2022 EDITION

The Product Marketer’s Guide to

Product-Led Growth
How to build scalable onboarding
experiences that deliver first value faster
 INSIDE THIS EBOOK

Introduction | product-led growth in 2022

Defining your product-led strategy

Reviewing your current onboarding experience

Planning better onboarding: 4 worksheets

Driving results with scalable, product-led experiences

The Product Marketer’s Guide to Product-Led Growth in 2022

 INTRODUCTION

The product itself is a SaaS marketer’s

greatest tool. You can only reach so many
users through emails, webinars, or pop-ups.
Product-led marketing is testing UX and
using product data to drive messaging.
Rebecca Reich
Director of Marketing, Candu

Product-led growth for product marketers

A product marketer’s biggest asset is knowing. It’s knowing what
drives value for customers and where they get off track. The more you
know about your customers and the paths they take within your
product, the better you can solve problems by better communicating
the “why,” “what,” and “when” of your product. So why do most SaaS
marketers map out growth inside a deck or Zoom call? The truth is,
we're often not as sophisticated when it comes to product analytics.
We're relying on customer conversations that happen with other
teams. We need tools that transform these conversations into product
moments that tell us how customers interact with UI.

Create what matters by turning your ideas into product-led

growth experiments. For each user interaction, every drop-off
or conversion—there’s a personalized, scalable experience
that’s missing from your user interface (UI). Lead with your
product; it starts with your in-product onboarding experience.
The Product Marketer’s Guide to Product-Led Growth in 2022
 INTRODUCTION

Product-led growth in 2022

Product-led growth (PLG) is a series Users may evaluate three or more
of moments that drive the user products, which leaves little room for
journey—from customer acquisition unlocking the time to first value
and conversion to adoption and (TTFV) for each one. Evaluation has
retention. But the journey to PLG become less about a product’s
doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a actual value and more about the
long time to get it right, and the user’s ability to discover it. The user
solution is never black and white. journey is now a race to find
PLG is a continuum. As you better benefits—and the best product isn’t
understand the market, you can always at the finish line.
funnel those learnings back into your
product messaging. Thoughtful, in-product onboarding is
key to unlocking your growth
In 2022, users are drowning in a sea strategy and the messaging that
of solutions. They’re no longer willing proves first value. Low-touch
to tread touch points to find value. In onboarding is one of the best ways
the past, end-users had fewer to ensure a consistent brand
solutions to evaluate and could experience. In this guide, you’ll learn
spend more time exploring a single how to transform a high-touch,
product because—in some cases—it human-led experience into a
was the only product they could low-touch, product-led experience
choose from. with a clear value proposition.

Successful companies will focus on ...

Scalability
Refining and automating; incorporating
repeatable UX via UI components.

Personalization
Mapping experiences into delightfully relevant
customer moments.

Rapid experimentation
Adapting UI to meet customer and business needs
based on data from scalable solutions.

The Product Marketer’s Guide to Product-Led Growth in 2022

 PLANNING YOUR GROWTH

Defining your product-led strategy

Product-led growth doesn’t require a complete UI overhaul. Start by
evaluating your current state and identifying minimum viable changes (MVC)
that will improve your first-time user experience (FTUE).

Map customer touch points.

Connect your in-product UX to your current sales
enablement and customer success content resources.

Outline quick UI/UX wins. Find your super users.

Find simple messaging Identify your most
updates to improve your Product-Led engaged users and their
current in-product Problem-Solving journey to first value.
experiences without
adding new UI elements.

Identify growth opportunities.

Explore what success looks like beyond conversion. Look
for ways to standardize everything from feature
announcements to ongoing learning.

The Product Marketer’s Guide to Product-Led Growth in 2022

 FINDING YOUR HAPPY PATH

Reviewing your current onboarding experience

Moving away from a human-led onboarding experience doesn’t mean reducing
the role of customer success teams. Instead, it’s a resource shift—from reactive
customer consultations to strategic interactions and marketing moments that
complement self-serve experiences. Use the following questions to review your
current resources and understand how you apply them with new customers:

Why are some obstacles in your What are your key implementation
current onboarding process? milestones?

Is there a project plan with content How many users touch onboarding?
for onboarding accounts? Do activities vary?

Ideally, what content should users What UI should accounts interact with
access throughout onboarding? throughout implementation? Is the
(E.g., learning courses.) process Linear, modular, or gated?

What tools do you use to track How many users touch onboarding?
steps per implementation today? Do activities vary?

What does the simplest onboarding What UI should accounts interact with
journey look like? (I.e., smallest throughout implementation? Is the
accounts, fastest time to value.) process linear, modular, or gated?

