Maxwell Onyeka
The complexities and techniques of SaaS product marketing are unique. But how do you know whether your strategy is working? You can't just go with your gut, and besides marketing KPIs are far too wide...
Product marketing is all about creating demand, identifying your target persona, and allowing your product, development, and features to sell themselves. Some of these objectives appear to be difficult to quantify. There are, however, some signs you may use to get a better idea of how well your product marketing approach is working.
Here are the Top 10 Product Marketing KPIs to monitor your strategy:
Sign up for a trial or a demo.
This may appear easy, but it is one of your product marketing and sales team's most significant KPIs. Qualified leads should be the goal of your product marketing approach. The amount of demo or trial signups you get per month, for example, is crucial for determining whether your messaging, content, adverts, and direct marketing are effective and reaching the correct people. Are you addressing the relevant problems and emphasizing your product's genuine worth? Is your user interface resulting in sign-ups, or do you need to make changes? If this measure is falling behind for product marketers, these are the issues that need to be addressed.
Lead-to-customer conversion rates on inbound channels.
Conversion rates on inbound channels provide insight into the health and performance of your inbound marketing strategy, which should be providing you constant leads to avoid churn and maintain growth. It's the most accurate approach to see if your long-term product marketing efforts are yielding results. Take a look at all of your efforts, including web traffic, conversion content pieces such as eBook downloads, white papers, and other similar items, as well as places on your site where you collect lead information from traffic, to see what percentage of your inbound traffic and leads convert to customers. It's a good idea to attempt and narrow down the conversion rate for each inbound activity to see which are the most beneficial.
Application of the product.
Overall product consumption is a key indicator of success for both your marketing and sales teams as well as your development team. Your teams should figure out which essential features are linked to increased user retention, revenue, and upsell opportunities. Tracking how these features are accepted and used can provide insight into the overall health of product consumption as well as identify areas of contention. Both product teams and product marketers are responsible for determining which features are performing well and where customers are requesting improvements. This metric can also be used by product marketers to identify which features are ideal for marketing and sales.
Score of customer engagement.
A product that is heavily engaged with is an indication of success. Customers are less prone to churn out if they are actively engaged. Users are more likely to leave if engagement dips, canceling recurring income.
For product marketers, maintaining a high Customer Engagement Score is critical. Customer engagement is measured using the criteria that matter most to your team, such as frequency of use, use of specific features, specific actions completed, and so on. The weights are then assigned to these factors, and a single value is calculated.
Customers are more likely to stay involved with products that suit their wants, answer their issues, and evolve through time in order to keep up with the market. To keep customers interested, product marketers must communicate with customers and leads about the product and its progress. To see this metric climb and avoid churn, they must effectively educate customers on how to utilize the product and its features in order to enhance engagement and help them succeed.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS).
Your product marketing teams will benefit greatly from word-of-mouth marketing. What consumers say about you is extremely powerful, and it may massively increase the number of fresh, quality leads you receive. Your Net Promoter Score measures how likely your consumers are to tell others about your product. It's an excellent indicator of overall product satisfaction and loyalty. Your Net Promoter Score, which is calculated through surveys, informs your product marketing team on where they are not doing a good enough job of addressing customers' expectations, where they can improve, and how they can use current customers to reach new customers.
Include features that encourage participation and adoption.
As your product evolves, it's critical for product marketers to continuously "market" new upgrades and features to existing and potential customers. This ensures long-term product success and engagement. When your team introduces a new feature, feature engagement is a measure to keep an eye on. It provides valuable insight into how well your product marketing team is connecting with and engaging customers, as well as meeting their demands.
New features and upgrades should serve as both an opportunity to re-engage existing customers and as compelling new selling points for potential new clients. It's critical for product marketers to understand why certain features don't garner a lot of attention.
Asset usage: content views, shares, downloads, and so on.
This measure focuses on the development of your brand's authority and influence, which is crucial for product marketing teams. Customers are more likely to trust your items if you are an authority figure in your industry. Growing that impact as well as organic traffic requires a significant amount of content marketing. Customers conduct extensive research before making a purchase. If your expert content is being used and engaged with by leads, it shows your brand is authoritative and trustworthy. Your marketing assets may not be interesting or resonate with your target customers if they are disregarded and unengaged with.
Target Market Success Rates
The success rate is a simple, straightforward sales indicator that may tell you how well your product marketing team is doing in comparison to competitors and replacements, as well as whether your messaging is resonating with customers. When given the opportunity, your success rate is the number of consumers you win. It could be in the form of a first impression, a demonstration, or a sales pitch, for example. Losses can also be broken down into "losses to competitors" and "losses due to no decision," for example. This might help you figure out how well your product and messaging stack up against the competition and other possibilities.
You may also split down your success rate by target market to see if your product and message perform better in certain markets and what changes you can make to improve.
Justifications for success.
It's critical to understand why clients choose your product over another or buy into your solution, in addition to "winning" with them. Knowing why you won will aid your product marketing team in determining what your product's major competitive selling factors are. Your product marketing team may use this information to better build the message for consumers around what "wins," and your product team can use it to better understand what makes customers happy in order to stay on track.
Upselling.
Upselling consumers in the form of premium features, supplementary services, or premium product levels is a key part of the SaaS product revenue model. Many SaaS companies find that growing upsells, or monthly recurring revenue, is the easiest way to increase MRR, or monthly recurring revenue, especially if new customers sign up for free or for a modest charge.
Knowing how many users convert from free or low-level customers to premium customers or purchase extra features can assist your product team anticipate customer lifetime value and identify areas where upsells can be improved to boost MRR. Knowing what your consumers are happy to pay more for will help you figure out what your product's fundamental value is and what you should keep delivering in the future.
Product marketing is a sort of marketing that touches every aspect of a SaaS business. Everyone on the team is involved, and everyone must work together to make these KPIs a success. Your product must adapt to what customers desire on a regular basis, and its growth and development should enlighten your marketing and sales strategy.