In this (essential) guide, you’ll find:

1. What the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework is
2. A powerful Jobs-To-Be-Done example
3. How to make use of the Jobs-To-Be-Done Framework in your Go-to-Market strategy
4. What you need to pay attention to when you use it

You’ll also learn how companies like Intercom use the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework to stay focused on the customer’s pain point and go-to-market with products that their customers love.

Let’s get started.

Chapter 1: What is the Jobs To Be Done Framework

The Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) framework is a framework that helps businesses stay focused on the problems of their target customers and build or optimise new products according to that.

By staying focused on their customer needs, businesses can:

1. Build features and new products that their target markets want
2. Improve their current product and have an evidence-based roadmap

Identifying customer needs and customer wants, is one of the best ways to attain outcome-driven innovation and gain a competitive advantage.

Essentially, what you are building next or what you’ve built already is based on the outcome and not on assumptions on what may be useful. That’s particularly useful in our days because it shifts your marketing strategy to a Go-to-Market strategy (GTM Strategy) when every function participates in customer acquisition.

Customer’s needs should be your first priority and it should guide everything that you are doing on a product level. They should also be the guiding light for your marketing plan, sales strategy and overall, your Go-to-Market plan.

Also, even though most growth strategies are tactics-driven, they should be outcome-driven.

Only through outcome-driven innovation you can drive disruptive innovation in your industry.

And, that’s exactly what the theory of Jobs-To-Be-Done is all about.

The Jobs-To-Be-Done theory was popularized by Professor Clayton Christensen from Harvard Business School.

Image Source: wbur.org

Professor Clay Christensen has talked about:

• The importance of understanding what potential customers want,
• What makes people buy certain products,
• How important market research is in that process,
• How understanding needs can improve the customer experience.

In its simplest form, the JTBD framework says that people won’t buy your products just because they happen to fall into your target audience.

If this is what you thought so far, then you are just competing against luck.

They are also not going to buy your product because of your pricing strategy or business model.

People will buy your product because it will help them with a job they need to get done. As Alan Klement, the author of “When coffee and kale compete” said in our interview, people will buy your product because it will help them make progress.

Let me put it this way: your customers’ jobs are things they have to do, but they wouldn’t mind if there was someone else who could do it for them.

Products and services that are truly successful are usually the ones that do a specific job well.

Let me illustrate this with a simple example.

I am sure you know Uber — the popular app that allows you to get a ride through your mobile phone.

Image Source: Unsplash

Why would you say that someone is using Uber?

Well, the answer is obvious: they need to go from one place to another.

But, they could do that with a simple taxi.

Why is that they are using Uber instead?

To get this, you have to dive a bit deeper into how people feel when getting a job done.

Uber is not only about commuting.

People had many other ways to go from one place to another.

A simple Google search for “Chelsea to Notting Hill” on Google will give you many different ways you can use to get to your destination:

And, even though these ways exist — and knowing that some of them are even cheaper — you will still choose Uber instead.

One of the reasons people choose Uber to get to their destination is that they want to get to their destination on time.

And why this might be important?

Because this way they won’t be late for a meeting or an important event.

In other words, Uber gets the stress away by getting people to where they want on time.

As you can see, to uncover the JTBD for any given product, you need to dive a bit deeper.

You need to find the actual cause of a problem.

You wouldn’t connect Uber with stress.

Well, as you can see with the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework, you have to find the emotional attachments behind purchasing behaviours across use cases and buyer personas.

And, by finding the root cause of the problem, you can present your product as the solution to that problem. And that’s the epitome of a successful Go-to-Market strategy.

Chapter 2: Jobs-To-Be-Done Framework Example

In this chapter, I am going to share with you another example, so that you can understand the concept of the JTBD framework in a bit more depth.

In a popular YouTube video, Clay Christensen explains what the “Job” of a McDonald’s milkshake is.

Image Source: Unsplash

Not for any segment of customers, but for those buying a milkshake early in the morning.

Now, if you had to guess, you would say that the job a milkshake from McDonald’s has to do is one of the following:

While all of the above Jobs To Be Done by a McDonald’s milkshake seem reasonable and right, the JTBD that the milkshake is doing is something completely different.

A research conducted by Clay Christensen and his team found out that the reason that people were “hiring” a milkshake was that they had a long and boring time to work.

In other words, people needed something to accompany them throughout the (boring) time to get from their house to work.

As per Christensen, people have tried to “hire” other products for this particular job:

• Donuts
• Bagels
• Snickers bars
• Bananas (even though it doesn’t do the job at all…)

According to Christensen, the Job To Be Done by the McDonald’s milkshake is:

“I have a long and boring drive to work, and I needed something that would just keep me engaged with life while driving the car.”

Amazing, right?

Who would have thought that the reason why people would “hire” the milkshake is to make the route to their job, less boring?

What’s more interesting than that, of course, is how businesses can use the JTBD by their products to make them more appealing to new markets.

One thing is clear, though: to learn what the JTBD is, you need to dive deep into your customers’ habits/thoughts and deeply understand what’s the true value proposition they need, what is the job they want to get done.

How can you do it?

This is what I am going to show you in the next chapter.

Chapter 3: How to Use the Jobs To Be Done Framework Properly

Applying the JTBD framework is NOT easy.

Making a list of your customers’ problems and addressing them by building features or new products is not going to help.

Simply put, you have to go deeper than that.

You have to be able to answer questions like:

I hope you understand that a simple customer survey won’t help here.

You need to talk to your customers and try to understand what are the JTBD your product can help them with.

I suggest that you jump on calls that will last 30–45’ each.

Of course, that depends on the product and your industry.

In general, the more time you spend trying to understand your customers’ JTBD, the higher the chances that you will get the answers you need to build the ideal Go-to-Market action plan.

The JTBD framework exists to help us understand what kind of actions we have to prioritize on a:

• Product level
• Marketing level
• Sales level
• Strategy level

I think you would agree that knowing what the JTBD is, can fundamentally change the way you build, market and sell your products across marketing channels.

It also changes your strategy, brand positioning, even your business plan.

This is why discovering what jobs your product is doing is very important.

Also, keep in mind that products that failed to find a job to do, in most cases, died after a while.

According to author and designer Jim Kalbach, the JTBD framework can be divided into six elements, that are grouped into two areas:

Image Source: Experiencing Information

Horizontally, we have the three dimensions of a given job:

• Emotional — how people feel when they do the job
• Functional — what are the actions taken by the person who does the job
• Social — how people are perceived when doing the job

Throughout your research, you need to identify both three areas.

Moving on with Kalbach’s diagram, on the vertical side, we have:

• Situation — the circumstances of a job
• Motivation — the trigger that leads to the action (i.e. a problem)
• Desired outcome — what the customer expects (i.e. a measurable result)

Once again, these are areas you have to identify.

Remember: the deeper you go, the better.

In the McDonald’s example that I mentioned earlier, these six areas — both vertical and horizontal — will look like this:

Tip: To get better results, try to come up with questions that cover all of Kalbach’s questions. Jump on calls and ask all of these questions to your customers. Identify patterns and try to understand what the real JTBD is.

Another view (or way) of using the Jobs To Be Done framework comes by Alan Klement in the following format:

Image Source: Experiencing Information

In our McDonald’s example, the story would go like this:

“When I am going to work, I want to drink a milkshake, so that I am not bored and so that I don’t have to eat until 10:00 am.”

Can you see the simplicity in this format?

You can use this story so that your product has to be a part of every three of the above gaps.

This way, you’ll know that you are focused on the problems and offer simple and powerful solutions to help your customers solve them.

Let’s move on to the next chapter.

Chapter 4: What You Need to Pay Attention to

I’ll keep this one short.

There are certainly some things you need to pay attention to when using the Jobs To Be Done framework.

Here are the most critical ones:

1) Some jobs remain the same, while their solutions are not

Think of how people used to pass the time to commute to work 20 years ago.

They would most likely read a newspaper:

Image Source: Unsplash

Now think of how people spend time on the commute to work nowadays:

Image Source: Unsplash

The problem remains the same: people need something to do while on their way to work.

However, the solution has changed.

Make sure that your solution is up-to-date.

2) Instead of guessing, ask your customers

You can’t rely on guesswork when it comes to your product’s success.

This is why you have to survey your customers; you have to talk to them and get as close to them as possible so that you can understand what their JTBD is.

Many companies — even some very successful ones — have failed to do that.

Don’t be one of them.

3) Your product has to be GREAT (at least) at one job

In an effort to outbid the competition, many founders build products that have many features but are very good at something specific.

In other words, people don’t need to hire them for any job, since they are not that good at any particular job.

Instead of building feature after feature, try to focus on the core value that your product brings to people.

Double down your efforts on that, and be sure that you will identify more jobs to be done as your product grows.

The Jobs To Be Done framework can also be used in the context of a Product-Led Growth strategy.

However, you need to be very careful when choosing the Jobs To Be Done and always have to keep the experienced value in mind.

4) Be transparent

Say that you identify a problem that your product is ideal at solving.

Is the product team the only one that needs to know about that?

You can note “no” in that column.

All your team members need to know the jobs that need to be done by the customers.

This way, your team will be focused on the problem, and how to better:

• Communicate that problem to your target audience
• Use that problem to sell to your prospects
• Use the problem to build better features

My advice is to be transparent, and let everyone know what the jobs to be done are so that they know how to deal with them.

Let’s move on to the last chapter.

Chapter 5: Final Thoughts

So there you have it.

Now you know what the Jobs To Be Done framework is all about.

When using this framework, I want you to keep one thing in mind:

The value that you add to your customers’ lives, is connected to how focused you stay on their problems.

Because, as Eoghan McCabe, Co-Founder and CEO at Intercom, put it in Intercom’s book a while back:

“No matter what you build, if you’re really passionate about a certain problem, you’ll almost certainly attract customers who are passionate about it too.”

Now I’d like to know what your thoughts regarding this powerful framework are.

So make sure to leave your comment, question, or objection below!

This article is reposted by growthsandwich.com

According to Jennifer Winter, content writer for UserTesting, “what users say isn’t necessarily what they do.” This is why — most of the time — simple Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys are not enough. You need to dig deeper to find out what users really want and think of in order to build a go-to-market strategy (GTM strategy) in the most optimal way.

Thus, we have to face two realities here: a) Most companies don’t invest in user research and b) Even if they do, they use tactics that won’t give them a clear understanding of how their users actually feel about their products. In this guide, I am going to explain what is product-led research, why it is essential, and how to use it for your software company.

Chapter 1: Why User Research Is Important

For the last two years, there has been a buzz around the term product-led growth. Product-led growth is a revolutionary approach as to how modern software companies can attain growth through a series of

go-to-market strategies that involve pricing, user onboarding, value metrics, and user research.

This last past — user research — is often overseen by SaaS companies for various reasons. As Braden Kowitz,

Co-Founder for RangeLabs, put it a while back in a Medium story for Google Ventures Library, some of the most common excuses when it comes to conducting user research are:

1. Customers don’t know what they want.
2. We don’t have enough time for user research.
3. We can’t hire a user researcher right now.
4. It’s not done yet — we’ll test it later.

Here is what is the reality, according to Braden, for each of those excuses:

1. Customers know a lot — if you just know how to ask.
2. User research makes you and your product launch faster.
3. Your team can learn user research (or you can outsource it).
4. You need feedback more than you think.

User research is an integral part of product growth and marketing strategy — it gets us one step closer to the target markets with the lowest cost possible. According to a 2018 survey of 1,700 product managers by Pragmatic Institute, respondents spend 8.5 hours per month talking to customers, while at the same time, they spend 32 hours responding to Emails and 43 hours attending meetings.

Software companies nowadays don’t have the luxury of time, which means that the timeframe from the moment a user signs up until the user decides whether or not she will stick with the product is very short. For Atlassian, that timeframe was 30 minutes, which means that users would spend only 30 minutes in the product before they decide if this was the right solution for them.

Image Source: Atlassian

Shaun Clowes, currently the SVP of Product at Mulesoft, but back then Head of Growth for Atlassian put it: “Effectively, we learned that if someone was a daily active user (DAU) on any day during the first week — except day zero, which was the first day — that was a pivotal moment for us.”

This shows us that we really don’t have too much time to identify the users’ needs, friction points and to ask them if they’ve found what they were looking for. If a software company like Atlassian has 30 minutes to figure out what the user wants and needs from the product, then imagine what the reality for most SaaS companies out there is.

According to UserTesting, developers spend 50% of their time fixing issues that could have been avoided (through user research). This indicates the need for doing user research before overloading your roadmap or committing product cycles that last several weeks or even months. As you can see, very few software companies do that.