Human-Led Product-Led

High-Touch Onboarding Experience Low-Touch Onboarding Experience

From implementation consultations to data
migration, high-touch experiences take 30+
days and countless stakeholders before
customers can find value. Teams are more
reactive and less strategic; onboarding and
other product experiences happen on shared
screens and not within the product itself.
These experiences are both scalable and
personal. Users spend more time interacting
with relevant parts of the product and less
time on scripted implementation calls.
Self-service experiences delight; the
remaining, human-led interactions are more
impactful as there’s more time for strategy.

The Product Marketer’s Guide to Product-Led Growth in 2022

 WORKSHEETS

Planning better onboarding

The following worksheets are designed to help you plan your
in-product onboarding strategy. From gathering project resources to
journey mapping, these exercises will help you and your team define
your customer’s happy path.

The Product Marketer’s Guide to Product-Led Growth in 2022

 PROJECT INVENTORY WORKSHEET

Write a list of customer onboarding resources in the CONTENT TYPE column (e.g.,
intro deck). List the what, who, when, and how of the distribution process in the
DESCRIPTION column (e.g., Google slides sent via email by CS).

CONTENT TYPE DESCRIPTION

The Product Marketer’s Guide to Product-Led Growth in 2022

 TTFV WORKSHEET

What is your shortest path to finding first value?

In the numbered spaces below, write the action or requirement necessary
for your customer to move forward in their onboarding journey.

OUR FIRST VALUE IS

1 2

4
3

x
X marks the spot.
5
6

If your path ends here,

it’s likely a happy one.

8
9
7

Customer overboard!
Six or more steps increase
the likelihood of drop-off.

12

10 11

The Product Marketer’s Guide to Product-Led Growth in 2022

 JOURNEY PLANNING WORKSHEET

List tasks within your CURRENT customer onboarding journey; identify FUTURE opportunities to transform tasks into
product-led experiences. “Kickoff” is an example of a stage; a “CS-led kickoff call” is a step.

STAGE
CURRENT FUTURE CURRENT FUTURE CURRENT FUTURE CURRENT FUTURE

TASK
View, save, or print this worksheet in landscape orientation.

The Product Marketer’s Guide to Product-Led Growth in 2022

 BUILD YOUR DREAM DASHBOARD WORKSHEET

Plan your product-led content. Think about your ideal customer onboarding experience:
What’s the UI of your dream dashboard? Cut out the following components and arrange
them on a separate piece of paper. Outline copy, images, or videos for each component.

Arts and crafts not your thing? Experiment with

different UI components and layouts for free.
Sign up for a Candu Personal Plan now.

The Product Marketer’s Guide to Product-Led Growth in 2022

 BEYOND ONBOARDING

Driving results with scalable,

product-led experiences
Onboarding isn’t the only key to product-led success. A complete strategy
incorporates experiences that impact engagement across the board.

While it’s possible to move toward a product-led growth strategy by

incorporating UI updates into each sprint cycle, it’s not a sustainable
approach—especially for SaaS startups.

The data gathered from in-product onboarding will inform every aspect of
each personalized user journey; your team’s ability to deliver thoughtful
future experiences and branded messaging will impact adoption and
retention—and, ultimately, the success of your company. This is why every
SaaS product marketer should care about product-led growth.

The complete product-led user journey

Feature Adoption
Announce new features inside your product with UI
elements like announcement bars.

Ongoing Learning
Bring learning materials inside your product with
curated dashboards.

Self-Serve Support
Add right-rail support components that update
based on segments and user flows.

The Product Marketer’s Guide to Product-Led Growth in 2022

BEYOND ONBOARDING

Grow without code Why “no code” is product-led growth:

A truly scalable, personalized Trial experiences transform your product

product-led journey requires rapid Non-technical teams can easily add
iteration. Non-technical teams components at drop-off points to help get
need the freedom to adapt and users back on track. Your product
implement experiences based on becomes a personalized asset for each
customer learnings. No-code UI user. When personalized journeys trend,
components take ideas out of you’ll discover new routes for your road
decks and directly into the product. map.

Everyone from founders to product Communities interact inside your product

marketers and customer success No-code community dashboards allow
teams can build product-led your champions to surface features and
experiences one embed at a share their experiences alongside new
time—without impacting users. Non-technical teams can update
engineering road maps. Rapid components to include timely news based
prototyping means real-time wins on trending topics.
for under-resourced teams. Every
product marketer wishes they had Content becomes a “content experience”
a window into their product. That Customer success, sales, and marketing
window is a no-code UI teams are empowered to translate
component. everything from learning content to
awareness messaging into UI components
that nurture the user journey directly
inside the product. Users are served the
right content at the right time—right where

The Product Marketer’s Guide to Product-Led Growth in 2022

NOW YOU CAN

Accelerate your product-led

growth curve with Candu.
Empower everyone to create
beautiful, no-code UI components
that can be embedded into your
product, seamlessly. It’s all about
enhancing the products you already
have—but doing it yourself.

Explore the benefits of Candu for

product-led growth:

• Rapid experimentation
• Delightful personalization
• Scalable automation

Create Better In-Product Messaging

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