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Pitfalls of Product Led Growth

You hear all the success stories about product-led growth and you think to yourself, “I’m gonna get me some of that! What could go wrong?” Plenty can go wrong if you don’t consider some pitfalls that inevitably come with product-led growth. Fortunately, others have experienced those pitfalls and lived to write about it so that you can know what to avoid.

Product Led Growth: What no one tells you about that you really need to know. Driven by the successes of companies like Slack, Zoom, Calendly, and Dropbox, Product Led Growth—or PLG—is being viewed by some as the new, better, standard for software business models. Some even hail it as “the future of software.” But for all its potential, there can be a dark side to PLG that you need to understand. Chris Mele identifies some underestimated risks you need to look out for when implementing product-led growth.
(via @OPEXEngineSaaS)

PLG Marketing: 5 pitfalls to avoid (and what to do instead). Your marketing strategy calls for a different approach now that you’re using your product as the main channel for acquisition, conversion, retention, and expansion. In this PLG marketing guide, Priscilla Tan explains how to avoid common traps and what you should do differently to maximize your revenue in this new era.
(via @breadcrumbsIO)

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When is it too soon to cut the cord?

You may have remembered CNN launching its very own premium subscription services just a few weeks back. They opted to forego any sort of creative moniker and just went with CNN+. I suppose that these days, it’s easy for consumers to understand what the + means. You’re paying more for additional premium content – just like you do for Disney, Discovery, and others.

However, nearly almost as soon as it started – it ended. Because just a month after launching, CNN+ is shutting down. If you thought Quibi’s failed fast, well… Quibi can hold CNN’s beer.

So what happened, exactly? It’s true that CNN+ had just 10,000 daily active viewers just two weeks after its launch. Considering CNN+ had invested over $300M in the venture, those numbers were obviously dramatically lower than planned and expected.

But how soon is too soon to cut the cord on a major product? If CNN+ found a way to give at least 6 months to grow its product, might it have figured out a way to pivot into success?

On one hand, you can argue that typically, throwing good money onto bad doesn’t ultimately solve our problems. If CNN+ was truly a product that people didn’t want, taking the time to reformulate its offerings, develop new shows, and reposition the product would take a lot of extra time and money with no guarantees for success. 

On the other hand, is it possible to build contingency plans into the plan to begin with? If Strategy X doesn’t work, could we implement Strategy Y – with the costs of Strategy Y built into the overall investment?

It’s way too easy to play Monday morning quarterback. So we won’t dunk too hard on CNN+. Our hope, though, is that the hundreds of extremely talented professionals that took a chance on CNN’s fledgling venture can find their way into their next roles as fast as CNN+ folded, because they certainly didn’t ask to be uprooted.

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3 Strategies to avoid the B2B pitfalls of PLG and strengthen your GTM motion. While creating a killer product is central to the success of any company and certainly helps to fill the pipeline, product-led growth by itself isn’t a revenue-generating engine to drive annual recurring revenue (ARR). Just because your pipeline is robust and overflowing doesn’t mean these buyers are quality potential business and will convert to paying users. Companies still need experts like PreSales to sell the products and establish use cases, especially when the product is complex and layered. Sam Wortman discusses 3 strategies to avoid the pitfalls of B2B PLG and how to jump-start your GTM motion.
(via @Vivun_Inc)

Don’t make these frequent freemium SaaS mistakes. A freemium strategy is one of the best ways to sell a SaaS product. However, common freemium SaaS mistakes can thwart this otherwise effective approach. Mia Jacobs helps you steer clear of the most frequent pitfalls SaaS companies encounter when deploying a freemium sales model. 
(via @Totango)

The common pitfalls preventing product managers from reaching their highest potential. There are few professions where mistakes are part of the process as much as they are in product development. Trial and error are a vital part of innovation and every mistake you make is an opportunity to grow. There are specific oversights many product managers are prone to, and focusing on avoiding these commonplace mistakes can make the road to success just a little shorter. Makayla Bowler shares a list of common pitfalls that can kill your product and a few ways you can avoid those pitfalls.
(via @PLEDalliance)

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