All this indicates the need for understanding our customers better, or as Bernadette Jiwa would put it, “to get closer to our customers.” One of the ways to achieve that is through user research — research that will allow us to understand the needs, pain points, and decisions of our target markets better. Let’s see how research can help us in that direction.

Chapter 2: What Is Product-led Research

In this chapter, we’ll see what is user research and how it compares to other types of research. Even though we believe that any kind of feedback from users is important, we’ve seen that some research types — such as user interviews — are much more effective than other types and have more value for the company using them especially if you are working on your Go-to-market strategy (GTM Strategy)

Types of User Research

When it comes to user research, we have two main categories: a) quantitative user research and b) qualitative user research. Each of these categories includes several types of research that can help us get closer to our customers. According to Nielsen Norman Group, some quantitative types of user research are:

• Quantitative Usability Testing (Benchmarking)
• Web Analytics (or App Analytics)
• A/B Testing or Multivariate Testing
• Card Sorting
• Tree Testing
• Surveys or Questionnaires
• Clustering Qualitative Comments
• Desirability Studies
• Eyetracking Testing

In these user research types, we can also add field studies, participatory design, and focus groups. It is imperative to understand that there isn’t a user research method that is better than the others. All of them can be useful and effective depending on how we use them and what are the resources we have.

However, these methods can give us quantitative feedback, which means that we can’t get deep into what users think and feel about our value proposition. This is where qualitative user interviews come in. User interviews are a great way to learn more about our existing users or even a new market, which lead them to use our product in the first place, as well as what they expect to see from us in the future. Here, in Growth Sandwich, we always start with user interviews when we are designing a new Go-to-market strategy (GTM Strategy)

What is the difference between usability testing and user interviews?

A common mistake among many software companies is the belief that usability testing is the same thing as user interviews. The truth is that — even though usability testing and user interviews are both very powerful user research methods — they are not the same thing.

So what is the difference between user interviews and usability testing? According to Sarah Lee, UX designer at ACL, “user research gives you a deeper understanding of users’ needs and behaviours. Usability testing helps you find the usability issues in your design that you never expected.” In simple words, usability testing helps you make something more usable, while qualitative user research helps you understand what should you build and how for your target audience or perhaps a new market.

When can you conduct user interviews?

Most software companies seem to value user interviews only during the customer development process or before launching a new product or feature. Even though user interviews can help us identify the needs of a group of people before launching a new product, they can also help us uncover opportunities for optimization for the users we already have or invaluable information about our marketing plan or even our pricing strategy.

Thus, user research through user interviews can be used at any time. However, we always recommend SaaS companies to conduct user interviews at least once per month, constantly. And even if you can’t do it yourself, you could, perhaps, ask the help of client-facing people or your sales team

Jobs To Be Done (Switch) Interviews

One of the best frameworks when it comes to conducting user interviews is the Jobs To Be Done framework. This is a powerful framework that helps you “connect the dots” by understanding what your customers want and how you’ll deliver it to them. According to Alan Klement, the stages users go through until they sign up for your product are the following:

Image Source: Jobs To Be Done

Ideally, you’d want to know how the user felt in each of these stages, what she was thinking of and what lead her to make the decisions she made. This is something that you can achieve through Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) interviews. According to Val Geisler, user experience and research expert, the following 12 questions can help you achieve exactly that:

1. How would you describe your role?
2. What are some of the projects you have going on right now?
3. Tell me about your workflow as it relates to {Product}.
4. How did you go about looking for it?
5. Do you remember talking with anyone else about the decision? Who? What did they say?
6. Did you look at other solutions? If so, why did you pick this one over something else?
7. Did you use any other solutions before this one? Dig deep into each one: what worked well, what didn’t, why they tried something else, why they switched again
8. Before you made the purchase, how did you imagine life would be better with {Product}?
9. Why did you finally stick with this one?
10. So now, what’s working well about {Product}?
11. What isn’t working well about {Product}? What gives you the most anxiety and stress?
12. Lastly, do you read content related to work or hang out in online groups of your peers? What topics do you typically read about and/or where are those groups?

How can user interviews help SaaS companies

The truth is that user research — and user interviews in particular — can help a software company in various ways, especially when building a business plan, marketing plan or Go-to-market strategy (GTM Strategy) to attract potential customers. Below, I’ll outline the three most important ways: a) customer acquisition and activation, b) customer churn, and c) user onboarding d) your sales strategy. Keep in mind that the effectiveness of your JTBD interviews is determined by how well-designed and executed your user interviews were.

Customer acquisition and Activation

The first two metrics that can be affected by user interviews are customer acquisition and activation. With roughly 66% of today’s software companies not having clearly defined activation, you can understand how important it is not only to define but to improve activation for any SaaS company.

Questions like the following can help you easily identify areas of improvement when it comes to customer acquisition and activation which will help you gain a competitive advantage:

→ Why did you finally stick with this one?

→ So now, what’s working well about {Product}?

By knowing what made your users research the first meaningful outcome (the Aha! moment), you can optimize critical aspects of the journey to activation for your buyer personas. Moreover, you can increase product engagement by emphasizing on the features or actions that resonate the most with your target market or potential customers.

Customer Churn

As you already know, churn can be a huge pain point for any software company. According to ProfitWell, churn correlates with company age. This means that especially if you are in the first stages after finding a product-market fit (PMF), you should expect a relatively high churn rate across buyer personas and marketing channels.

Image Source: ProfitWell

However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take action to improve your retention. In his book, The Innovator’s Solution, Clayton Christensen suggests asking questions related to all the stages of retention using the whys, hows, wheres, whats, and whens that will lead to meaningful answers and an action plan that will help you reduce churn and improve retention.

Also, something critical here is that when it comes to retention, you should conduct interviews both with 1) active users and 2) users who have just churned across use cases. After all, who is better to answer questions about churn than a user who just churned? Here are two examples of questions related to churn and retention:

→ What isn’t working well about {Product}? What gives you the most anxiety and stress?

→ Why did you decide to cancel your subscription? What didn’t work well or didn’t go as expected?

User Onboarding

According to a study, 82% of companies without a free offering (i.e. freemium or free trial) admit that their in-product onboarding is either non-existent or is lacking. But even though most software companies know that their onboarding is lacking, they don’t seem to ask all the necessary questions to their target customers so that they can improve their Go-to-market strategy (GTM Strategy) or sales process.

Image Source: OpenView

With the help of user interviews and by asking the right questions, SaaS companies can improve their user onboarding and improve their overall activation rate and retention rate. Once again, the deeper you dive, the better the understanding of the friction points and areas that need to be improved in terms of your user onboarding process.

Now that you know why user interviews are important let’s take a look at what you need to pay attention to when conducting your user interviews, or when outsourcing them to a vendor.

Chapter 3: What to Pay Attention to When Doing User Interviews

Conducting user interviews isn’t an easy process. Creating a user research strategy, designing the questionnaires, scheduling interviews, talking to your customers, and analyzing the results are only some of the tasks you need to accomplish. According to Andrea Hill, when it comes to running successful JTBD interviews, it all boils down to the following three things:

1. Talking to the right people
2. Under the right circumstances
3. Focusing on the right things (during the interview)

These three aspects can determine the success of your user interviews and thus should be taken under serious consideration from all the people involved in the process. Let’s break down each of these three aspects, according to Andrea’s analysis in a blog post she published in 2017.

1) Talking to the right people

Talking to the right people comes down to a) talking to the decision maker — the person who made the decision to buy your product, b) talking to people who made a switch (from another provider) in the last 90 days and c) talking to people one-on-one, which means that no one else should be present during the interview.

2) Under the right circumstances

Conducting user interviews under the right circumstances comes down to a) dedicating at least an hour for each interview (so that you don’t rush things), b) create an environment that helps users open up and talk to you with honesty and c) ask permission to record the calls so that you — or any other member of your team can get back to it and listen to the details.

3) Focusing on the right things (during the interview)

Lastly, focusing on the right things during the interview means that a) you won’t provide details on how the product works (this is not the right time for that), b) you will focus on the “turning point,” which is the point where the user made the decision to use your product and c) try to learn if the product met their expectations and how quickly they came to realize the value of the product (Time to Value, TTV).

Some other things you need to pay attention to are:

1. Come up with a user research strategy
2. Lead the conversation, do not impact its outcome
3. Ask the right questions
4. Collect both qualitative and quantitative feedback
5. User research or experience tools (e.g. UsabilityHub, Hotjar) are not enough
6. Analyze the results and make the right decisions

Chapter 4: Final Thoughts

According to the book Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach by Roger Pressman, fixing a problem in development costs 10 times as much as fixing it in design, and 100 times as much if you’re trying to fix the problem in a product that’s already been released.

Many of the problems that software companies have in terms of activation or in-product onboarding are problems that could have been avoided with user research. Thus, the cost of maintaining and growing a successful product would have been — in most cases — significantly lower if software companies used user research as a way to collect feedback before they make releases or optimize certain aspects of their product.

This explains why roughly 80% of companies without a free offering admit that their in-product onboarding is lacking or why 66% of SaaS companies haven’t yet defined activation for their product. User research can be the solution in all these problems, and it can be a solution that is both cost-and-time-effective at the same time.

Software companies must acknowledge the benefits of user research and adopt a mindset that puts the user first, by identifying the user’s needs, pain points, goals, and objections through user research. This is your opportunity to learn from your customers — all you need to do is listen.

This article is reposted by growthsandwich.com

By using the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework (JBTD) and staying focused on your customer’s needs, your business can build products that your target audience wants.

There has been so much conversation around the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework. I wanted to learn more about the framework from someone who has effectively implemented the philosophy into product management roles. That’s why we interviewed Alan Klement, Partner at Revealed and author of the book “When Coffee and Kale Compete”.

Alan is a person who understands the importance of building products that his target audience wants and he achieves this by staying focused on his customer’s needs as part of an effective Go-To-Market strategy (GTM).

Across the space of five years, Alan Klement started building his own products and small businesses. Along the way, the serial entrepreneur experienced both success and failure with his initiatives.

In his own words, “The excitement for me was creating something new, putting it out onto the market and having people adopt it, or not”.

The trials and tribulations of Klement’s innovation lead him to a realization, “I needed a better way to think about how to create something new and bring it to the market”. This is what attracted him to the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework.

Are you ready to learn about what the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework is and how you can use it to create products that will attract more potential customers? Keep reading.

What is the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework?

People purchase products to get a “job” done. It’s like ticking a box. A successful product has the ability to solve and extinguish a problem faced by potential customers.

The jobs-to-be-done theory suggests that in order to understand a customer’s needs, companies must put considerable thought into the value proposition of their product. By focusing on the job-to-be-done, product managers and tech founders are able to identify all of the customer’s needs and determine which are unmet.

Subconsciously, when customers are executing a job, they have a set of metrics in their mind. These metrics, or desired outcomes, are used to define the successful execution of that job.

At the moment, there is plenty of buzz around the topic of the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework, with many people contributing to the theory.

I wanted to learn more about Klement’s perspective on the theory and how it can be useful to product managers and tech founders outlining their GTM strategy and trying to create growth.

“There’s often a lot of confusion and misunderstanding around [Jobs-To-Be-Done],” said Klement. “The theory was developed by people who were not professional theory-makers.”

Alan Klement uses the analogy of a bathtub to describe the concept of the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework (JTBD).

If you want to fill a bathtub, you have to add water to it. You also have to figure out how to prevent water from leaking out. Growth is about increasing the inflows and reducing the outflows.

When you’re only talking to existing customers, that won’t help you fill the bathtub. Alan created growth for the business he worked for by increasing the inflows (consumers adopting) and reducing the outflows (consumers abandoning).

What led Alan Klement towards using the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework?

Over a decade ago, Klement was in charge of a product called FDT. “I did what I thought I was supposed to do as a product manager, I talked to my customers,” he said.

Studying the needs of the target audience, Klement was planning ahead for the next major release, jumping from version three to four of the product.

After seven months of working, Klement’s team released the newly updated version of the product. “They loved it — it was a huge success,” he said. The FDT team received countless emails from customers, telling them how much they liked the product.

On appearance, the updated version of the new product had been a success. However, in a frustrating turn of events, the CEO had a conversation with Klement, who expressed disappointment at the lack of new sales.

As Klement shared with me, “We really hadn’t sold anything new”. The excitement generated around the latest release was from existing customers who were updating from version three to four.

