Swipe Files - 📂 The customer-led growth framework

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Today's newsletter is by my friend and SaaS marketer extraordinaire Gia Laudi.

Gia was previously the VP of Marketing at Unbounce and the founder of Forget The Funnel.

And for the Swipe Files audience only, she's sharing about a new framework they've been developing: customer-led growth.

Hey friends 👋

You know sales-led, marketing-led, product-led, engineering-led, and maybe even community-led growth. Forget them for now. I wanna tell you about the one that comes in above and before all of them: Customer-Led Growth – and the results speak for themselves.

I’m talking nearly 900% revenue growth at a predominantly marketing-led SaaS in just two years kind of results.

But first, let me tell you about how it started.

I was in-house at a relatively early-stage SaaS, and I was working like a chicken with its head cut off. I was doing everything I could to hit our growth goals. Some months we’d kill it, some months we’d miss by a long shot.

Around that time, I was in SF for a conference. Lenny Rachitsky (a PM at Airbnb at the time), invited me to their HQ. In his team’s workspace, I noticed sheets of paper scotch-taped to the wall — each representing a customer journey stage — 10 or so in a row.

Up to that point, I had only seen and used the more traditional, transactional concepts like buyers’ journey stages (leads, MQLs, SQLs) and funnel metrics (AAARRR). But this was entirely different.

They broke their customer relationship down based on their customer’s success milestones instead of their own business metrics.

A lightbulb went on.

When I returned to work, our Co-founder and Director of Product, Director of Customer Success, and I built our first customer experience map. It became the basis for nearly every marketing, growth, and customer success decision we made from that point on.

No more obsessing over and prioritizing metrics that don’t actually impact LTV. Oh, and we were all on the same page, so no more elaborate project briefs and painfully long meetings, too. Finally, consistent growth.

The following year – you guessed it – we grew revenue by nearly 900%.

By gaining clarity on — and operationalizing how — our best customers received value and achieved their goals, we were able to reach ours, and then some.

Years later, the value of this approach is more obvious to me than ever. Since that big ‘aha’ moment, I met Claire Suellentrop, started Forget The Funnel, and developed the Customer-Led Growth (CLG) Framework to be a step-by-step process that anyone can use to achieve reliable, revenue-generating, customer-led growth.

So now that you know the background, here’s how it works:

1: Get inside your customers heads

Extract your best customers' struggles, anxieties, motivations, ‘aha’ moments, and desired outcomes using interviews or, yes, even surveys. This doesn't have to mean months-long research projects.

You want the answers to questions like:

1. When did you realize you needed a tool like ours? What was going on in your world that caused you to start looking?
2. When you tried , what happened that made you feel certain it was the right choice?
3. Now that you’re using regularly, what's the #1 thing you're able to do that you weren’t before?

You can grab our interview and survey questions and email outreach templates here​

2: Turn customer data into insight

Take the data you’ve gathered and analyze and codify it to identify your customer’s Jobs To be Done with the most growth potential. At this point, you’ll know your best customer, what they value, and why they chose you over all of the other options.

​Here’s the amazing Asia Orangio showing off her team’s clear, organized process for doing customer research and uncovering insights (which she learned as part of the CLG framework)

3: Identify your customer’s success milestones

Mapping your customer’s experience will help you understand every action, touchpoint, motivation, and objection throughout their relationship with you – from experiencing the problem you solve to expanding their use of your product and telling their friends about you.

One of the most tangible outcomes of identifying these milestones is evolving beyond generic (*cough*pirate*cough*) metrics and measuring the delivery of value. Think ‘credit card entered’ vs. reaching an ‘aha’ moment. Or ‘daily/weekly/monthly active users’ vs. product engagement linked to value realization and continued value. You can finally measure what drives real customer outcomes (i.e., the KPIs that tell you that you’ve done your job helping customers achieve theirs).

Autobooks did this and increased new user adoption by 30% and core feature usage by 300%. SparkToro improved their trial to paid conversion rate by 50%. MeetEdgar increased their website conversion rate by 89% and trial to paid by 40%.

4: Find your biggest levers for growth

With a new awareness of customer value and how it’s measured, you’ll have a critical view of where you stand. You’ll know where your success gaps are. You’ll have the visibility needed to prioritize the programs needed for happier, more successful and higher-LTV customers.

• High impact website and onboarding messaging
• More effective freemium strategies
• Higher converting product activation
• Proactive re-engagement and retention campaigns
• Customer expansion programs
• Not to mention more resonant marketing that lands with those ideal product-fit customers

Since starting Forget The Funnel, we’ve used this framework with SparkToro, Appcues, SproutSocial, AutoBooks, MeetEdgar, Raydiant, LifeLapse, AgencyAnalytics, and tons more SaaS brands.

Now, one final point I want to make is that customer-led growth is not about just blindly following what your customers say. It’s about understanding precisely what your customers value most about your product, and then helping them reach value quickly.

It’s the intersection of your customer value, product roadmap, and company vision. Find the middle of that Venn diagram and live there. Design what good great looks like for your best customers there. This is what Customer-Led Growth is all about. Plus, you know what they say, if you don’t, someone else will.

I know you hear it all the time, but seriously: talk to your customers. If you’re not doing customer research today, get on it. If someone else on your team is, get involved. Just know, learning from your customers is just the start. What you do with those insights – that’s where the fun begins. That’s where meaningful revenue growth is waiting.

If you want to learn more about Customer-Led Growth – we’re writing a book or check out forgetthefunnel.com or find me on Twitter @ggiiaa​

✌️

—Gia

Thanks again to Gia for sharing about customer-led growth.

What did you think?

—Corey

p.s. did you see that I launched my new course, Marketing Like A Media Company? Would love for you to check it out →​

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