Developing a product marketing strategy for a freemium product

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Developing A Product Marketing Strategy For A Freemium Product “How HubSpot Became Free”

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Alex Girard Product Marketing Manager HubSpot

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HubSpot’s Free Tools Launch

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01 A Quick History Lesson Our Journey into the freemium space. 02 Positioning How we ended up positioning these products in the market. 03 Post-Launch Plays What we focused on after launching our free tools, and why. 04 What Really Worked. The most valuable tactics we employed.

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Chapter 01: A Quick History Lesson HubSpot’s History with Freemium Products.

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2006 2014 2016 2018 A Timeline Of HubSpot’s Product

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2006 One “Premium” Offering

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2006 2014 Our First “Freemium” Offering

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2006 2014 2016 2018 Leaning into the “Freemium” Motion

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We need to make our Marketing Hub mirror the way people today want to buy.

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Nicholas Holland | GM, Marketing Hub “Free users are brutal. If you’re product isn’t absolutely delightful, they’ll forget you & drop you in a minute.”

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HubSpot CRM Conversations Forms

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HubSpot CRM Ads Email Conversations Forms

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Chapter 02: Positioning How we decided to position our free marketing tools in the market.

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What truly separated HubSpot from all the other free ESPs out there?

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What’s the Status Quo? Why this is a problem? What’s the alternative? The solution.

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What’s the Status Quo? System of Engagement -EMAIL -Ads -CHAT System of Record -CRM

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Personalization Always Wins.

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Personalization without a CRM is just a parlour trick.

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Why this is a problem? System of Engagement -EMAIL -Ads -CHAT System of Record -CRM

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What’s the alternative? System of record System of Engagement -EMAIL -ads -CHAT -CRM Personalized Marketing

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The Solution CRM

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Chapter 03: Post-Launch Plays What we are doing post-launch to ensure our success.

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With a freemium product, the real work starts after you launch.

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Heavy users of our free tools. Light users of our free tools. Current paying customers.

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Heavy Users Run review campaigns. Generate case studies. Show the value in upgrading to paid tiers in-app.

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Light Users Show value of other free tools. Leverage our community.

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Current Customers Adjust positioning of our paid tier. Show value of current tier vs free product

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Chapter 04: What Really Worked A few launch tactics that took us over the edge.

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This launch was a company-wide effort.

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Some unique tactics that were essential to the success of our launch.

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PR & Communications We had a global PR campaign in support of this launch that included media exclusives and partner activation.

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How we approached our PR & Communications plans. Take a global approach. Leverage exclusive releases. Create thought leadership content and leverage your execs. Enable partner community to create content around the launch.

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HubSpot Execs activated for the launch. Media articles that we tracked. Countries with media hits. 14 33 10

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Product Hunt We launched our free tools on Product Hunt the morning of launch. Dharmesh Shah hunted our product, and we activated the product team in support.

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Some tips for a successful Product Hunt launch... Make sure your product is a good fit. Post early. Get a Hunter with some clout if you can. Stay active in the comments on your product.

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YOUR GOAL: Get your product within the top 10 products launched that day.

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Upvotes on the product. Product of the day on July 16. Unique reviews of the product with a 4.8/5 rating. 814 #4 30

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Internal Enablement We activated our employees to act in support of this launch -- sharing the news on social and creating their own content in support of the launch.

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Bogota Cambridge Portsmouth Dublin Berlin Paris Tokyo Singapore Sydney We have a captive audience of ~3000 people globally, waiting to help support this launch.

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Some tips for a successful internal enablement campaign... Incentivize your colleagues in some way. Find a way to track engagement. Remove as much friction from participation as possible. Explain the importance of the campaign to the business.

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Individual HubSpotters who participated. Shares of launch content. Lucky winner of an all-expenses paid vacation. 900 3,597 1

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Main Takeaways • Rarely should you lead with “FREE” • Keep in mind not only your new users, but your current paying customers. • Explore new channels of promotion with free where it makes sense. • Don’t ignore your employees as a megaphone for the launch.

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