Alan Klement began to realize that his approach to project management was not “in-line” with what the business expected of him. As Alan told us, “I realized I was there to create growth for the business”.

This is when Alan created an action plan and decided to completely overhaul his product launch and go-to-market strategy.

Klement’s bold new strategy was to ignore existing customers. “If there was a big issue, I’d talk to them about it, but for the most part I’d ignore them,” said Klement.

Instead, Alan looked to people who were not upgrading. They may have purchased the third version of the product, but they didn’t upgrade to version four. Klement wanted to dig deeper and understand why this was happening.

Alongside this, he analyzed the customers of competitor products to gain a competitive advantage and understand their marketing strategy.

As Alan told us, “I only made changes that would attract more customers and would keep existing customers upgrading the product”.

Instead of just talking to existing customers, Alan looked to the potential customers to learn about buyer personas. This enabled him to build a roadmap for the product, bolstering the value proposition and increasing customer acquisition.

“This is how I think about growth happening”, Alan told us. “It’s about getting more consumers to adopt while reducing consumers abandoning”, he said. This situation is — according to Alan — the equation of Growth = Adoption > Churn.

What causes people to adopt and abandon products? This is the question that the JTBD framework tries to understand by analyzing the value proposition of a new product to gain a competitive advantage and increase customer acquisition. “How can we describe this phenomenon that is out there in the world?” said Alan.

Jobs-To-Be-Done Framework Example

Alan Klement likes to use the example of the Snickers candy bar to describe the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework.

If you look at the old advertisements of Snickers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the brand had a marketing strategy that positioned the candy bar against Milky Way.

These candy bars both sat on the shelves next to each other, making them direct competitors. Rather than asking the existing customers about how the Snickers candy bar could be improved, a different approach was taken.

Snickers decided to investigate the behaviour of potential customers who were thinking about buying their candy bar for the first time.

At the same time, they also conducted research into Milky Way, investigating why some potential customers choose to purchase Milky Way candy bars.

What causes a potential customer to purchase a Snickers bar? When they were looking at the Snickers bar, what other products were they thinking about buying? These were just some of the questions that were asked in the research.

In the case of the Snickers bar, many customers also went on to buy products such as coffee, energy drinks, apples and burgers. Customers who purchased a Milky Way bar would go on to buy products such as wine and ice cream.

As Klement explained, “Just by looking at what consumers consider to be options, it tells you that there’s something very different going on here”.

When you look at Snickers and Milky Way, there are contrasting buyer personas. In other words, they are different types of people with unique interests.

“With Snickers, it was all about energy and revitalization. Whereas, when people were looking at Milky Way, looking at the context of what other options were available, [Milky Way] was a luxury food” he explains.

Initially, Snickers were concerned about their product. There were conversations about removing peanuts from the recipe, in a bid to make the candy bar more appealing.

Rather than making their product more like the MilkyWay or changing their pricing strategy, they created growth by adjusting their marketing efforts, putting an emphasis on revitalization and endurance.

What causes people to adopt and abandon products?

“We reduce it down to this idea of progress. People want to make a change and that’s what causes them to start buying a new product,” Alan explains.

So, how can you apply the theory of Jobs-To-Be-Done to your own product development? According to Alan Klement, it begins by asking yourself a few questions.

Going beyond yourself, he also recommends sending out a questionnaire to your product team, sales team and decision-makers in your company to see if everyone is aligned with your perspective and vision for the new product.

Because of us, what can our customers do that they couldn’t do before?

As Klement shared with us, “People adopt a product because they are trying to make some changes.” He suggests comparing a consumer’s life with and without your product, questioning the impact it has on them.

Hopefully, with your product, there should be a change in the consumer’s life. “If you can’t really articulate that change, then you need to do some research and figure out what their jobs-to-be-done are,” said Alan. This change will ultimately become a core component of your new market and sales strategy.

Who are we really competing with? Who are we trying to beat?

By understanding the goals and struggles of your potential customers, you will be able to craft a product with a high value proposition.

As we saw in Alan’s example, Snickers thought they were competing with the Milky Way.

However, upon researching the buying characteristics and interests of those who purchase these candy bars, they discovered that a Snickers bar appeals to a very different type of customer.

Through learning this, they readjusted their marketing plan to focus more on energy and revitalization and less with competing against the Milky Way.

When a consumer switches to your product, what will they stop buying/using?

“It could be the case that maybe someone is entering the market for the first time, but that doesn’t happen nearly as much as consumers switching,” said Alan.

For example, with Snickers, their growth strategy is to persuade their target market not to buy other rival products of interest, such as a power bar, banana or apple — encouraging them to buy a Snickers candy bar instead.

In the closing moments of our conversation, Alan Klement talked about why this is a vital question to ask. “Growth comes from understanding adoption and churning…understand that and then figure out, when you develop your strategy, what can you do to ensure that they switch to you?”, he said.

Alan Klement is currently working on a new book that will dive into the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework in great depth.

Speaking about the book, Alan says, “Whereas the first book was maybe 275 pages, I think this next book will be a hundred pages or fewer. Not only that, I think the theory part is like 10/15 pages. We’ve really reduced it down to ‘here’s what it is’, ‘here’s what we’re trying to explain’.”

This article is reposted by growthsandwich.com

How to identify the Jobs to Be Done [Interview with Alan Klement] was originally published in Product-Led Growth on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In these agencies, you will find only the best B2B marketers.

These marketing experts will help you…

• Boost your conversion rates,
• Take your Email marketing to the next level,
• Build inbound marketing systems that generate qualified leads,
• Run marketing campaigns that will get more users at your B2B website.

Ready to learn more?

Let’s dive right into the list.

B2B Marketing Agencies

Agency #1: Earnest

Agency #2: Velocity Partners

Agency #3: Growth Sandwich

Agency #4: Klientboost

Agency #5: Lead Cookie

Agency #6: Fabrik Brands

Agency #7: CXL

Agency #8: Cro Metrics

Agency #9: RockBoost

Agency #10: Bammboo

Agency #11: Off The Record

Agency #12: Growth Supply

Agency #13: The B2B Marketing Lab

Agency #14: Blend

Agency #15: UPTHRUST

Agency #16: Sway Copy

Agency #17: Fourty Two Agency

Agency #18: Demand Maven

Agency #19: Val Geisler

Agency #20: Bard Analytics

Agency #21: Business Casual Copywriting

Agency #22: Price Intelligently

Agency #23: SalesFolk

Agency #24: Testimonial Hero

Agency #25: Outbound Edge

Agency #26: Yellow O

B2B Marketing Agency #1: Earnest

Earnest has the tools and the team to tackle your businesses to-do list. They go beyond the traditional services of a B2B agency by offering UX design, live events, including pre and post event marketing, and even AR/VR services. Their goal is chasing out the humdrum of business-to-business marketing by using the latest innovations.

Website: Earnest

Location: London and New York

Type: B2B Marketing Agency

B2B Marketing Agency #2: Velocity Partners

Velocity Partners is a B2B marketing agency that specialises in helping technology companies. They understand that the marketing industry and the technology that affects it change quickly so they help clients accelerate their digital marketing strategies to capitalise on the metrics that matter.

With digital marketing agencies in London and New York, they are a global influencer helping brands like Sprint, Salesforce and Informatica.

Website: Velocity Partners

Location: London and New York

Type: B2B Marketing Agency

B2B Marketing Agency #3: Growth Sandwich

The team at GrowthSandwich knows a business cannot enter into its growth phase until is has found a product-market fit first. This is why they have written an ultimate guide to product-market fit analysis but you don’t have to do it alone. They are here to help you!

They have established a 3-step process which ends in them leading your product-led growth for a short period of time until you or your team is ready to take over the marketing programme.

Website: GrowthSandwich

Location: London, UK and Strasbourg, France

Type: Product-Led Growth Agency

B2B Marketing Agency #4: Klientboost

Klientboost offers a free proposal to launch your PPC performance forward. The proposal includes competitive market research and a unique growth plan for your business.

Their goals go beyond clicks, they aim to get you conversions that increase sales enablement. Besides optimising keywords and ad copy, they also focus on landing page design and testing to capture qualified leads.

Website: Klientboost

Location: California

Type: PPC Management & Google AdWords Specialists

B2B Marketing Agency #5: Lead Cookie

Lead Cookie is the leader in LinkedIn lead generation, helping global brands such as Adobe, Capital One, Google and many more.

They offer a free guide to get you started that claims to help generate 4–20 leads per month on Linkedin. They also offer a 30 day money back guarantee on their services so it’s worth a try!

Website: Lead Cookie

Location: Montreal, Canada

Type: LinkedIn Lead Generation

B2B Marketing Agency #6: Fabrik Brands

Fabrik is a creative agency that focuses on brand-building and brand development through informative insights. Those insights are then used to create a complete brand identity and digital strategy from web to mobile.

Being a full-service b2b agency, Fabrik understands every piece of your brand must work together, from social media to web development to the marketing campaigns and beyond.

Website: Fabrik Brands

Location: London

Type: Creative Agency

B2B Marketing Agency #7: CXL

The CXL team consists of the top data-driven marketing practitioners and they want to help get your business to the top as well. This is why they offer 4 different mini-degree programmes including conversion optimisation, digital psychology & persuasion, digital analytics and growth marketing.

Learn these advanced skills and earn more through increased conversion rates or let the marketing experts at CXL handle the growth services for you.

Website: CXL

Location: Austin, TX | Tallinn, Estonia | London, UK | Budapest, Hungary

Type: Conversion Optimisation Agency

B2B Marketing Agency #8: Cro Metrics

Conversion rate optimisation is Cro Metrics specialty, being named after it. They don’t make you choose between SEM or CRO strategies but work to incorporate both into your sales funnel.

There services are also subscription based, giving them a long term advantage over hourly rate agencies. Let Cro Metrics utilise A/B testing on your behalf and improve your ROI.

Website: Cro Metrics

Location: California

Type: Conversion Rate Optimisation Agency

B2B Marketing Agency #9: RockBoost

RockBoost helps your business increase conversion rates through education, consulting and custom growth software. Having success with over 200 companies, they are confident they can optimise your entire sales funnel.

According to a recent case study, they help an ecommerce business increase its growth revenue year-to-year by 75%. Let their team help you today or attend one of their growth hacking workshops.

Website: RockBoost

Location: The Netherlands

Type: Growth Hacking Agency

B2B Marketing Agency #10: Bammboo

Bammboo is all about creating a data-driven marketing strategy and they even offer a free growth model template to get you started. Make data-driven actions to Reach and convert your potential customers.

Stay in control of your growth strategy by getting the knowledge and skills embedded in your team from the experts and Bammboo.

Website: Bammboo

Location: The Netherlands

Type: Growth Hacking Agency

B2B Marketing Agency #11: Off The Record

Off The Record helps create growth strategies for startups, scale-ups & corporates. Is your CMO overwhelmed or maybe you don’t have one yet? Integrate a head of growth into your staff or get a whole team with Off The Record.

They also offer a 1-day workshop to kickstart your content marketing strategy. Off The Record has helped global brands such as ING, IBM, Philips, and more

Website: Off The Record

Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Type: Digital Growth

B2B Marketing Agency #12: Growth Supply

Growth Supply is a storytelling agency. They strive to grow businesses through words, strategically placed together to create a captivating story. Most people understand the importance of storytelling in regards to public relations or SEO but storytelling is a major part of the marketing process as well.

Previous clients like Hubspot and Buffer have said the decision makers at Growth Supply were able to break down complex topics and, “convey powerful messages that resonate with your audience.”

Website: Growth Supply

Location: N/A

Type: B2B Content & Storytelling Agency

B2B Marketing Agency #14: The B2B Marketing Lab

The B2B Marketing Lab is the number one HubSpot partner in Europe. They offer marketing, sales and service products through HubSpot.

Other than that, they also offer inbound marketing services such as video marketing, lead generation, marketing automation and many more. Book your free consultation or take advantage of their training courses in London.

Website: The B2B Marketing Lab

Location: London and Singapore

Type: HubSpot and Inbound Marketing Agency

B2B Marketing Agency #15: Blend

Blend specialises in inbound marketing for businesses in the technology industry. Apply the latest technology to your sales services and win more customers.

They are a HubSpot diamond partner agency, using this inbound marketing software to analyze the data you need to make real decisions that better your business.

Website: Blend

Location: Reading, UK

Type: Inbound & Content Marketing

B2B Marketing Agency #16: UPTHRUST

Upthrust propels it’s clients upward by focusing on 6 areas: operations, performance, technology, media, growth & design. Upthrust is a part of the Quanteus Group, a group of professionals dedicated to the development of their local markets and the people in them.

