Kyle, great email. So excited to get more of your thoughts on Growth!
"There’s now a science around how to measure product readiness for a free offering and how to ensure that you can convert free users into paying customers at scale."
I'd love a case study or examples with some specifics around this! As I venture to create my own PLG company and get it off the ground, This would be so valuable!!!
Great insights here, however I'd love for you to write the counter-point to this strategy. As someone who has been a part of both GTM motions, there are upside and downsides to both...
Thanks for the note, Eric. I've had others reach out with the same suggestion. My quick two cents:
- Focus & prioritization: This type of free(mium), PLG, bottom-up strategy can be a distraction for SaaS companies if it isn't their core business. It also takes a meaningful amount of resources and time to see results.
- Managing free users: Many folks don't have a product offering that can be adopted in a low-cost and fully self-service manner. There can be very real costs of supporting free users. In a worst case scenario, a free offering could attract too many folks outside of the target market who would never convert to paying customers yet who still become a resource drain.
- Customer experience: You have a limited window to put your best foot forward with a potential customer. A free offering might not be able to offer that, especially if your product requires complex integrations, customization, or data migration in order for it to deliver value to a customer.
My team over here has been waffling over how best to approach. Do you think a mix of approaches could work? Freemium funneling up our base plan vs a separate tool? We’re in the freight forwarding space too fwiw
Kyle, great email. So excited to get more of your thoughts on Growth!
"There’s now a science around how to measure product readiness for a free offering and how to ensure that you can convert free users into paying customers at scale."
I'd love a case study or examples with some specifics around this! As I venture to create my own PLG company and get it off the ground, This would be so valuable!!!
Thanks, Matt! This is a great topic for a future newsletter.
Great insights here, however I'd love for you to write the counter-point to this strategy. As someone who has been a part of both GTM motions, there are upside and downsides to both...
Thanks for the note, Eric. I've had others reach out with the same suggestion. My quick two cents:
- Focus & prioritization: This type of free(mium), PLG, bottom-up strategy can be a distraction for SaaS companies if it isn't their core business. It also takes a meaningful amount of resources and time to see results.
- Managing free users: Many folks don't have a product offering that can be adopted in a low-cost and fully self-service manner. There can be very real costs of supporting free users. In a worst case scenario, a free offering could attract too many folks outside of the target market who would never convert to paying customers yet who still become a resource drain.
- Customer experience: You have a limited window to put your best foot forward with a potential customer. A free offering might not be able to offer that, especially if your product requires complex integrations, customization, or data migration in order for it to deliver value to a customer.
I might have done just that : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KY8LQMN
@kyle this is phenomenal. Thank you.
My team over here has been waffling over how best to approach. Do you think a mix of approaches could work? Freemium funneling up our base plan vs a separate tool? We’re in the freight forwarding space too fwiw
Thanks, Miles! It’s hard to say without extra context. It depends on how easy it is to implement the base plan and the product’s ability to act as a marketing channel. Here’s some more info on how companies often think about this separate free tool idea. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kyle-poyar_saas-productledgrowth-pricing-activity-6726163112606621696-X4eG
My man! Thank you! 🙏🏾🙏🏾👊🏾