Every business aims to obtain constant growth in its user base, be it an old company or a new start-up. It is definitely not surprising to know that all the big corporations employ different product growth strategies to keep themselves relevant in the cutthroat competition. But what are these strategies, and why is everyone not using them already?
It turns out, these strategies are mostly so simple that people tend to overlook such factors. According to research by SunTrust, only 49% of small businesses focus on employing any growth strategy. SaaSworthy recommends some top-notch product development growth strategies that are easy to implement and can churn out big revenue numbers for you.
💡 Quick Bit: In this article, we will talk about prominent companies and their growth strategies so that you can learn from the best, so hold on till the end.
Table of Contents
Understanding growth strategies
To begin with, your idea of a growth strategy needs to change from quick-fix formula to a long-term plan. Growth Strategies are more of a mindset development with time and a product of good marketing, leadership, design, engineering, and product management. A good growth strategy will involve an overall development of all these facets of a business. But, SaaSworthy believes that product growth strategies are more nuanced for SaaS companies and products.
What are SaaS products?
SaaS stands for Software as a Service, where a central provider accommodates software materials and circulates them to the consumers via cyberspace. To increase your product sales, you have to make your consumer is aware of the entire process, your product values, and the essential features that make it stand apart. Walking your consumers through the funnel is an important step, and if your start-up can effectively do that, you are already spot-on with formulating your own product growth strategy.
What qualifies as a good SaaS product?
Some important features of every good SaaS product are:
- Effective workflow management
- Caters to multiple markets and user base
- Efficient customer retention rate
- Enhanced engagement
- Constant return on investments (ROIs)
If your product or start-up can resonate with all these points, then voila! You have created a successful business model that has the potential to grow exponentially. With these features, your product will definitely grow, but there are various other growth strategies that your business needs to imbibe in order to increase your product sales.
Growth strategies employed by SaaS companies that actually work
Creating viral loops: “You can share this too on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram”
Giving an incentive to your customers for sharing your product or any news about it is one of the most common growth strategy product development. Companies like BuzzFeed used this “golden rule of shareability” and offered shareable links to every article for circulating on social media. This way, the views on their website increased, and the frequent readers kept coming back, adding to the virality. Gamification of reviews and other features can also be a good viral loop.
Another example for creating a viral loop is by offering hampers or discount coupons to your users to simply share and install your SaaS product on 10 other smartphones. Payment apps like Google Pay offer a certain amount to users who share their referral link with others and have them install Google Pay for the first time. Such schemes can be a big hit with start-ups too. Please ensure that you only offer deals that you can afford to offer.
Product design is a priority: “Design trends and color schemes are a real thing”
On the internet, substance over style is really a thing. If your product is no good, it will struggle to succeed despite an attractive look. Your product has to work. But after you have aced the basics of the features, you must also focus on the design aspect of it. There are several design maturity models that you can use to reap the benefits of a good product design as a part of growth strategy product development.
With a good product design, you can enhance the user onboarding experience as well. For example, when Twitter had over 30 million active users, they tried experimenting with their growth strategies. Every new user was suggested to follow 10 different accounts, creating a good user onboarding experience, such that no one ever had an empty feed.
Loyalty-based marketing with feedback: “When you listen to your users, they come back to you”
When you take note of all the feedback you get and make changes to your software accordingly, your existing users tend to trust you more and recommend your services to their friends and family. Such a simple product development growth strategy can do wonders for your business.
Another famous example of achieving great success by simplifying reviews is Airbnb. The founders, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, already knew that their audience mostly uses Craigslist. So they started allowing hosts to post double ads, both on Craigslist and Airbnb. But with their review strategy, they started offering reliable reviews about places but also incorporating positive feedback about Airbnb. Both the reviewers and readers need to be Airbnb members to view them. This way, their user base grew exponentially.
Freemium goes a long way: “Who doesn’t love freebies?”
When you have something awesome to offer, you should never give it away for free…unless you want the users to experience your services and then sign up for it. The freemium model has helped companies like Slack greatly in building a solid user base.
Even Clearbit drove about 100k inbound leads by giving away free tools. They created free APIs that were so efficient that the customers automatically trusted their paid APIs. Freemium does not work everywhere, but if you have the right plan of action, then freemium can help you expand your user community greatly. Use social media platforms to create all the buzz you want about your ‘exclusive and free’ services.
Do not exaggerate any feature: “Stay real, that’s only attractive”
It is very common for companies to elaborately talk about their features and even exaggerate them to some extent to get some user base. But this is the most common mistake, as your audience will immediately withdraw their trust if they find any hollow promises.