Through this partnership, they offer over 100+ years of combined experience and experts ready to join your on-site team to create successful digital strategies.

Website: UPTHRUST

Location: Machelen, Belgium

Type: Digital Projects & Expert Sourcing

B2B Marketing Agency #17: Sway Copy

Josh is the man behind Sway Copy. He got started at age 11, writing a persuasive essay to his mom, and has been living and breathing data analysis and SaaS strategies ever since.

He writes copy for any platform and designs it to reach your customers no matter what stage they are in with your business. Even though one of his degrees focused on persuasion, Josh writes copy that makes your customers feel good about the next action you are wanting them to make.

Website: Sway Copy

Location: Canada

Type: SaaS Copywriter & Consultant

B2B Marketing Agency #18: Fourty Two Agency

Fourty Two Agency helps B2B marketers with demand generation, operations and growth. The founder, Kamil, started this advertising agency when he noticed several SaaS businesses struggling to scale.

Their team will help you build a complete demand generation strategy but if you aren’t sure where to start, they offer Quick Start Programmes that are designed for a quick turn around with low commitment .

Website: Fourty Two Agency

Location: Ontario, Canada

Type: Performance Advertising | Demand Generation

B2B Marketing Agency #19: Demand Maven

Demand Maven’s goal is to help SaaS founders reach their growth milestones through a proven go-to-market strategy, specifically designed for early-stage startups. Demand Maven will help you increase the number of free trial sign ups, website traffic or any other KPIs your business is aiming for.

Website: Demand Maven

Location: Atlanta, GA

Type: Demand Generation and Marketing Strategy

B2B Marketing Agency #20: Val Geisler

Val Geisler is a self-proclaimed Email geek. She loves email copywriting and email marketing so she created her own email marketing agency. Post-conversion emails, account action emails and reactivation emails; she’s done them all.

Val is in the business to help SaaS and subscription based ecommerce companies by converting leads, retaining lifelong customers and gathering more revenue through strategic emails.

Website: Val Geisler

Location: Ohio

Type: Email Marketing Agency

B2B Marketing Agency #21: Bard Analytics

Bard Analytics gives you the support to make sense of your data and gives you advice about the latest analytic tools on the market. However if you don’t have the time or the budget to put into a full time analyst, Bard has several quickstart projects to quickly get started and to the activation phase quickly.

They offer publishing, e-commerce and custom quickstart projects. The projects cost $5,000 and usually take 3 to 6 weeks to complete.

Website: Bard Analytics

Location: Minnesota

Type: Analytics Agency

B2B Marketing Agency #22: Business Casual Copywriting

Business Casual Copywriting is all in the name but Joel, the business founder, is not about creating copy to fill up a page. His copy is written with a purpose, to multiply conversions, drive better leads and ultimately make you more money.

Of course good copywriting is great for SEO but you don’t want just any copywriter for your business. You need a conversion copywriter.

Website: Business Casual Copywriting

Location: Alberta, Canada

Type: Conversion Copywriter

B2B Marketing Agency #23: Price Intelligently

Price Intelligently is software that automatically increases your customer retention and gains a higher revenue through subscription based intelligence. Their software combines pricing data and industry leading expertise to drive growth.

They offer a free pricing audit as well as a free copy of The Anatomy of SaaS Pricing Strategy. Check out these resources and then contact them to take the guessing out of your growth marketing.

Website: Price Intelligently

Location: Boston, MA

Type: Pricing Strategy

B2B Marketing Agency #24: SalesFolk

No one likes getting spam emails or poorly written sales emails that you might mistake as spam, so that is where SalesFolk comes in. They create outbound sales email templates that can increase response rates by 300% or more.

They are the first marketing company to specialise in cold email copywriting and have created many of today’s email best practices through their experience and research. Create conversations with your customers through copywriting, backed by data.

Website: SalesFolk

Location: New York

Type: Sales Email Templates

B2B Marketing Agency #25: Testimonial Hero

Written reviews are great but what if potential prospects could see and hear the emotion in your testimonials? This is exactly what Testimonial Hero helps you accomplish through video testimonials.

Instead of wasting hours and resources trying to create a new marketing strategy, let your happy customers drive growth. Testimonial Hero drives results through B2B video testimonials and they have several examples on their website for you to view.

Website: Testimonial Hero

Location: Boston and San Francisco

Type: Video Testimonials

B2B Marketing Agency #26: Outbound Edge

Sharpen your sales pipeline or expand it into a sales flywheel with Outbound Edge. They help assess opportunities and risk factors to transform account activity into revenue activity.

They offer services such as pipeline reviews, deal reviews and deal scoring. Outbound Edge knows pipeline management is essential to forecasting new revenue.

Website: Outbound Edge

Location: Portland, OR

Type: Funnel Assessments

B2B Marketing Agency #27: Yellow O

Getting your audience to your site is just the beginning, it’s what you do after that makes a good business into a great one. Yellow O incorporates marketing automation and CRM implementation to help take your business to the next level.

Yellow O takes your current B2B SaaS audience and keeps them engaged while striving to increase your revenue and scale your business’s growth. In one case study they helped a retail and leisure location data analytics company see a 30% increase in leads.

Website: Yellow O

Location: Twickenham, United Kingdom

Type: Revenue Engine

Now It’s Your Turn

You now know what the best B2B agencies are.

And, you can choose a B2B marketing agency for your business with confidence.

Before doing so, you’d want to make further research. You need to:

• Ask for testimonials from previous customers
• Ask access to relevant case studies
• Jump on calls with current customers
• Ask from the agency to break-down their process

Do your market research and always try to qualify your partners.

If you have any questions about how to choose the best B2B marketing agency for your SaaS, make sure to leave a comment below!

Top 27 B2B Marketing Agencies to Grow Your SaaS was originally published in Product-Led Growth on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s probably because you are using the wrong tools.

Of course, there are many factors of success in user onboarding.

Nevertheless, you need tools that will help you increase your chances of success.

In this list, you’ll find the top 40 user onboarding tools for your SaaS business.

Without any further ado, let’s dive right into the tools!

Tool #1: Loom

If you don’t have the time or the staff to be able to conduct in person training or training workshops, video onboarding can be the next best thing.

Loom allows you to record yourself, the screen or both.

This onboarding tool can make the process easier and quicker by allowing you users to watch a short video rather than read an entire manual.

Website: Loom

Best For: User onboarding videos

Tool #2: Appcues

Educate your new customers by guiding them through the user onboarding flow using prompts and cues.

Appcues is code-less making it very user friendly.

Personalised messages create a great customer journey from the start.

Website: Appcues

Best For: App prompts through onboarding

Tool #3: Intercom

Intercom allows businesses to communicate with their customers on their website, inside web, and mobile applications, as well as by email.

Intercom lets you set up in app messages to guide users along the onboarding process and even allows you to send targeted emails based upon actions the user made or a progress point they may have stopped at.

Website: Intercom

Best For: In app prompts and targeted emails

Tool #4: FullStory

Fullstory goes beyond traditional website analytics and allows you to search through different data points from your customers experience.

Pixel perfect playback allows you to see exactly how users interact with your platform but FullStory goes beyond that with analytics, click maps and more.

Website: FullStory

Best For: Pixel Session Replay

Tool #5: Autosend

Autosend allows you to send trigger based emails, sms, and push messages to web and mobile app users.

Autosend is a simple all-in-one tool that helps you automate messages for your users as they hit milestones within your website or application.

Website: Autosend

Best For: Triggered messages

Tool #6: ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign offers email marketing, marketing automation, sales automation plus CRM.

ActiveCampaign also allows app messaging directly on your software.

Take your time back with the sales and marketing automation.

Use their simple workflow to take of the tasks no one has time for.

Website: ActiveCampaign

Best For: Marketing Automation

Tool #7: WalkMe

With technology rapidly evolving each day it can be hard to keep up.

This is where WalkMe comes in.

WalkMe aims to take the burden away from the user by making systems adapt to them instead of the other way around.

Gain insights into your users journey and create change with data driven decisions.

Website: WalkMe

Best For: Businesses struggling to adopt digital software

Tool #8: Hopscotch

Hopscotch makes it super simple for developers to add product tours to their platforms.

Create tours over multiple pages of your website or application and customize your language to support customers anywhere in the world.

This tool is a great innovation for user engagement.

Website: Hopscotch

Best For: Product Tours

Tool #9: Nickelled

Improve your onboarding experience while decreasing the time it takes by showing users the most important processes they need to know through Nickelled’s walkthrough guides.

Help navigate users through critical events in your app without plugins or javascripts.

Make sure your users see the value in your platform from day one.

Website: Nickelled

Best For: Walkthrough Guides

Tool #10: Tour My App

Tour My App is another code less in-app guide.

These days users don’t want to take the time to read a long manual and even watch a video.

The easiest and most efficient way to engage your users is through in-app guided tours.

Tour My App lets you create fully interactive tours while completely customising them.

You also get metrics on your tours to see how effective they are.

Website: Tour My App

Best For: In-App Guides

Tool #11: Wistia

Wistia is a business platform for video hosting.

It allows you to create a more personal user experience for your customers by creating a play-by-play video of your app in action.

These videos can help bring personalization to your brand, making it easier for customers to connect with you, and can also help break down complicated processes.

Their soapbox feature makes it so simple to create a video. All you need is yourself, a webcam and a Google Chrome extension!

Website: Wistia

Best For: video tutorials

Tool #12: Inline Manual

Through the onboarding process, Inline Manual lets you create tailored tutorials for first time users and allows you to reinforce your goals through guided actions.

Beyond that it allows you to set up customer support articles inside your app and send support emails related to areas your users are struggling with within your app.

Website: Inline Manual

Best For: Walkthrough guides

Tool #13: LeanPlum

The campaign composer feature inside LeanPlum allows you to create and send messaging campaigns across mobile and web channels, helping you drive engagement and increase revenue.

Access customer onboarding analytics to see the optimal time to send your messages and set a frequency cap to reduce unsubscribes due to over messaging.

Website: LeanPlum

Best For: Messaging Campaigns

Tool #14: Auth0

Getting users into your app and engaging with it is the ultimate goal.

Achieve this quickly without losing the security of your application by using AuthO.

AuthO implements single sign on capabilities including social media through Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

AuthO offers 100+ pre built rules for you to use or you can completely customise it by writing your own code.

Website: AuthO

Best For: Single Sign On (SSO)

Tool #15: Customer.io

Customer.io allows you to segment your audience based on real-time events and then send tailored messages to different audiences, through targeted emails, push notifications and sms.

Instead of scheduling email messages to customers at the same scheduled time, let customers receive the message on their own time depending on actions they’ve taken inside your webpage or application.

Website: Customer.io

Best For: Trigger based emails

Tool #16: Mailchimp

Mailchimp’s awesome templates, handy automation, and a powerful analytics tool really make them stand out in the email marketing industry.

There’s no monkeying around with their software.

The easy to use design tool allows anyone to design a message like a pro and the best news is that you get access to all of this for free!

Website: Mailchimp

Best For: Email marketing

Tool #17: Close.io

Technology and the use of machine learning software is the way of the future but some people still believe in the power of a good human interaction.

This is exactly what Close.io believes.

They offer a personalised email sent from an actual human, no automated messages here, and even a phone call with the first 5 minutes of your customer signing up.

Calling can be a pain point nowadays but Close.io takes all the work out of it with their automated calling and predictive dialing.

Website: Close.io

Best For: CRM with sales automation

Tool #18: Optimizely

Every consumer will interact with your platform differently and that is why A/B testing is so important.

Optimizely lets you test, learn and deploy winning product experiences every time.

Eliminate the guesswork, test your ideas and know exactly what is working with your users and what isn’t.

Website: Optimizely

Best For: A/B Testing

Tool #19: WhatFix

WhatFix allows you to create interactive walkthroughs inside your application.

Give your users the power during their customer journey by delivering a personalised journey in real time.

This platform is great because it’s very secure, GDPR compliant and delivers help to your users in many different formats to ensure you are reaching every customer in their preferred method.

Website: WhatFix

Best For: In-app guides

Tool #20: Zapier

Zapier is a tool that allows you to connect different apps, automate workflows and spend less time in repetitive tasks that take too much time.

If you want a better user onboarding for your customers, you should definitely check what Zapier can do for you.

Website: Zapier

Best For: Automate workflows

Tool #21: Segment

Take control of your customer data with the help of Segment.

By integrating with over 100 different apps, Segment allows you to centralise all of your customer data and is reportedly easier to use than Amplitude, Kissmetrics and Mixpanel.

