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Product Leading Enterprise Engines for Growth

enterprise engine for product-led growth

A product-led strategy has in recent years become the new standard for B2B digital solutions. The freemium-to-subscriber pipeline is simple to establish and simpler to maintain if backed up by a high-quality product that clients love. 

 

But a bottom-up strategy, while great for ensuring retention and a stable customer base, comes with its own challenges that can inhibit long-term organizational goal setting and growth. Both in B2B and B2C interactions, when businesses cater solely to the expectation of the user, they may lose sight of company development. 

 

It is however possible to maintain a product-led business philosophy while simultaneously driving organizational advancement. The trick lies in introducing top-down enterprise sales strategies to complement a more client-centric approach to uplift tools and products which establish and support an enterprise growth engine. 

 

So let’s take a closer look at how you can establish this within your organization. 

How to build an enterprise level growth engine

A bottom-up strategy can be wildly successful in supporting initial organizational growth, maintaining a solid client base, and perpetuating the reputation of your extraordinary product. And while enterprise programs are critical to the facilitation of long-term growth, it’s important to continue satisfying the beneficial elements of a product-led structure during the transitional – or marital – period. 

One crucial element to fostering a successful product-to-sales growth strategy is knowing when to establish the enterprise engine. Doing so too early can actually inhibit long-term growth; too late, and your organization risks losing out on myriad opportunities for advancement. The experts at Bessemer Growth suggest allowing your product-led strategy to mature to a point of “consistent end-user demand” before you go full-tilt into an account-guided model. 

Here are a few tips that can help you make it happen. 

Implement changes based on user type

You can still achieve significant enterprise growth with selective implementation of a sales-based strategy. 

Because product-led growth methods are built to support transitional client pipelines, typically ranging from free-version personal user engagement (in the case of B2C businesses) to corporate-level user engagement, a PLG business model necessarily generates users at a variety of engagement levels.  How users at all levels may transition should be treated differently, as users at each level will have different use cases and implementation requirements for your product. 

Both in the marketing process as well as the sales and implementation process, strategize your approach based on the type of user. For example, different calls to action should be delivered to different customers, depending on their use case and product engagement level. 

You might make minimal changes for users at the lowest product tier – maintaining a (free first) product-led strategy at this level will help to support client influx and better retention for non-enterprise users. However for corporate users you might consider taking a more aggressive approach. This is where you will be able to best drive growth through enterprise sales. 

Customize experience and funnels

The key here is relevance. Your product, your upgrade path, and who clients are talking to should uniquely support the user’s specific needs at all points in the journey. 

A free version of your solution makes your organization accessible to self-serve users who might be running their own small business or working for a startup. So your marketing plans need to demonstrate how they and their work can be better served by your “Pro” version. And the upgrade process should be as simple as inputting their credit card information. 

On the enterprise end, you might set up a team demonstration to exhibit relevant features that will best serve the department most interested in your product. The upgrade funnel conversation should be facilitated by your sales team, both to make the transition smoother and better support a client conversion. 

Focus on the right data

In all cases, having the right data can help you to implement the right marketing and sales tactics for users at all levels. Product-led growth is often dependent on clients self-identifying how your solution meets their needs. With an enterprise sales strategy, you need to understand what your client’s needs and pain points are so you can demonstrate why your product is qualified to address those problems.

This means accessing organizational data to understand your client’s company size, industry, and use case for your product. 

Use firmographic data

Firmographic data is similar to demographic data in that it defines an organizational client profile and gives both your sales and marketing teams critical insight into a client’s identity, as well as the use case they may have for your product. Firmographic data defines company details such as industry, size, reach, hierarchy style, growth trends, spending habits, and even relationship to technology. 

Understanding a target account’s firmographic data allows you to understand how to scale your outreach efforts, which features and products will most appeal to them, and how likely they are to engage. This in turn supports your team in making personalized content and conversation more likely to result in conversion. 

Learn more here: What is firmographic data?

Segmentation and customer profiles

Once you have your detailed client data, for users at all levels, you can create segmented customer profiles based on specific aspects of that profile to develop broad but targeted strategies for free clients, pros, enterprise, and everything in between. 

Client segmentation supports your transition from a product-led model to an enterprise sales model by helping you to understand demographics within your client base. Ratios of these demographics can also act as indicators for timing your initial implementation. Consistent enterprise clientele will better support the introduction of a sales strategy.

Learn more here: How to perform account segmentation. 

Social advertising for B2B

Converting to an enterprise sales model also means rethinking some of your acquisition strategies. Cost of advertising for a product-led organization is typically extraordinarily low, and you will likely need to increase your ad budget to maintain a consistent influx of new clientele. 

But targeted social advertising can be just as effective for B2B organizations as for B2C, and helps to keep cost of advertising down while maintaining optimum visibility. Your firmographic data can help you understand where best to place your materials. 

Intricately can help

Intricately is an unparalleled go-to-market data strategy that allows B2B organizations to access myriad client information to design better marketing and sales tactics, and help drive enterprise growth at every stage. Sign up for a free demo today to see how Intricately can support your company goals.

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