Grow Faster With No Cost - Kyle Poyar, OpenView

Proprietary and Conﬁdential ©2022 OpenView Advisors, LLC. All Rights Reserved
HOW TO GROW FASTER
WITH (NEAR) $0 CAC
2022
AUGUST
Kyle Poyar
Traction Conference

Proprietary and Conﬁdential ©2022 OpenView Advisors, LLC. All Rights Reserved 2
▪ Three-in-five software
companies have adopted
PLG strategies.
8
PLG HAS GONE
FROM NOVELTY TO
THE NORM
▪ 91% plan to increase their
PLG investments
according to Gainsight.

BUT MAKING THE MATH WORK IS HARD
60 Free Signups
(6% Conversion from a visit to the
website)
3 Paying Customers
(5% Conversion from free)
2 are Self-Serve
(of 65% conversion via self-serve)
40 Free Signups
(4% Conversion from a visit to the
website)
7 Paying Customers
(17% conversion from free)
1 is Self-Serve
(of 20% conversion via self-serve)
FREEMIUM FREE TRIAL
The journey of 1,000 website visitors

YOUR GUIDE:
THE PLG USER
JOURNEY
Discover
Activate
Convert
Scale
Start

HOW TO WIN:
MAKE YOUR PRODUCT DISCOVERABLE BY USERS
ACQUISITION SOURCES
Start here

FOCUS YOUR
MARKETING
ON USER PAIN,
NOT BUYER PAIN

• Users aren’t necessarily searching
for safety checklist software.
• They’re just people at work trying to
solve an everyday problem.
• SafetyCulture has a library of
96,000+ checklists from
commonplace (“first response
incident report”) to highly specific.

PRODUCT-LED MARKETING THAT WORKS
Programmatic “How to”
Landing Pages
Templates Library Product Education &
Docs

Free Sidecar
Products
Product Education &
Docs
Landing Pages

Product Education &
Docs
Landing Pages
Free Sidecar
Products

ACQUISITION SOURCES
Then this!
HOW TO WIN:
USE YOUR PRODUCT AS A MARKETING CHANNEL

VIRAL LOOPS CAN BE EXTREMELY POWERFUL
External virality through
product exposure and
multi-player use
Internal virality
through collaboration
Disclaimer: Calendly is an OpenView portfolio company.

ARE YOU VIRAL?
K-factor:
How many additional users does one
existing user bring?
Invites:
How many invites (social exposures)
do users send out?
Acceptance:
What % of those invites are accepted?
This will be hard to track and attribute. The simple
version: direct traffic via Google Analytics.

HOW TO ADD VIRALITY
Add and promote social
features in your product
Remove friction from being
social
Add social elements
outside of your product

HOW TO ADD VIRALITY
social
Add social elements

COMMUNITY =
VIRALITY OUTSIDE
OF THE PRODUCT
▪ Webflow’s audience was freelancers who
work by themselves – they were hungry
for an online community.
▪ Users hang out, provide support, and
show off their work.
▪ There are now 1 million+ designers in
Webflow Showcase, which has produced
100k+ assets – providing substantial
long-tail SEO.

COMMUNITY STRATEGIES FOR PLG
BE ACTIVE
WITHIN EXISTING
COMMUNITIES
CONNECT USERS WITH
THEIR PEERS
AMPLIFY COMMUNITY
CREATORS
BUILD A CONTENT
COMMUNITY
WH
AT
IT
IS
Become a trusted voice within
existing communities where
your users hang out.
Play the role of connector for a
specific function or industry.
Partner with power users to
showcase and amplify their
success.
Produce high-value content,
tutorials, and educational
material for target users.
EXA
MP
LES
▪ Shopify's Marketplace
▪ Slack's App Directory
▪ Google's Chrome
Extension Web Store
▪ Productboard's Product
Makers Community
▪ Procore's Construction
Network
▪ Pocus's Product-Led
Sales Community
▪ Notion's Template Gallery
▪ Miro's Miroverse Template
Gallery
▪ Unity's Asset Store
▪ DigitalOcean's community
▪ Twilio's documentation
▪ HashiCorp Learn

BE ACTIVE
WITHIN EXISTING
COMMUNITIES
CONNECT USERS WITH
THEIR PEERS
AMPLIFY COMMUNITY
CREATORS
BUILD A CONTENT
COMMUNITY
WH
AT
IT
IS
success.
EXA
MP
LES
▪ Google's Chrome
Extension Web Store
Makers Community
Network
Sales Community
Gallery
▪ HashiCorp Learn

THEN LET THE
FLYWHEEL KEEP
SPINNING
PRO-TIP:
TO OPTIMIZE YOUR
MARKETING, LOOK AT
PRODUCT ACTIVATION
Discover
Activate
Convert
Scale
Start

11 RULES TO
GROW FASTER
WITH $0 CAC
• Focus your marketing on user pain, not just buyer pain.
• Treat your marketing as a product that offers real value to users.
• Programmatic “how to” templates are a great starting point.
• Free sidecar products work even for non-PLG companies.
• Instead of standard blogs, write product education and docs.
• Viral loops can be extremely powerful for PLG products.
• Start by adding and promoting social features in your product.
• Then reduce friction from being social (check your pricing!).
• Add social elements outside of your product (celebrate milestones!).
• Think of community as virality that lives outside of your product.
• To optimize your marketing, look closely at product activation.

Kyle Poyar
Traction Conference
August 2022

ABOUT OPENVIEW
Our mission is to improve people’s working lives.
We do this by investing in the best software companies and helping our portfolio companies accelerate growth and
become market leaders through hiring top talent, and connecting them to the resources they need to succeed.
View a full list of our portfolio companies here.

Grow Faster With No Cost - Kyle Poyar, OpenView

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