Examples of Growth Strategies and Experiments for Different Stages of the Funnel

Simple hacks at each stage

Typical funnel stages

So, let’s remember what we know about the stages of the funnel:

• Acquisition
• Activation
• Retention
• Conversion
• Expansion
• Virality
• Churn/reactivation

These are the stages through which the user goes through the product. At all these stages, you can come up with something typical that, in principle, can help you with the growth of metrics at each of these stages and reduce the number of dropoffs on this funnel.

All that I will write about today, of course, is not a “silver bullet”; all this needs to be tested and verified at home. But, of course, you only need to believe in data and honest experiments. Beautiful pictures by themselves do not mean anything. Still, on the other hand, if you, as a Product Manager, are not supervised enough, you have no idea what other great companies are doing because many things have already been invented before us.

Good ideas need and can be spied on and put into your collection, learn from the guys on case studies, and see what works for whom.

Acquisition

This stage aims to attract more leads to the site, trial, or free version of your product. The problem here is that you need to attract more leads, but you need high-quality leads interested in your product. Therefore, it requires a constant search for marketing channels that can be interesting to work with in combination with the work of the product and the Product Manager.

This diagram describes the strategy for the acquisition stage.

We first try to collect a lot of traffic on the internet through SEO, ebooks, content, etc. Then we lead the leads to a free plan, or we are trying to understand which of these leads is right for us. Then we pass all these leads through nurturing education, for example, our ICP (ideal custom profile), and then these leads go further to our product.

A perfect way to work with acquisition is to work with partners and their system integrations. For example, if you are making an accounting product, accountants also use CRM systems, which means that you need to take your neighbors in the ecosystem as partners. Such a strategy is well applicable for any B2B tool, trying to partner by exchanging user bases, adding to their marketplaces, etc.

Experiments with a Sign-up form

An exciting hack called work email not to sign-up leads that did not come for a product but to look. This is especially useful for B2B companies who have a product demo stage, and the company does not want to waste time on irrelevant leads.

The goal is to collect information from the lead that can be skipped (came from a large company, the desired country, etc.) to understand whether it is necessary to talk to him. Basically, they collect 3 important information: business email, phone number, and company size, but there are also more questions. So try to take the lead pleasant so that it doesn’t get tired of your questions, or use Enrichment tools like Clearbit, DataFox, or ZoomInfo.

Small free product

You can make the product itself or part of the product free of charge. You can make a small free product that is a side product that you can use to collect good leads. A good signal is to do something that has potential value for your potentially awesome leads, through which you can collect a large number of emails and start selling further.

An example from Eversign, which launched a separate little product called onlinesignature.com. They collect email from this product and then use it in their nurturing cycle or the Sales cycle. However, there is little value for the user: you can upload a document and send it for signature or sign there yourself.

Free educational content

An example from Hubspot, which makes free educational content, is all sorts of ebooks, PDFs, videos, etc.

As you have noticed, the process of choosing to make a product for you free or with a trial is actually very laborious, which needs to be constantly tested.

General tips for when you are better off Freemium

• When your product has a large market
• Low cost of serving a lead
• Your product is straightforward to understand

Benchmark for Freemium

An excellent signal that you are doing everything right is if the conversion from free users to paid users is 3–5%. If it is less, then there is no point in continuing to build up the free base.

Activation

The purpose of this stage is to sell the hope that your product is worthy, that it can be used at all, that it solves some problems/needs of the user. So it’s very cool when the user comes in, and you immediately bring him to the aha-moment.

The 3 worst roadblocks to activate

• Ask the user to enter/import data.
• Integration with other systems
• Integration of tools into the process

And one more, when the user cannot understand the interface, your task is to hold the user’s hand as much as possible and try to bring him to the aha-moment through the product.

There are several strategies here

• If you have a tool that does not work without ready-made content, try to fill your tool with ready-made content and show value on it.
• Simplify the first session as much as possible, make sure that there is nothing superfluous. Try to guide the user down a straight path using simple steps.