Website: Segment

Best For: Collecting and Analyzing Customer Data

Tool #22: Apptimize

Test different versions of your app using Apptimize. Apptimize takes pride in coming from mobile roots and specialises in the mobile platform.

Besides that, they also help you feel confident about new feature releases by allowing you to gradually roll out new features to select users and roll them back if needed.

Apptimize doesn’t stop at mobile though, explore these features across platforms.

Website: Apptimize

Best For: A/B Testing

Tool #23: Funnelytics

Website: Funnelytics

Best For: Funnel Visualization

Tool #24: Amplitude

Amplitude lets you gain deep insights on your consumers behavior.

Track an unlimited number of in app events and run experiments to create the best customer experience and achieve long term retention.

Website: Amplitude

Best For: Product Analytics

Tool #25: Mixpanel

Easily analyse your users behavior across several platforms, run tests to a higher conversion rate and use personal messages to increase retention.

Mixpanel gives you the information you need to make business changing decisions.

Website: Mixpanel

Best For: Product Analytics and User Surveys

Tool #26: Tutorialize

Although they aren’t currently taking new registrations, check back soon to take advantage of their services.

Tutorialize is completely customisable, through CSS or the HTML directly, to easily guide users through your site or application.

For those less technically savvy, you can also engage with these features through a Google Chrome extension.

Website: Tutorialize

Best For: On-page Tutorials

Tool #27: TalentLMS

Let your LMS look and feel how you always wanted with TalentLMS’s custom features.

Save time with their easy to use platform and eLearning courses that can be built in minutes.

It also constantly offers you support through complete integrated software and it is always free!

Those two things alone make TalentLMS a system to look into.

Website: Talentlms

Best For: Cloud Based Learning Management System

Tool #28: Userpilot

Create the best customer experience by triggering in-app actions at exactly the right time during each unique customer journey with Userpilots’ code free software.

Pave the exact path to those revenue returning moments.

Effectively onboard each user seamlessly by removing the forced actions in preset app or site walkthroughs but still highlight the most important features through pre-defined checklists.

Website: Userpilot

Best For: In-app Triggered Actions

Tool #29: Hotjar

Easily track not only what pages users are visiting on your site but what area of each page through intricate heatmaps.

Try it free and uncover valuable insights to implement meaningful optimizations to your website or application.

Conversion funnels allow you to guide users down a pre-set checklist that leads them to the most beneficial actions and an increase in revenue.

Website: Hotjar

Best For: Heatmaps

Tool #30: Autopilot

Automate repetitive tasks through Autopilot’s creative visual software.

Establish personal relationships with every customer by creating unique personalised messages.

Along with marketing automation, Autopilot also offers email and content marketing, lead management as well as product integration.

Website: Autopilothq

Best For: Marketing Autopilot Software

Tool #31: Gainsight

Gainsight combines insights from multiple sources to help gain a deeper understanding of what each client needs and provides data to help proactively deliver the best user experience.

Gainsight also keeps your touchpoints unified for your customers so all your client-facing departments can be on the same page when dealing with the on-boarding process.

Website: Gainsight

Best For: Customer Analytics

Tool #32: Totango

Onboarding is one of the most important parts of any client experience.

Totango steps in and analyzes which trial users are active and engaged with the programmes, which leads to higher conversion rates, a better overall onboarding experience and an overall increase in revenue.

Website: Totango

Best For: Customer Retention Software

Tool #33: Inspectlet

Google Analytics offer great analytical insights but go beyond with qualitative insights from Inspectlet.

They record video of every user action that lets you see every mouse movement, scroll, click, and keypress on your site.

Once you can understand your user’s patterns, you can increase your overall conversion rate by pinpointing why they are leaving a page.

Track your audience with different filters and get a whole new understanding of the visitors to your website.

Website: Inspectlet

Best For: User Action Playback

Tool #34: UsabilityHub

Improve the overall UX of your apps and websites by testing and researching your platform through Usabilityhub.

UsabilityHub helps improve your website functionality by offering a comprehensive set of tools that helps uncover design issues early.

They also help identify the effectiveness of the links on your website, optimize messaging on landing pages, and gather information from users through forms to ensure quality control.

Website: Usabilityhub

Best For: User Testing Platform

Tool #35: UserTesting

UserTesting is a dynamic tool that allows you to record each customer session and how they are interacting with your app.

You can track what they do, but also hear them think aloud as they walk through their user onboarding journey.

UserTesting combines multiple reporting techniques to provide a clearer insight to your customers which then leads to a better customer experience.

Website: UserTesting

Best For: User Testing

Tool #36: Qualtrics

Qualtrics is a simple to use web-based survey tool that conducts survey research, evaluations, and other data collection methods.

They have numerous questions and survey templates to choose from, built-in dynamic reporting tools, and an easy to use interface to make forms that people want to interact with.

Website: Qualtrics

Best For: Customer Experience Management

Tool #37: Qualaroo

Qualaroo automates user research and gathers quality user feedback with personal targeting and sentiment analysis.

Automated surveys don’t do the trick anymore, you have to reach out to your users individually at the right time with the right questions.

You can segment your customers however you like, schedule exactly when you want questions to pop up, and get clients hot takes at each step of the onboarding process.

You can also incorporate Qualaroo with your favorite tools like Salesforce, MailChimp, Google Analytics and more.

Website: Qualaroo

Best For: User surveys

Tool #38: Typeform

Engage your audience with Typeforms’ easy to use forms and surveys that create an interactive experience for your clients.

Their conversational format stops one sided communication and helps you get more honest responses from customers, all without having to add code to your website.

Choose from multiple beautiful designs and create an easy to use, mobile-friendly form for your website.

The forms can also anticipate different question types as you start typing them out making for a simple setup.

Website: Typeform

Best For: User Forms & Surveys

Tool #39: Drift

In-site or in-app chat software are innovating how businesses connect with potential leads in real-time by allowing you to connect directly with customers when they are interested in a product.

Drift cuts down the time between when the client expresses interest and the business converting the sale, overall improving the communication between business and client.

Website: Drift

Best For: Chat software

Tool #40: Clearbit

Clearbit is a data provider that offers a variety of different products, APIs and solutions to help with all stages of business. Increase sales and reduce fraud by gathering more demographic information from your customers journey. Gain more than email addresses during the onboarding process.

Website: Clearbit

Best For: Analyzing Customer Data

Now It’s Your Turn

So there you have it.

You now know what are the top user onboarding tools for your SaaS business.

Before I leave you, I need to tell you one last thing:

Tools are important but in order for them to be effective, a great product is needed.

What this means, is that to move the needle you need a truly amazing product.

Then, and only then, your user onboarding tools will be effective.

Now it’s your turn:

Which of these tools are you going to use first? Is it Loom or maybe Appcues?

Either way, let me know by leaving a comment below!

Originally published at https://www.growthsandwich.com on June 24, 2019.

Top 40 User Onboarding Tools for SaaS Businesses was originally published in Product-Led Growth on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Lucky for you, many venture capital firms are investing in SaaS companies.

Here are some of the software venture capital firms you’ll find in this list:

1. Sequoia Capital
2. The SaaStr Fund
3. Costanoa Ventures
4. Andreessen Horowitz

This list will help you find investors who are investing in early-stage startups like yours.

So if you want to secure your Seed or A’ Series round, you’ll need this list.

Let’s dive right into the investment companies.

Venture Capital Firm #1: Y Combinator

Y Combinator is one of the best VCs in the world, investing both in B2B and B2C products.

It provides Seed funding to startups and has also created a new model for funding early-stage startups.

According to Marc Andreessen, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz:

“Y Combinator is the best program for creating top-end entrepreneurs that has ever existed.”

The VC has funded more than 2,000 startups, including some of the most popular ones:

• Airbnb
• Stripe
• Dropbox
• Segment
• Instacart

Y Combinator is definitely one of the best VCs to look for help for your newly launched startup.

Website: Y Combinator

Type of Investments: Seed

Venture Capital Firm #2: Costanoa Ventures

The second VC I have for you is Costanoa Ventures.

This is a Seed and Series A

As the firm’s website states:

“The startup journey asks a lot of you. So will we. But we will give you everything we can in return.”

This means that raising money from Costanoa Ventures is not easy.

However, if your idea is solid, and if you have everything it takes to succeed, you’ll win a trusted partner that will guide you throughout every step you take.

Costanoa Ventures have invested money in some pretty interesting companies:

• Stitchlabs
• Amplify.ai
• PayNearMe

Its headquarters are located in Palo Alto (California), while the VC also has offices in San Francisco.

Website: Costanoa Ventures

Type of Investments: Seed & Series A

Venture Capital Firm #3: The SaaStr Fund

As the name implies, The SaaStr Fund is a Venture Capital firm that invests heavily in SaaS companies.

This software Venture Capital firm is also responsible for the great event SaaStr Annual.

Here are some of the companies that have raised money from The SaaStr Fund:

• MixMax
• Algolia
• Pipedrive
• Greenhouse

The SaaS Fund is a B2B Venture Capital firm that is always on the lookout for great investment opportunities.

So if you are a SaaS founder, keep it at the top of your list.

Website: The SaaStr Fund

Type of Investments: Early-stage

Venture Capital Firm #4: SaaS Ventures

Here is another great SaaS investor.

According to its website, the SaaS Ventures:

“SaaS Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital fund focused on enterprise tech.”

So as you can imagine, SaaS Ventures is an excellent opportunity for software companies.

Especially for those selling enterprise solutions.

This B2B venture capital firm has invested in companies like:

• TrackStreet
• GoExpedi
• Whitefox
• LiveSource

Keep it at the top of your list.

Website: SaaS Venture Capital

Type of Investments: Seed

Venure Capital Firm #5: Sequoia Capital

Sequoia Capital is probably one of the most popular VCs in the world.

Here are some of the startups that belong to its portfolio:

• Airbnb
• Square
• Zappos
• Zoom
• Instacart

With investors like the legendary Don Valentine, Sequoia is undoubtedly one of the most experienced VC firms out there.

Of course, raising money from Sequoia is not easy.

Sequoia is actively investing in some of the world’s fastest-growing startups, like Drift.

If you are a tech founder, keep this one at the top of your list.

Website: Sequoia Capital

Type of Investments: Seed & Series A

Venture Capital Firm #6: Atlanta Ventures

According to its website, Atlanta Ventures:

“Empowers entrepreneurs to achieve their potential through community, content and capital.”

This means that Atlanta Ventures doesn’t just fund startups, rather than equip them with all the tools and resources to succeed.

Atlanta Ventures usually invests in SaaS companies that:

• <$1 Million Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)
• <$1 Million previous capital raised
• <$1 Million targeted for current capital raise
• Have 10+ paying customers

The fund usually invests from $250K to $1 million, and leads the round or do the entire round by itself.

Here are some of the companies Atlanta Ventures has invested in:

• Calendly
• SalesLoft
• SingleOps

Make sure to check their website for more information.

Website: Atlanta Ventures

Type of Investments: Early-stage

Venture Capital Firm #7: VenTech

VenTech is a Series A VC firm that usually invests in companies that have already received an initial investment between €2 million and €5 million.

Moreover, the firm runs a Seed program through which it invests in early-stage and disruptive companies, between €100K and €250K.

Some of the startups in its portfolio include:

• Albacross
• Chattermill
• Talent.io

VenTech invests solely in tech companies, regardless if it is B2B or B2C.

With a great tam of partners, this VC will guide you through the difficult paths of entrepreneurship.

Website: VenTech

Type of Investments: Series A

Venture Capital Firm #8: Andreessen Horowitz

Venture Capital firm Andreessen Horowitz was founded by pioneering investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.

This VC is one of the few in the world that consistently invests in software and internet companies that tend to become very successful.

Some examples? Well, let’s see…

• Instagram
• Asana
• BuzzFeed
• Coinbase
• GitHub

The firm, which is based in Silicon Valley, California, states that it is “stage agnostic.”

This means the investors can pour in money from Seed to late-stage companies.

It all depends on the company, the lifecycle stage, the momentum and whether or not it has managed to find a product-market fit.

Keep this at the top of your list.

Website: Andreessen Horowitz

Type of Investments:

Venture Capital Firm #9: 500 Startups

500 Startups is another great VC that is always on the lookout for investment opportunities.

Here is the firm’s mission, based on its website:

“500’s mission is to discover and back the world’s most talented entrepreneurs, help them create successful companies at scale, and build thriving global ecosystems.”

The firm has a diverse team of entrepreneurs, partners and investment managers.

