature requests to bug fixes, to UI and UX, feedback can give you invaluable insights into what you need to focus on.
Interact with your users on a regular basis to really understand their challenges and define how well your product can resolve them. The data you collect will be a goldmine of insights about how your users perceive your product and your company as a whole.
Creating a culture of feedback
Although user feedback is indeed the language of product managers and designers, it should not be owned by any one department. Everyone in your organisation can make use of user feedback.
You’ll want to create a culture of feedback within your company. By this, we mean understanding that every interaction with a customer has the potential to reveal valuable insights. And, the kicker is, most departments will already have some key insights that another department is looking for. When there’s no solid culture of feedback, or feedback strategy in place, it’s difficult for teams to align and make the most of the data you have.
In order to create a solid culture of feedback within your product-led organisation, you first need to outline your approach to feedback. But, before drafting your approach, you should know why you are collecting feedback and what you want to achieve with it. Consider bringing business goals to the table, like essential product-led growth KPI’s such as customer churn, retention, and loyalty.
Once you’ve outlined clear goals, you’re all set to outline your approach to feedback. This can be done in many ways, but one of them is by creating short documents considering how important feedback is to your organisation, and deciding what you’ll be using it for.
For example, you’ll probably be using the feedback you collect to inform your roadmap, but also to make decisions based on the priorities of both your team and your users.
Then, dive into how you’ll be collecting feedback, and what steps to take once it’s been collected. Consider things like how often is the feedback reviewed and who by? Which teams need to be involved?
Perhaps you have bi-weekly alignment meetings where you share key takeaways from the feedback you collect. If the right people are involved, then these meetings can be very valuable. Your Customer Success teams can be notified of customer churn, Development and UX teams can see where they need to focus in order to optimise product performance, Sales can quickly respond and capture leads, and Marketing can identify where is best to target their efforts.
Finally, explain how you can track the status of the feedback. If a user requests a feature, and it’s implemented, do you let them know? Or just include it in the standard release note?
Keeping track of the feedback you collect and assigning proper goals and tasks with it is a beast of its own, so taking the time to outline your approach and process will be a real time saver for your teams. Make sure you stick to your process, so teams can have access to these insights whenever they need them.
Getting the team involved
As mentioned above, a solid product feedback strategy is essential for product-led companies, but only if everyone gets involved. Your product strategy is not a ‘product party’, it’s for everyone. And there’s no use collecting product feedback if it doesn’t get put to good use across your teams.
There are many ways the data you collect with Mopinion can be used across your organisation. For example, you could provide your customer success teams with data about product usage to identify upsell opportunities, or highlight UX feedback to your designer.
If you’re not sure where to begin, it’s always good to speak to other teams and gather information about what they’re working on and where feedback could come in to help solved their problems.
Getting your team on board with customer feedback
Try this simple three-step process for getting your team on board with customer feedback
Investing in a product feedback solution
As you probably already know, Mopinion is an all-in-one user feedback tool that empowers organisations to collect and analyse website, mobile, and email campaign feedback. Our easy-to-use interface allows you to build, design and configure feedback forms to suit your brand standards.
Advanced targeting means you can show forms to specific groups of visitors and gain insights into why they are struggling to convert, or where your experience is lacking.
Organisations that are product-led strive to enhance their user’s experience at every possible opportunity, and asking your user’s what they think is a great tool for achieving this. However, you should be aware of the importance of closing the feedback loop.
Closed-loop feedback is when you respond to your users’ feedback to further understand their experiences and take action based on the feedback you receive. Read also: How to Close the Customer Feedback Loop.
Once collected, you can visualise the product feedback using our customisable dashboards and charts, and carry out advanced analyses. A great way to organise your product feedback data is by tagging items based on their category. Mopinion’s tag management system is great for assigning feedback items to different teams, and our smart notifications feature means you can always stay on top of your product feedback.
By categorising certain items with a label, it’s very easy to search and group similar feedback items together. Assigning certain feedback to specific teams or colleagues can be very helpful, and adding notes for yourself and colleagues can help simplify the process. Not only that, do even more with your insights by connecting your other apps to Mopinion, check out our integrations here.
Some final tips for using Mopinion for your product-led growth strategy…
- Collect product feedback frequently and from a wide range of sources and channels.
- Align your product feedback to customer data.
- Leverage an effective product feedback loop.
- Get creative and use different forms, like conversational feedback, for different goals.
- PLG is a team sport, so be sure to get everyone involved.
Keep reading: Our guide to collecting product feedback
Ready to see Mopinion in action?
Want to learn more about Mopinion’s all-in-1 user feedback platform? Don’t be shy and take our software for a spin! Do you prefer it a bit more personal? Just book a demo. One of our feedback pro’s will guide you through the software and answer any questions you may have.