What patterns are there

• Use checklist
• Use scripts based on JTBD or personas
• Videos, animations, slideshows, which high-level talks about some of the highlights in your product, ideally by persona
• If you need to connect external systems, make a well-developed interface to help the user avoid confusion.
• Use tooltips, but it will be better if used for feature discovery
• Blank states of screens that are decorated in such a way that leads you to what needs to be done
• If you have a configurable product, then prompt the user to complete a questionnaire/wizard
• Give examples of ready-made templates that can be edited

I will not give examples of each of the listed items, and I will show only a few of them. A good example is QuickBooks, where they use scripts based on JTBD or personas. Having come to your product, the user already understands what problem or need he wants to solve, and such a simple form allows him to experience the aha-moment and keep it in the product for a long time.

Another great example from Notion, who uses blank states of screens that are decorated in such a way that leads you to what needs to be done or ready-made templates that can be edited.

Conversion

The purpose of this stage is to nudge the user to buy, show him the price options, and help him make a buying decision. In fact, there are already many great articles, such as the 10 best ways to show a price page, as well as what to do depending on the price (usage-based, value-based, metered-based, flat, etc.), but I will mention just a few.

An example from AppFollow, which does not just 3 plans, also makes a visually very readable personal offer. Choosing a monthly/annual plan always has a huge impact on conversions, so the Product Manager’s task is always to convert a user to an annual plan to increase LTV and set the default annual pricing page.

An example from Dropbox, which highlights the most popular plan and thus removes the problem of choice, also pre-selects an annual plan by default but shows prices per month.

Retention

This stage aims to return the user to the application, preferably that he himself wants it without push or email. The product should naturally develop a habit of using your product. There is a great book on this topic by Nir Eyal, “Hooked”.

Retention works very well to integrate your product into communication systems or work management systems, such as Slack, Teams, etc.

If you do not have direct integration into Slack, you can try different automation tools such as Zapier, Integromat, etc. Adding support chats and account management with a personal assistant also works well.

Expansion

The purpose of this stage is to persistently, but not intrusively, seduce the user with something that the user does not have now but is already available in the product, for example, on a more expensive plan.

A sandbox, a trial for a feature, or an interactive demo, where the user can try and choose to buy or switch to a new plan, works very well in such cases. An example from SurveyMonkey is a feature that I consider to be one of the strongest growth hacking companies out there.

There is also a good example from Intercom, which shows on which plan a particular feature is available. Then, if the user wants to use it, he offers to upgrade through nurturing in articles, videos, etc.

Virality

This stage aims to use those with whom your user communicates and bring them to your product. Doing this is not enough to publish something on Facebook; you need to give other users some micro value.

An example from SurveyMonkey, when someone has completed someone’s survey at the end of the survey, they are prompted to create their own survey through registration. And when other users also want to create their own survey, they remember that they already have an account with SurveyMonkey and thus become regular users, but this is a pretty long-term strategy.

An example from DocuSign allows you to send documents even to users who do not have an account. When a user wants to view a document, he can create an account and store signed documents for free.

I will not consider it here, but I will tell you about an example of “bring a friend, get a bonus”, which some companies use. In my example, it was a bad experiment because it didn’t generate good leads.

Churn

The purpose of this stage is to keep the user with some interesting proposals. If he still leaves, then you can try to get at least feedback from him (why he leaves, where, what we could do better)

A good example is PandaDoc which offers a downgrade for a simpler plan or at a lower price.

When you refuse to renew your subscription, a good example from Amazon offers to pause rather than delete card data.

On average, 10–20% of users churn because they have expired their bank cards or not enough money on the card. A good example from Netflix, which notifies by email and offers to fix the problem with debiting money in the interface without prohibiting users from using the product.

So we looked at small but handy examples of working to improve each stage of the funnel. If you can’t keep your customers happy and keep them using the service, there is no point in worrying about acquiring more of them. You will simply be filling a leaky bucket, rather focus your attention on plugging the leaks.