Here are some of the companies 500 Startups have invested in:

• Canva
• Udemy
• Intercom
• GitLab

Make sure to check it out.

Website: 500 Startups

Type of Investments: Seed, Early-stage

Venture Capital Firm #10: OpenView Venture

OpenView Venture is “the expansion stage VC.”

What does that mean?

After carefully reviewing your company’s structure, lifecycle stage, employees and your product, OpenView will help you find…

• The network
• The operational resources
• The expertise

… To grow your business further.

Here are some of OpenView’s most popular investments:

• Deputy
• Logz.io
• VTS
• Expensify
• Workfront

Keep it at the top of your list.

Website: OpenView Venture

Type of Investments: Debt, Early Stage Venture, Late Stage Venture

Venture Capital Firm #11: AngelPad

AngelPad ranks as the best accelerator MIT’s Seed Accelerator Benchmark, every year since 2015.

AngelPad is a seed-stage accelerator program, based in NYC and San Francisco.

Since 2015, AngelPad has helped more than 150 companies launch their products, through a very intense 3-month program for young founders.

The program runs every 6 months and is limited to a limited team, from a massive pool of applicants.

Website: Angel Pad

Type of Investments: Accelerator

Venture Capital Firm #12: Battery Ventures

Battery Ventures is a venture capital firm that has invested in more than 300 companies over its 36-year history.

Some of the startups that have received funding from Battery Ventures are:

• Glassdoor
• Catchpoint
• Collibra
• Redox

These are the types of companies the firm usually invests to:

• Application Software
• IT Infrastructure
• Consumer Internet/Mobile
• Industrial Technology
• Tech-Enabled Services

Make sure to check this one.

Website: Battery Ventures

Type of Investments: Early-stage

Venture Capital Firm #13: Boldstart Ventures

Boldstart Ventures is a “first check, lead investors for technical enterprise founders.”

Here are some of the most popular companies in its portfolio:

• Catalytics
• Divide
• Superhuman
• Klipfolio

If you are a founder of a tech startup, you’d want to check this one.

Website: Boldstart Ventures

Type of Investments: Seed

Venture Capital Firm #14: Eight Roads Ventures

Eight Roads is active on ventures, principal investments and real estate.

Since 1969, when the firm was founded, it has invested in more than 300 companies worldwide — companies like:

• Alibaba Group
• Avidity
• 8FIT

The firm has offices in more than 10 countries, including its offices in China, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Website: Eight Roads Ventures

Type of Investments: Early Stage Venture, Late Stage Venture, Post-Ipo, Private Equity, Seed

Venture Capital Firm #15: VentureFriends

Venture Friends is a relatively young VC firm, located in Greece.

The firm has invested in various software and tech companies like:

• Blueground
• Welcome Pickups
• Contact Pidgeon
• Ad Espresso

Make sure to check the VC’s website for more information.

Website: Venture Friends

Type of Investments: Early-stage

Venture Capital Firm #16: Insight Venture Partners

Insights Venture Partners are software experts investing in growth.

It is a VC firm based in NYC that invests and supports companies from all around the world.

Some numbers regarding the firm’s action:

• Over $20 billion in AUM
• 300+ primary investments
• 200+ portfolio acquisitions

Make sure to check this one.

Website: Insight Venture Partners

Type of Investments: Debt, Early Stage Venture, Late Stage Venture, Private Equity, Seed

Venture Capital Firm #17: L-Spark

Are you looking for a SaaS investor in Canada?

Then this VC firm is for you.

L-Spark is Canada’s leading SaaS accelerator.

Some of the companies you’ll find in L-Spark’s investment portfolio are:

• Cybeats
• Acerta
• Fitcheck
• ZINation

L-Spark also runs a series of events for founders and people working in SaaS companies.

Website: L-Spark

Type of Investments: Seed

Venture Capital Firm #18: Acceleprise

Acceleprise is “the top B2B SaaS accelerator, backed by leading operators.”

Some of the companies that have joined the accelerator are:

• Fomo
• TrackMaven
• Unique.ai

Acceleprise has a very simple and straightforward process for helping companies that join the program.

Last but not least, the firm has offices in Washington DC and San Francisco.

Make sure to check its website for more information.

Website: Acceleprise

Type of Investments: Early-stage, Seed

Venture Capital Firm #19: Accel

Accel is an early and growth-stage venture capital firm that powers a global community of entrepreneurs.

The firm, which has offices in the San Francisco Bay Area, was founded back in 1983 by Arthur Patterson and Jim Swartz.

Accel has invested in some of today’s most prolific software companies like:

• Facebook
• Atlassian
• Dropbox
• Slack
• Spotify

So as you can understand, Accel is ideal both for B2B and B2C companies.

Keep this one at the top of your list.

Website: Accel

Type of Investments: Early Stage Venture, Late Stage Venture, Seed

Venture Capital Firm #20: Northzone

Northzone is a venture capital firm investing in winners since 1996.

The firm has invested in companies like:

• Trustpilot
• Catawiki
• MarketInvoice

Its headquarters are located in Stockholm (Sweden), which makes it an ideal VC firm for SaaS founders that operate within Europe.

Check it out in the link that follows.

Website: Northzone

Type of Investments: Early-stage, Seed

Venture Capital Firm #21: New Enterprise Associates

New Enterprise Associates is a global venture capital firm investing in technology and healthcare.

The firm is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area and also has offices in NYC, China, Washington DC, Menlo Park (California) and Boston.

New Enterprise Associates have an impressive portfolio that counts:

• 360 mergers and acquisitions
• 210 IPOs

If you are on a late stage, you might want to check this one.

Website: New Enterprise Associates

Type of Investments: Debt, Early Stage Venture, Late Stage Venture, Post-Ipo, Private Equity, Seed

Venture Capital Firm #22: Frog Capital

Frog Capital helps you scale-up your expertise and raise capital for your tech startup.

Let’s take a look at some numbers…

• €1 billion total exit transactions since 2010
• Almost 40% portfolio revenue growth PA
• Portfolio of over 60 tech companies

Frog Capital is ideal both for B2B and B2C products, as long as there is potential and the necessary vision.

Website: Frog Capital

Type of Investments: Early Stage Venture, Late Stage Venture, Private Equity

Venture Capital Firm #23: Frontline Ventures

Frontline Ventures invest in “ambitious seed-stage B2B founders.”

Some of the companies that Frontline Ventures have helped:

• Tandem
• Verve.co
• Pathfinder
• AQMetrics

If you are a founder of a B2B company, you’d want to connect with the firm’s partners and initiate meaningful conversations.

Website: Frontline Ventures

Type of Investments: Seed

Venture Capital Firm #24: PROfounders Capital

PROfounders Capital is an early-stage VC backed by successful entrepreneurs and focused on investing in technology start-ups across Europe.

The firm has many interesting companies in its investment portfolio:

• Flux
• Unity
• OneFineStay

The good thing about PROfounders Capital is that it is really open to founders who want to ask questions regarding a potential investment.

Make sure to check it out.

Website: PROfounders Capital

Type of Investments: Early-stage, Seed

Venture Capital Firm #25: 83North

83North focuses on backing-up European and Israeli entrepreneurs.

The firm, which is based in Tel Aviv, has founded companies like:

• BlueVine
• Payoneer
• ScaleIO
• Workable

83North is ideal for both early-stage and late-stage investments.

So if you happen to be in Europe or Israel, you’d want to keep this at the top of your list.

Website: 83North (formerly Greylock IL)

Type of Investments: Seed, Early-stage, Late-stage

Venture Capital Firm #26: Point Nine

Point Nine Capital is a Berlin-based venture capital firm focused on early-stage investments related to SaaS and digital marketplaces.

The firm is based in Berlin but invests in companies from all over the world.

Some of the companies that Point Nine has invested in are:

• Algolia
• Delivery Hero
• Geckoboard
• Loom

As you can see, Point Nine has a diverse portfolio, which makes it an ideal opportunity for tech founders who are actively seeking VC money.

Website: Point Nine

Type of Investments: Seed, Early-stage, Late-stage

Venture Capital Firm #27: Alchemist

Alchemist is a VC-backed accelerator that helps startups selling in enterprises.

Plain and simple.

Admissions are open three times per year, and the process for applying is fairly easy.

So if you want to build a startup that sells on enterprises and needs a go-to-market strategy, you’d want to check the Alchemist’s program.

Website: Alchemist

Type of Investments: Accelerator

Venture Capital Firm #28: Prime Ventures

Prime Ventures is:

“A leading venture capital and growth equity firm focused on investing in European companies in the technology and related industries.”

Here are some companies in the firm’s portfolio:

• Dealerdirect
• SlimPay
• Meero

Make sure to check it out.

Website: Prime Ventures

Type of Investments: Early Stage Venture, Late Stage Venture, Private Equity, Seed

Venture Capital Firm #29: Draper Esprit

According to its Crunchbase profile, Draper Esprit is:

“Draper Esprit is a Pan-European venture capital fund that invests into disruptive tech companies at the early and growth stages.”

Some of the company’s investments include:

• Trustpilot
• SocialBakers
• Movinga

You can see the complete list of SaaS companies that have raised money from Draper Esprit on their website.

This way, you’ll get an idea of what the VC considers to be an opportunity.

Let’s move on to the last one.

Website: Draper Esprit

Type of Investments: Seed, Early-stage, Late-stage

Venture Capital Firm #30: Bessemer Venture Partners

Bessemer Venture Partners is a leading VC firm that manages more than $4 billion of venture capital invested in over 130 companies around the world.

Some of the companies that the firm has invested in are:

• Twilio
• Pinterest
• LinkedIn
• Shopify
• DocuSign

It is without a doubt that Bessemer Venture Partners is one of the best VCs for SaaS companies in the world.

Check it out.

Website: Bessemer Venture Partners

Type of Investments: Debt, Early Stage Venture, Late Stage Venture, Private Equity, Seed

Now It’s Your Turn

So there you have it.

You now know what the best funds investing in SaaS startups are.

Getting your company from one to zero is much more than securing a funding round.

As an entrepreneur, you must know that the quality of your product is everything.

If you can guarantee quality and if you have signs of product-market fit, then investors are more likely to put trust in you and invest in your tech startup.

So focus on the quality of your product, and investors will come to you.

Now I turn it over to you.

Which one of these investment firms do you think to go after first? Is it Y Combinator, or maybe Sequoia Venture Capital firm?

Let me know by leaving a comment below!

Originally published at https://www.growthsandwich.com on June 11, 2019.

Top 30 SaaS Investors That Invest in Startups Like Yours (Right Now) was originally published in Product-Led Growth on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Then this list with the top 30 growth agencies is for you.

Inside you will find:

• Marketing agencies
• Full-service agencies
• Lead generation agencies
• Content marketing agencies
• Growth hacking marketing agencies
• Search engine marketing (SEM) agencies

What do all these agencies have in common?

That their marketing teams are dedicated to helping your business grow.

Let’s dive right into the list.

Growth Agency #1: TrueUp

TrueUp is a data-driven growth consultancy. They have helped global clients like Westfield, Vodafone and Standard Life unleash their business growth and they can do the same for you.

The TrueUp team starts by defining your business goals through data. Then they implement unique techniques to drive retention and engagement. They truly understand every business has a different growth plan or maybe just different approaches to achieving it and that is why they make every project personal.

Location: United Kingdom

Type: Growth Marketing Agency

Growth Agency #2: Ladder

Ladder also starts the growth process with a data-driven marketing strategy but their custom-built growth technology really makes them stand out amongst the competition. They’ve worked with top brands like Facebook and say their strategy success rates are 300% better than the industry average!

Location: New York, NY & London, UK

Type: Growth Marketing Agency

Growth Agency #3: Growth Sandwich

The team at Growth Sandwich loves to analyze the user’s decision in order to develop a successful onboarding process, set an effective price for your SaaS product and handle the ups and downs in users, revenue and activity. They understand businesses might not always have the time or staff to allocate to product-led growth so they will handle the marketing tactics until your team is ready. They offer free funnels, free product management resources and even a free consultation!

Location: London, UK and Strasbourg, France

Type: Product-Led Growth Agency

Growth Agency #4: Practico Analytics

The founder of Practico Analytics believes in 3 goals to excel your growth strategy, reduce CAC, improve onboarding and increase user retention. It is not enough to simply analyze data, unless they are helping you take meaningful decisions about your business. Don’t gamble with those crucial business decisions, let the data guide you. They empower you with the tools and knowledge to make smart business decisions even if you aren’t an expert in Google Analytics.

