If you are a Product Manager leading your organizations Digital Transformation Strategy this book is Gold!
Alternatively if you are a Business Owner looking to have an increased Online presence or are starting to go Online, the lessons could be invaluable.
Successful Products that have a Product-Led Strategy have these characteristics
- They allow the users to try and have an experience of using products before a buy
- They have a delightful end user experience
- They are easy to use
Which one of these would you choose?
Freemium, Free Trial or a Demo?
What is Freemium?
Freemium is where a part of your product is free forever.
What is a Free Trial?
Free trial is where a full version of your product is available for new users to try your product for a finite amount of time (example: 30 Days of a Free Trial)
What is a Demo?
Demo is where a member of your team (Sales or Support or the Product Manager), gets on a call or travels to the Customer location and show cases the value the product provides to its end users
Which one amongst Freemium, Free Trial, Demo or Hybrid, should you choose?
To answer that question you will need to know the authors MOAT Framework
M- Market Strategy
O- Ocean Conditions
A — Audience
T — Time to Value
Here’s a video of the above concepts
M — Market Strategy
Among the many other market strategies, in this book we look into three Market Strategies.
Disruptive Market Strategy
This is where your product targets all consumers, does the job in an almost similar manner to existing alternatives if not better, yet charges a lot lesser.
A Freemium offering or a Free Trial is a good option here. This will give your potential customers (prospects) an opportunity to experience your product before making a buy decision.
However care must be taken to understand that Freemium could result in customers who have no need to upgrade to a paid offering of your product and you will have to have to make sure you have appropriate resources (Support, Infra) to support the Freemium Users.
Example of a Disrupted Market Strategy: Google Docs Relative to Microsoft Word
Differentiated Market Strategy
This is where your product does the job better than existing alternatives and charges higher than the existing alternatives. Here is where you target non consumers of existing alternatives and build a product thats better thus attracting them towards your product
If your product is a niche product, you will need to have Sales personnel hand holding your users for a limited amount of time until users get used to your product. A demo offering works very well here.
Dominant Market Strategy
This is where your product targets overserved customers. Those that are already using existing products and have no need to change. However you do the job better than existing alternatives and yet charge lesser.
Here’s a video of the above concepts
O- Ocean Conditions
Red Ocean
This is where the market is full of competition.
Your product captures existing demand
A freemium offering is a great one to have here
Blue Ocean
Blue Ocean is where your product has created a new demand, thus creating a market for yourself
Eventually though competition would arrive if this is an attractive market
If yours is a brand new product, never seen or used before, users may need some handholding through demos and may also have an option of Free Trial
A — Audience
Top Down Selling
Is your products first audience an executive who makes the purchase decisions in an organization?
This is where a Sales-Led Strategy is good to have for your product, where Sales teams build relationships with your customers.
Usually results in Deals with High Contract Value and there is lower churn of customers
On the flip side, the buyer may not be the actual user of the product and it will take some convincing for users to use it.
Also it could result in your product having a few high value customers thus forcing the product roadmap in a certain direction which other customers may not appreciate.
Bottom Up Selling
This is where your product is used actively by users. The usage of the product grows so much that eventually people are talking about it in an organization and they are buying licenses to your product.
A Product-Led Strategy works best here.
Video of the concepts discussed above is here.
T-Time to Value
Should you decide to go with a Product-Led Strategy, you will have to ensure your users get value out of your product very quickly. Products that are hard to use or require one to read tons of documentation will find it hard to survive in this market.
Questions to ask, is how can you ensure your product delivers value quickly? What unnecessary steps can you remove in your product and processes to ensure a quicker time to value for your customers?
Video of the above concept here:
