Not the sexiest growth strategy, but this technique is one for the playbook.
Datadog optimized its product pages to make them SEO-friendly, increasing the chances for organic search discovery.Steal this strategy.
👉 Optimize pages for keyword clusters. Focus on high-value mid- and long-tail keywords to attract high-intent visitors.
👉 Follow linking best practices. Use meta tags, internal linking, and backlinks to improve search engine rankings.
👉 Add in different content formats. Use videos, screenshots, and recordings to make product pages more engaging. This improves user experience and keeps visitors on the page longer.
To help make your next product launch successful, here’s an overview of the prep involved. This is not a complete checklist, but more of a reminder to catch any gaps in your process.
👉 Measuring your funnel – Ensure you have web/product analytics in place to track how visitors and users move through your funnel.
👉 Continuing the engagement – Build an email onboarding flow that guides users through the activation process to maintain acquisition momentum.
👉 Building your promotion strategy – Rank various channels for announcing your product, balancing audience fit, reach, and cost.
Once you’ve ironed out the prep work, there are several ways to roll out a launch. Here's one strategy to try.
👉 Creating an Early Feedback Loop – Use a phased launch approach with beta testing to gather real user feedback, iterate quickly, and refine your product before the full launch. This ensures a smoother launch, higher user satisfaction, and better product-market fit.
For product leaders looking to add new features, here’s a targeted approach to avoid relying just on intuition.
👉 Beta Testing – Introduce new features in a controlled beta environment. Gather detailed feedback from a select group of users before a full rollout.
👉 Data-Driven Decisions – Use engagement metrics from existing features to identify what users need next. Prioritize developments that address these needs.
👉 Customer Interviews – Regularly schedule calls with both high-engagement users and those who churn. Pinpoint features that can drive retention and attract new users.
You can launch a product when it's ready or you can launch it while in beta. But if you're really bold, you can 'launch it' before it's even built. Here's one way to get your first 100-paying customers within a month (befre a line of code is written).
👉 Tweet about your startup's journey before the product is released. Start by sharing ideas, decisions, and setbacks as a way to build an engaged community.
👉 Use your audience on one platform to build engagement on others. Before posting on ProductHunt, share that you are doing an upcoming launch. And once you're live, share the post so others can engage with it.
When going toe-to-toe against industry incumbents, honing in on your company’s core values can give you a leg-up when winning over customers. For JumpCloud, that meant crafting its go-to-market motion around transparent product pillars that resonated with its target audience.
Guided by the company’s 'Freedom and Openness' principle, JumpCloud launched with a freemium model that was truly ungated, which helped the company build trust with users. As the JumpCloud scaled, the company combined its PLG motion with a sales-assisted strategy that allowed customers to access support and sales demos throughout their evaluation journey.
Social proof is evidence that people and companies use your product – or more importantly, they trust it. These displays of social influence reduce friction in the funnel by scaling the concept of recommendations.
Here are six of the most common types of social proof.
- Customer case studies - writeups of how customers use your product and the benefits they receive
- Customer testimonials - snippets of customer quotes displayed on your website
- Customer logos - a carousel of logos on your home page
- Customer/user quantity metrics - representation of scale – displays of
- Awards and badges - most common are G2 badges, Garner quadrants, and SOC2 compliance
- Number of integrations - trust through association, displays of partners, and integrations
Customer testimonials are essential elements of any SaaS website.
But before you start reaching out to customers for quotes, consider tailoring the formats of your testimonials to match your industry.
- Feature different buyer personas – attract your champions and decision-makers
- Showcase real tweets from customers – a popular format for prosumer companies
- Create dedicated landing pages for customers in a specific vertical – think ABM strategies
- Use customer videos as testimonials – high lift, but offers more intimacy
Social proof isn't just for your website, you can also use it in your email flows for new users.
Here's a quick tip. Use customer success stories, notable endorsements, and user metrics within your onboarding flows to reinforce the value of your product. This tactic showcases credibility and aligns your users’ expectations and needs.
G2 has a crazy business model! Not only has the company found a way to monetize social proof, G2 uses it to accelerate growth.
G2 badges have become a symbol of social status in the SaaS space. As a result, companies are encouraged to promote and display their badges on their website. This act does two things for G2.
👉 Customer marketing – While these badges offer social proof, they also help G2 extend its awareness by tapping into a company’s audience.
👉 Domain authority – Plus, these badges become backlinks that help G2 rank higher in search (further increasing its awareness).
Not a pure-play SaaS model, but this company’s display of social proof is impressive – to say the least. ShipBob, an e-commerce fulfillment platform, found the ingredients to maximize its social influence.
👉 Strategically place your testimonials across key customer touchpoints – homepage, product, and pricing pages.
👉 Use multiple forms of social proof tailored to different funnel stages – videos for engagement, use cases for depth, and quick quotes for high-traffic areas.
👉 Tailor testimonials to speak directly to specific industries - use data and real examples to resonate with buyers.
One of the best visuals I’ve seen on how the demand gen workflow ties with lead gen activities.
At its core, demand gen is an orchestration of marketing and sales tactics to drive awareness.
These cross-functional efforts occur at the top of the funnel to build an audience around your product and problem space.
- Outbound marketing emails
- Inbound marketing efforts (organic, paid, referrals)
- Retargeting ads and email nurtures
- Top-of-funnel programs (webinars and events)
Thought leadership and brand awareness go hand in hand when it comes to demand gen.
I often say that building trust is the battle that comes before adoption. And the quickest way to earn trust is to provide value consistently.
Here are three Thought Leadership campaign types to help you build trust.
👉 Newsletter-led / Blog-led (optimizes for a subscriber base, but has a long ramp time to stand out)
👉 Podcast / Interviews-led (optimizes for building intimacy, but difficult to measure attribution)
👉 Events-led (optimizes for building community, but time intensive)
A masterclass on building, testing, and optimizing campaigns!
Whether you’re building demand gen or lead gen, running campaigns is core to your GTM initiatives. And to run them well, three layers need to work together. Here are a few questions to ask to set yourself up for success.
👉 What funnel stage are you using to define your success criteria – moving MQLs into first calls?
👉 What segments are you targeting – is it a new market or are there specific criteria?
👉 What channels are you using to engage with prospects – how are you reinforcing your messaging across mediums?
Follow this playbook to grow your company’s LinkedIn page to 200K followers.
Through a combination of company, employee, and paid social posts, Gong layered different mindshare tactics to drive brand awareness.
Here’s the breakdown.
👉 Encourage employee takeovers – share new hires, personal milestones, and regular updates to drive engagement and visibility
👉 Build a brand voice for your company page – use “edutainment” to personalize your content – your posts should read like a human, not a corporation
👉 Compliment your posts with thought leader ads – use specific persona targeting to boost organic posts through LinkedIn’s Thought Leader Ads