Location: British Columbia, Canada

Type: Analytics Agency

Growth Agency #5: NoGood

NoGood was founded by tech executives that were tired of the marketing fluff and instead wanted to deliver true data driven growth. They state they have helped companies grow from hundreds to millions in revenue. They have years of experience and the trust of global brands like IBM, Ford, Heineken and more to back them on this claim. Give them the chance to build a 6 to 12 month marketing plan for your business and see an increase in revenue and retention.

Location: New York

Type: Growth hacking agency

Growth Agency #6: Growth Media

Growth Media has a passion for helping startups and rapidly growing businesses and they are confident that their in-house team can provide value to you at any stage of the marketing funnel. Whether you are trying to get new clients or increase customer retention, Growth Media has specialised professionals and custom coding for product solutions. They have established long-term partnerships with reputable brands, making them one of the top advertising agencies in Ottawa.

Location: Ottawa, Canada

Type: Growth Hacking Marketing Agency

Growth Agency #7: CXL

CXL specialises in conversion rate optimisation (CRO). ADP, GOLFNOW and other brands have trusted CXL to increase revenue while lowering acquisition costs. They start with a 3 month conversion boost programmes that requires in depth research and extensive testing. CXL is designed for the more vested business, as they would like you to be bringing in $1,000,000 in leads or 100,000 in monthly traffic.

Location: Austin, TX | Tallinn, Estonia | London, UK | Budapest, Hungary

Type: Conversion Optimization Agency

Growth Agency #8: Single Grain

Single Grain lets you stay in control of your growth marketing strategy by allowing you to choose how involved you would like to be. You can choose to move forward with the marketing services completely on your own, with a specialist or you can allow the specialist to take full control.

Single Grain has helped global brands such as Uber, Amazon and Salesforce. They start with a friendly conversation, getting to know your growth areas and specific KPIs, then while rolling out the full plan they acquire as many simple wins as possible.

Location: Los Angeles, CA | New York City, NY | San Francisco, CA

Type: Full-Service Digital Agency

Growth Agency #9: P3 Media

Don’t need a full-service team? Well P3 offers a spectacular one but they also let you choose individual services. They understand the power of analytics but they also value the creative side of digital marketing, with services such as photography, video, 3D animation and more. They are partnered with Shopify Plus to deliver stunning solutions to top brands. They have worked with global brands like Google, Facebook and Mailchimp.

Location: New York

Type: eCommerce Marketing & Media Agency

Growth Agency #10: Bell Curve

Bell Curve goes beyond the traditional role of a marketing agency by training your team to do what they do. Get step-by-step training on how to implement your growth market strategy from professionals who have seen growth in the market for many years. They have written a very insightful guide on growth and much of their work has been turned into case studies.

Location: San Francisco, CA

Type: Growth Marketing Agency

Growth Agency #11: Cro Metrics

Their specialty is in the name. CRO stands for conversion rate optimization and that’s what they’re all about. Cro Metrics aims to understand your customers and grow your business through A/B testing and data driven experiments. Through this they help their clients achieve more conversions, earn more ROI and see rapid growth. Facebook, Trulia and Fuze have seen great success through these tactics.

Location: California

Type: Conversion Rate Optimization Agency

Growth Agency #12: BAMF Media

BAMF stands for badass marketers and founders and it is pretty cool that one of the co-founders is an accredited viral sinsation by launching the viral LinkedIn storytelling trend. They are still known for their successful LinkedIn growth hacking strategies and viral marketing campaigns. They are confident they can help any business from startups to Fortune 500 companies.

Location: Venice, California

Type: Growth Hacking Agency

Growth Agency #13: Deviate Labs

The co-founders of Deviate Labs co-authored the book “Growth Hacking: Silicon Valley’s Best Kept Secret” which was the first introduction of the ASP™ Sales Flywheel. Working with Dollar Shave Club and having several clients that were on Shark Tank you would think they were in the market of larger businesses but they are confident they can help any business achieve their growth goals. Advisory and execution are their two main tools for innovative growth hacking.

Location: Los Angeles, CA | Seattle, WA | Boise, ID

Type: Growth Marketing Agency

Growth Agency #14: From The Future

From The Future is a digital marketing agency that specialises in taking marketing campaigns out of the past and launching them into a successful future. They accomplish this through proven SEO and SEM tactics. By building their own tools, they allow their customers to have a competitive edge in the market.

Location: Miami, FL | Philadelphia, PA

Type: Digital Marketing Agency

Growth Agency #15: The 20 Media

Some agencies specialise in SEO or CRO but The 20 Media was created to close those gaps. By combining content marketing, SEO, and CROs seamlessly they have helped brands maintain consistent SEO traffic, capture leads and gain a higher ROI. Talk to their team during a free 30 minute phone consultation to learn how they can help your business overcome any performance marketing challenges.

Location: Gujarat, India | Singapore

Type: SEO & Content Marketing Agency

Growth Agency #16: Digital Intent

Digital Intent wants to flip the script on small businesses by disrupting breakthrough startups and putting bigger companies on the offense. They are user-focused and invested in emerging technology to help their clients utilise the latest innovations such as IoT, chatbots and voice applications. Previous clients like Hyatt, Pepsico and the Chicago Bulls think working with digital intent is a slam dunk.

Location: Chicago, IL | Dallas, TX

Type: Digital Innovation Consulting

Growth Agency #17: Inbound Labs

Inbound Labs combines inbound marketing with growth hacking by partnering with HubSpot to deliver engaging website that convert, CRM integration and more. For Inbound Labs no goal is too big or too small because they have a track record of success with brands such as HubSpot, Berkeley and Appster. Get advice from professionals focused on exceeding your goals.

Location: San Francisco, CA

Type: Inbound Marketing & Growth Hacking Agency

Growth Agency #18: RockBoost

RockBoost can help drive your business into the future through educational training, consulting and setting up software that is right for your business even if that means building a custom growth software. They have analyzed more than 200 companies and created a unique strategy that worked for them. Some of those companies being Cisco, Helloprint, and Rabobank

Location: The Netherlands

Type: Growth Hacking Agency

Growth Agency #19: Woodridge Growth

Woodridge Growth is a New York based company that helps startups, SMBs and Fortune 500 companies achieve their goals through a love for growth hacking and experimentation. Two of their clients, Jet.com and FanDuel are two of the fastest companies to achieve being valued at $1billion dollars so it is safe to say their experiments are successful. A unique service they offer is app store optimization that continuously drives real results.

Location: New York, NY

Type: Growth Marketing Agency

Growth Agency #20: Right Side Up

Right Side Up is a San Francisco based company that prides itself on not being a traditional marketing agency but instead a team of marketers-in-residence (MIRs). With a wide variety of skill sets throughout the company they are sure to have a specific person for whatever challenges your business is facing including but not limited to conversion optimization, budgeting, branding and channel management. They have helped Fitbit, Sephora and Google achieve their growth marketing goals.

Location: San Francisco, CA

Type: Growth Marketing Agency

Growth Agency #21: Bammboo

Bammboo helps businesses create a great growth marketing strategy by first defining the target audience and understanding what service or product they want from you. They have seen success with several startups through experimenting, A/B testing and measuring the success of your marketing tactics. Their case study with Compact Solar, a Dutch solar energy startup, shows over 150 leads in the first 3 months.

Location: The Netherlands

Type: Growth Hacking Agency

Growth Agency #22: Outfox

Outfox is partnered with Google Marketing Platform and Google Cloud, making it a leading source in digital analysis and conversion optimization. In one case study they helped the Red Cross take a donation page from 12% of visitors following the payment path to 30%, a 139% increase! This was accomplished from data gathered in Google analytics and A/B testing.

Location: Stockholm, Sweden

Type: Growth Hacking Agency

Growth Agency #23: Kickass Growth

Kickass Growth is very funnel focused, breaking down the sales funnel into 5 steps. Those steps are attract, give, sell, keep, and bribe. They understand that no two business goals are the same or will follow the same strategy but through the five steps Kickass Growth can help your business gain more customers and more revenue.

Location: Belgrade, Serbia

Type: Growth Marketing Agency

Growth Agency #24: Off The Record

Off The Record helps businesses ensure they have a good process in place to improve their performance online. They utilise tools and analytics to come up with an actionable growth strategy to set your company up for success. Off The Record provides a unique dedicated Growth Team that focuses on your digital marketing and is available for support with campaigns.

Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Type: Digital Growth

Growth Agency #25: Living Online

Living Online blends strategic marketing initiatives with hands-on digital specialty for a final product that helps your business succeed online. They create digital marketing campaigns across a variety of platforms and channels. Living Online can help you with your content marketing, search engine optimisation/marketing, web design and email marketing services.

Location: Subiaco, Western Australia, Australia

Type: Digital Marketing Agency

Growth Agency #26: Avaus

Avaus is driven to partner with enterprises and transform their data into business growth. They can help with setting up long term actionable roadmaps for your business and assist on executing it thoroughly. Some of their many services include Data/Analytics/AI Strategy, eCommerce optimisation, and lead generation.

Location: Helsinki, Finland

Type: Customer Growth Strategy

Growth Agency #27: Les Causantes

Les Causantes can help your business operate its own specific growth strategy to succeed in the digital world. They assist with increasing traffic to your site while retaining loyal customers on social media and finding a community of users. Les Causantes is constantly trying to improve by testing out new methods on a weekly basis while always keeping an eye on your ROI.

Location: Lille, France

Type: Digital Marketing

Growth Agency #28: Growth Supply

Growth Supply is a storytelling agency with clients like Ahrefs, Hubspot, Drift and Shopify. Growth Supply also offers a digital marketing course that can assist you with growing your online business in the crowded marketplace. The course includes writing an article together, launching an email marketing campaign, and creating a traffic-generating side project to build your platform beyond the course.

Location: Online

Type: Online digital growth marketing course

Growth Agency #29: Growth Machine

Growth Machine specialises in SEO-focused content and marketing that can help you get thousands more website visitors each month. Within a few months they can increase your traffic by 100–400% by ensuring each article is SEO optimised to attract the right visitors to your content. They work with a range of different industries including health, wellness, marketing, productivity, sales, travel, and more.

Location: Fort Lauderdale, FL

Type: Google Traffic

Growth Agency #30: Lead Cookie

Lead Cookie is a growth agency that specialises in LinkedIn lead generation and they offer a 30-day risk-free trial. After optimizing your LinkedIn profile, they create valuable connections through non-sales messaging and then deliver 4 drip messages to potential prospects. They don’t stop there, they also help you increase your conversion rate by closing those leads.

Location: Montreal, Canada

Type: LinkedIn Lead Generation

Now It’s Your Turn

You now know what are the top 30 growth agencies for your B2B SaaS business.

Remember: the fact that we included these agencies in our list doesn’t mean that you don’t have to do further research.

When hiring an agency, it’s always good to:

• Ask for testimonials
• Request access to case studies
• Talk to past and current customers
• Ask the agency to break-down their process

Do your research, ask questions and choose based on results and not based on the price of the services.

If you have any questions about how to choose the best agency for your business, make sure to leave a comment below!

Originally published at https://www.growthsandwich.com on June 26, 2019.

Top 30 Agencies for Your B2B SaaS (in 2019) was originally published in Product-Led Growth on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

And yet, most of them often fail to create a process that really ‘wows’ the users.

But before we head there, let’s first understand the goal user onboarding helps achieve.

User onboarding isn’t about helping your users become better at using your product. It’s actually about helping them use your product for what they want, in the most hassle-free manner possible.

Users love products that are simple and don’t take up too much of their time.

And if you have an onboarding process that feels more like a code that needs to be cracked, no matter how great your product is, you are going to end up losing them.

Let’s take a look at some of the problems your onboarding process may have:

• Overwhelming your users by throwing all the product features at them all at once. People sign up for a product because they expect it to solve a problem for them, not because the product has a multitude of features.
  Similarly, having multiple pop-ups on the screen nudging the user to sign up for the newsletter or receive offers and updates, etc. is something which puts off the user (trust us, we have seen it several times).
• Similarly, the other extreme of being intrusive is not being proactive at all. Something as simple as not collecting feedback from users from time to time, and waiting for them to complain.
• Designing a ‘one-size-fits-all’ user onboarding process which can often make your users feel like they are trying to make their way through a maze.

Avoiding these mistakes is the first step to acknowledge this rule of thumb — customers use a product for solving their problems…that’s all! What they need is not an elaborate onboarding process (which feels like a labyrinth of features), but an effective one that helps them achieve their goals!

Building An Effective Onboarding Process

Given the growing competition in the SaaS market, the need to set up an effective onboarding process, one that’s faster and better, is critical than ever.

