Customer-led growth | Georgiana Laudi (Forget The Funnel)

Sep 29, 2022 1h 6m 22 insights Episode Page ↗
Georgiana Laudy (Gia) of Forget the Funnel shares her exact process for SaaS companies to unlock and accelerate growth, often doubling or tripling conversion. She details how to identify key customers, map their journey, set goals, and execute on growth opportunities.
Actionable Insights

1. Map Customer Journey: Customer-Centric

Create a customer journey map focused entirely on the customer’s emotional journey and external life context, not just business touchpoints, to align teams, improve communication, and clarify goals and KPIs across the company.

2. Conduct Targeted Customer Research

Prioritize customer research (interviews or surveys) focusing on your “best customers” (recent, high-value, low-maintenance) to uncover their pre-product struggles, trigger moments, must-haves, anxieties, and desired outcomes.

3. Prioritize Single Customer Job

From your research, identify and prioritize one “Job to Be Done” for your product, focusing on customers with urgent problems, high willingness to pay, and strong retention potential, to maximize effectiveness and resonance.

4. Define Max 6 Journey Milestones

Map your customer’s journey into 3 phases (Struggle, Evaluation, Growth) with a maximum of 6 key milestones, such as Problem, Interest, First Value, Value Realization, Continued Value, and Value Growth, to simplify and focus your efforts.

5. Set Measurable Milestone KPIs

Assign a specific, measurable KPI to each customer journey milestone, linking it to meaningful product usage or attributes that deliver value, to track progress and identify where customers might be falling off.

6. Develop Customer-Centric Messaging Guide

Create a comprehensive messaging guide (5-7 pages) based on customer research, outlining value propositions, competitive advantages, and value themes (emotional/functional benefits tied to product attributes), to serve as a baseline for all marketing and product communications.

7. Use Customer’s Own Language

Base your messaging strictly on the language and priorities expressed by your ideal customers in research, reflecting their concerns and desired outcomes, rather than internal assumptions about your product’s coolest features.

8. Implement Proactive/Reactive Customer Experiences

Design proactive in-app or email experiences to guide customers to value moments, and reactive “win-back” experiences to re-engage those who fall off, using your milestone KPIs to trigger timely interventions.

9. Optimize Product Onboarding Messaging

Extend your refined customer-centric messaging and positioning beyond your website into product onboarding (email, in-app) to guide users to the most valuable parts of your product, increasing trial-to-paid conversion and product activation.

10. Prioritize Post-Acquisition Growth

For recurring revenue businesses, recognize that marketing and growth do not end at customer acquisition; actively account for post-acquisition retention and expansion in your growth models to stay in business.

11. Understand Customer’s Pre-Discovery Problem

Incorporate the “problem stage” into your growth strategy by understanding the customer’s world and context before they discover your product, as this provides valuable insights for marketing and product development.

12. Realign with Ideal Customer

Realign your positioning and messaging with your ideal customer by deeply understanding them, as this is the lowest-hanging fruit for growth and can significantly increase website and trial-to-paid conversion rates.

13. Streamline Research for Quick Action

Conduct customer research efficiently, aiming for decisive outcomes within 2-3 weeks (especially with surveys), to avoid analysis paralysis and quickly gain solid insights for actionable steps.

14. Regularly Re-evaluate Customer Understanding

Even as a founder, regularly conduct customer research to learn new insights, as products, markets, and customers evolve, ensuring your understanding remains current and your product continues to meet their needs.

15. Focus on Customer Value

Shift your business perspective from being business-centric to customer-centric, measuring value delivered to the customer rather than just internal business values, to ensure sustainable growth.

16. Match Sales Strategy to Setup

Choose between a product-led or sales-led approach based on your current setup; if not equipped for high-touch sales, opt for product-led, and vice versa if you have a robust sales team.

17. Implement Time Blocking for Focus

Proactively schedule dedicated blocks of time for specific tasks, using methods like “brain emoji” time blocking, to safeguard focus and improve productivity throughout the day.

18. Use Message Priority Codes

Implement a system of priority codes (e.g., “no rush,” “EOD,” “timely,” “alarm emoji” for ASAP) in team communication tools like Slack to help colleagues manage their mental processing load and protect focused work time.

19. Track and Review Time Usage

Consistently track your time usage and review it monthly or quarterly to maintain honesty about how time is actually spent, allowing for adjustments and more effective time blocking in subsequent periods.

20. Read “Obviously Awesome”

Read April Dunford’s “Obviously Awesome” to gain foundational knowledge on product positioning, especially if you are a founder, as it is considered required reading for effective strategy.

21. Read “Hooked” for Design

Read Nir Eyal’s “Hooked” to understand how to build habit-forming products and influence user behavior, providing insights into behavioral design and engagement strategies.

22. Daily Nutritional Safety Net

Take a daily scoop of a comprehensive supplement like AG1 (75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, adaptogens) dissolved in water as a nutritional safety net, especially on demanding days, to ensure you’re absorbing essential nutrients.