This has been one of the most prominent reasons for the downfall of several start-ups, who showed promising growth initially but came down rapidly. Make sure that you are not one of them, and claim only what you can offer. If you have bigger goals in mind for your SaaS company and you want the audience to know that, include such features as upcoming updates and not as the current features.
Build a team that works together: “Unity is strength, but strategized use of talent is excellence”
Do you have the right set of employees to work together? This can seem to be a generic question, but in the long run, your team placement matters a lot. Employing the right type of skill that you need on your team is vital for the growth of your SaaS product.
One of the good product development growth strategy examples is how Yahoo had doubled its mobile revenue between 2012 and 2013 by simply rearranging its team. They hired a new head for the Mobile and Emerging Products, Adam Cahan. He got into the work ecosystem, a sense of start-up ethics. He brought together employees from different disciplines like product management, engineering, design, and motivated them to develop new products. With this approach towards team management, their products got really dynamic, growing their mobile users from 150 million to 550 million in just 2 years.
Highly-targeted marketing campaigns: “Talk to those whom you want to hear you”
Generic ads are everywhere. All your target audience must already be bombarded with so many marketing ads and campaigns daily. A good product development growth strategy is to reach out to your customers and assure them that your product can cater to all their needs.
For example, Tinder established its user base and almost tripled it too, by reaching out to the target groups physically. They used extensive resources in arranging tours of fraternities and sororities at colleges and pitched the app separately to men and women, helping them find suitable dates in the same school. By such on-ground, highly targeted marketing, Tinder became the massive success we see it to be today.
Outdoing the competition: “Borrowing a page out from their playbook”
We have long heard of this strategy that every company needs to outdo the competition. But no one really talks about how you can take ideas from the competition and put it to your own benefit. We are not advocating any illegal means, but if you can understand their model of operation, then you may beat them at the race very easily.
As product development growth strategy examples, in the smartphone industry today, when OnePlus had been flaunting their budget range of OnePlus Nord for over a month, Google sneakily released Google Pixel 4A in the same price range, at the same time, and with no background marketing. They immediately attracted a huge audience base and shifted the market inclination from OnePlus’s budget smartphone range. These techniques are often used by bigger corporations, and it’s time that small companies and start-ups take a cue.
At the right place at the right time: “Always on the go”
In SaaS products, the placement matters a lot. Your service can be similar to any other SaaS company, but if you are present at the right place when no one else is there, the deal is yours.
We saw this trend of online video communications on Zoom during the lockdown phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. But there were already very old and trusted online video calling platforms like Skype, and still, Zoom got ahead in the race with its excessive marketing at the right time. This strategy is bound to make your company a hit, but the success is never overnight – so keep working towards it.
Mergers and acquisitions: “Grow with the growth of others, if you can”
As a start-up, thinking of mergers and acquisitions can be a wild dream. Still, if you put more thought into it, you will find that it is actually simple and beneficial. Once you have created a certain status for your SaaS company, you can look for even smaller companies to merge with you. If you are a start-up and your service is really excellent, any big company can offer to buy you at a great price too. Make sure to choose whatever gives you the best profitable deal.
As a great product development growth strategy, recently, one of the most popular graphic design software, Canva, purchased two European start-ups:
- Kaleido.ai
- Smartmockups
Kaleido.ai specializes in cleaning the background of any photo or video, and Smartmockups allows one to quickly create mockups for mugs, t-shirts, and other merchandise. These acquisitions have not only benefited Canva but also brought great perks to the two start-ups.
Brand differentiation: “What makes you different, makes you preferred”
There are several SaaS companies that offer the same features as you, but what makes you stand apart? Maybe you have the best quality services, or your product is the most advanced technology in the market.
Whatever be your reason, SaaSworthy recommends that you have at least one very unique feature, and you base your initial marketing entirely on that one feature. This will help you communicate that clearly to the potential customers and give them a point of differentiation from the competition.
Bottom line — Make an informed choice while investing in SaaS
Not only are these product development growth strategy examples useful, but also very practical, as SaaSworthy has noted in its experience. But, as a start-up, you must also ensure that your application is nearly flawless and provides a high-quality user experience.
Ensure that all the features are properly functioning and work for the design and branding. Remember some major pointers by SaaSworthy as we wrap up this article.
1. Maintain a good onboarding experience
2. Keep enhancing your services
3. Learn from the feedbacks
4. Provide helpful blogs around your SaaS product
5. Seek help from influencer marketing
6. Offer free trials of your services
We hope that this guide helped you learn a few things and motivated you to implement what you already know. Make sure you use these strategies to plan, prepare and communicate your business growth for maximum profit. For more such interesting information and strategies, visit SaaSworthy, and give your business a new direction!