For SaaS startups who are at the stage of setting up the onboarding process, it is not as important to focus on how you measure success, or the features you want them to use.

It is more important to understand why the user has signed up for the solution, and what is their idea of success. What are they using the product for — to save time, to save money?

To win over a user, your onboarding process should essentially bear the ‘wow’ factor.

To provide this ultimate user experience, you need to focus on the features they tend to use in the first few weeks of signing up for the product. Those are features most important to them.

For instance, consider something like an inventory management application that takes users from maintaining bulky, complicated excel files to a simple drag and drop solution.

This is what the user wants — anything that saves his/her time and makes his/her experience seamless.

Essentially, it’s about delighting them in a way they weren’t even expecting.

Here are a few companies that we believe have cracked the user onboarding code:

1) Etsy

Etsy establishes the entire onboarding flow a user will need to follow right at the beginning, by way of a progress bar. The user can see herself crossing each stage — a psychological trick that motivates her to go right till the end.

2) Trello

Trello is a visual project management tool where users create tasks in the form of cards — the good ‘ol kanban-stye. It uses the same cards to show users how the product works.

3) Xero

Xero uses an animated video to simplify the onboarding process when you signup for its accounting software.

4) Dropbox

Dropbox’s onboarding process uses the ‘fun’ element to initiate new users. They use fun illustrations to lighten the mood.

5) LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s onboarding flow is more about personalizing the experience. For instance, once the first time users fill out the sign up forms, it prompts them to tell where their interests lie.

Or, take the example of a mobile app. It is believed that more than 20% of the users who download it don’t use it beyond one time.

In such a case, it is essential to design an effective onboarding process that keep the user from abandoning it.

Here are a couple of examples of effective onboarding flows that different companies have adopted for their mobile apps.

1) Evernote

Evernote’s onboarding flow focuses on how the app works — it helps new users understand why they need to use it.

2) Tumblr

Tumblr has an onboarding flow that gets users to actually use the app during the onboarding process. For instance, when a user signs up, Tumblr encourages the user to start using the platform by asking them to ‘Find blogs. Follow five.’

These are definitely worth taking inspiration from! Here are some other ways to keep your onboarding process relevant to the user’s requirements:

1. Marketing Communication

To establish a connection with the product, SaaS companies are now required to focus on self-service activities that enable users to start using the product without any help from user support.

One effective way to achieve this is through marketing communications.

For instance, as soon as a new user signs up for the product, she starts receiving information on what she needs to do next to get started, how to use the product to meet a certain objective or use cases on how people are using the product. It keeps your user continuously engaged with the product.

2. Webinars

Marketers often debate about webinars being dead. But, that’s hardly true. It’s the content that becomes outdated, not the medium used to convey it.

It’s all about building an effective webinar by moving away from the content that is already done to death.

For instance, conduct a 25 minutes webinar wherein you start with typical problem users intend to solve with your product and walk the attendees through an outcome-driven demo on how you just solved that problem in less than 25 minutes.

If done right, webinars can be used to engage far more users at the same time than the usual channels of communication.

3. Building A Community

Thirdly, there’s the persuasive power of a community. Building a community is probably the best way to keep users continuously engaged with the product.

So, if you are a Saas startup, and you want to start a community, the first thing to determine is the goal — is it meant for customer service, act as a forum for your user queries, let your users help each other and build a camaraderie around your product, or simply a fun way to keep users engaged?

The way to go about it is to identify the power users — these are the people who are using your product extensively and innovatively and know it inside out.

Appoint them as your ambassadors, and let them help your team answer questions on the forum. Begin the show with these guys, and then slowly expand the base to include the other users too.

Of course, it goes without staying that for a community to remain relevant and active, you’ve got to ensure that there’s always new content — either related to your product, use cases or the category you belong to.

This peer-to-peer network pretty much runs itself, therefore ensuring a continuous connect with all your users.

However, building a community is just one part of the project — you will need someone to manage it too. Hire a community manager to keep things from going south.

After all, a community is a public forum, and if it’s not managed well, the whole thing could potentially backfire. So, before you decide to start a community, make sure you have the skills and the resources at your disposal to manage it.

4. Gamification

Gamification of the onboarding process makes it a little more exciting and interactive. For instance, you could have users talk about how they are using your product through a video, and choose the one you find most innovative and offer some incentives as a reward.

Or, they could promote the product internally (in their respective companies) or externally (amongst their peers) and earn status rewards related to authority. Or you could simply unlock an additional feature that the user could benefit from.

So, we’ve spoken about what can be done to entice the user to stay. But, we also need to focus on the other end of the spectrum — the team actually handling the entire onboarding process.

Who should be working on optimizing the user onboarding process?

With SaaS startups, there’s usually one team doing everything in the beginning, since the goal then is not just to get users, but do so as optimally as possible — lowering CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), reducing churn rate, etc.

Eventually, the user base increases, and correspondingly your business expands.

It is only then that you can really focus on specialization — have one team handle the first 90 days of client onboarding which needs a separate set of skills and then another for keeping the account going.

Another way to look at it is the size of the deal being cracked, and to what extent has it been cracked. If it is closed (yay!), then the team involved would be more focused on relationship management. If the deal is still halfway there, then it would be a job for a team with selling skills.

Another important aspect is feedback. For the teams to perform effectively, they need to know what’s working and what isn’t. The communities we spoke about earlier can be incredible platforms to glean feedback from the users, about features that aren’t doing what they are supposed to. Here are a few examples of companies that are doing it really well:

The first one is Airtable:

And, the second is bubble:

And considering it’s an open platform, the relevant teams can access it directly, analyze it, and take the necessary steps. There’s no scope for miscommunication because it’s right there for all to see.

A Peek Into The Future

As far as the future is concerned, it’s pretty obvious that users are no longer naive.

They are well versed with technology and want things to be easy.

They want products that can save them time.

So, while on the one hand, you must have an incredible product that meets these requirements, on the other, you’ve got to have a user onboarding process that’s seamless and enjoyable.

That is the first step of user experience, and if you don’t get that right, you will lose a user.

Originally published at https://www.growthsandwich.com on June 26, 2019.

The Essential Guide to User Onboarding (for 2019) was originally published in Product-Led Growth on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

– OpenView Venture Partners

The term was invented last year (2018) by OpenView Venture Partners. Even though Product-Led Growth is a new term, PLG companies like Slack, Mailchimp and Dropbox have been using Product-Led Growth for customer acquisition, activation and retention for many years now.

Product-Led Growth helps software companies in three ways:

1. Acquire more users
2. Activate their users
3. Retain their users

Why Product-Led Growth is important?

Acquiring new customers becomes really difficult and expensive. Instead of focusing on sales and customer success team, PLG companies can focus on improving their product and expanding worldwide. Here are some of the benefits of Product-Led Growth for SaaS businesses:

1) Product-Led companies have a wider Top of the Funnel (TOFU)

Offering a free trial of a freemium model can help you attract more people who are earlier in their customer journey. It can speed up the process of Activation and get more new users at your door. When you don’t charge for product features, but let users experience the value of your product, you will constantly get new users who will want to try out your SaaS product.

2) Product-Led companies attain rapid global scale

Product-led Growth gives you an edge over the competition. While your competitors are trying to hire sales reps, you are trying to refine your user onboarding and collect user feedback on how your product team can improve your product.

3) Product-Led companies have a shorter the sales cycle

By having users onboard themselves and experience value right away, you won’t need to spend time on demos, follow-up Emails and calls. This way, you’ll get free users to update to one of your paid plans quicker and without any friction points.

5) Product-Led companies have a lower Cost to Serve & higher Revenue per Employee (RPE)

If your product is self-served, you won’t need to hire more customer success people or salespeople. Also, you’ll have fewer support tickets, which means a higher profit margin per customer.

6) Product-Led companies connect the volume of user engagement with revenue

By offering a value-metric-based pricing model, you educate your users and give them the right incentives to keep using your product. This way: 1) You educate userson how to get the most out of your product and don’t alienate product metrics, and 2) You have a more fair pricing, as it is volume rather than feature-based.

How Does Product-Led Growth Works?

In order for Product-Led Growth to work for your B2B SaaS business, you need to understand the value that your product brings to users. Once you understand what value you can bring to users, you have to communicate that value effectively. Product-Led Growth is a way to reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC) and use your product as the main growth lever for your business.

The 6 Steps to Achieve Product-Led Growth

To attain Product-Led Growth, you need to follow the 6 steps that follow:

Step 1: Choose a Pricing Model

To achieve Product-Led Growth, you have to choose a pricing model for your product. Your options are:

• Free trial (i.e. Zapier)
• Freemium model (i.e. Mailchimp)

You must avoid pricing models that are based on demos. A pricing model based on demo is usually ideal for enterprise solutions, with long sales cycles and decision makers who are usually C-level employees. Choose between a free trial and a freemium model.

Step 2: Connect Your Pricing Strategy With a Scalable Value Metric

Successful PLG companies connect their pricing strategy with a value metric. This strategy allows the average revenue per user to scale, since the value that the user gets scales and the user experience is significantly better. Product-led growth strategies are connected with value metrics that are scalable. As the product experience value for the user grows, so does the cost of the product:

Let’s use Slack as an example. Take a look at Slack’s pricing plans and you’ll notice that it only charges you for active users on your account:

This way, you have:

• A pricing that is fair, since you’re only charging for users who get value out of the product
• Created a virality effect because you know users will refer the product to others, since they will be charged only if they use the product

Step 3: Stop Counting MQLs; Focus on Product Qualified Leads(PQLs)

Even though Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) are important, they aren’t yet enough to measure product growth. Also, it’s unlikely that MQLs and SQLs indicate the intent of the user. Thus, you should start measuring Product Qualified Leads (PQLs), by taking into account the product experience value.

Step 4: Align Your Sales Strategy With Your Go-to-Market Strategy

If you want to follow a product-led growth strategy, you need to use scalable tactics that will attract leads who will be willing to use your product. For example, if you run a B2B SaaS and offer a 14-day free trial to all new users, you can’t use demos as a way to activate those users.

Having a sales team running demos should be avoided if you want to follow a product-led growth approach. The reason is simple: this process is not scalable and thus contradicts with what you’re trying to achieve through product-led growth.

Step 5: Develop Your Straight Line Through Bumpers

Growing a successful product requires you to get the ball (AKA the user) from Point A to Point B. The reason you want to do this is because that way, free users will experience the highest value possible in the shortest time frame possible, and thus will want to upgrade to a paid plan.

Developing your straight line product means helping users to reach the first meaningful outcome as fast as possible. To do that, you need to follow these 3 simple steps:

1) Make screenshots of all the steps the user has to take, from home page to the first meaningful outcome.

Let’s take Ahrefs as an example.

The steps that someone has to take until the first meaningful outcome are the following:

1) Land on Ahrefs homepage

2) Sign up for a 7-day free trial

3) Insert a keyword on Keywords explorer

4) Get a list of keywords you can use right away for your content

Once you map out these steps, you can move on to the next step of the process, which is to categorize steps based on their contribution to the first meaningful outcome.

2) Categorize these steps based on how they contribute to the first meaningful outcome.

Here is how you can categorize these steps:

Green: Absolutely necessary

Yellow: Necessary but maybe for more mature users

Red: Must be skipped

3) Keep only those that are absolutely necessary.

Bumpers are methods of onboarding users in the best way possible so that they reach the first meaningful outcome as soon as possible, and thus upgrade to a paid plan. Bumpers are divided into two categories: 1) Conversational Bumpers and 2) Product Bumpers.

4) Use conversational and product bumpers to get users to the 1st meaningful outcome.

Bumpers are methods of onboarding users in the best way possible so that they reach the first meaningful outcome as soon as possible, and thus upgrade to a paid plan. Here are some examples of bumpers:

Step 6: Align the Perceived Value With the Experienced Value

There are three drivers that make someone buy your product:

Functional Outcome: The Job To Be Done needed by the user

Emotional Outcome: How the user feels when this task is accomplished

Social Outcome: How the user wants to be perceived by others when performing and fulfilling this task

Product-led growth exists in the intersection of these three outcomes.

We have two types of product values:

1. Perceived value
2. Experienced value

With a PLG Strategy, you want the perceived value to be as close as possible to the experienced value. The closer the experienced value gets to perceived value, the higher the chances that someone will stick with your product.

Originally published at https://www.growthsandwich.com on June 29, 2019.

What is Product-led Growth & Why Should You Care? was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Become a PLG editor was originally published in Product-Led Growth on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.