Developing a product marketing strategy for a freemium product

Transcript

1. Developing A Product Marketing Strategy For A Freemium Product “How HubSpot Became Free”
2. Alex Girard Product Marketing Manager HubSpot
3. HubSpot’s Free Tools Launch
4. 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.
5. Chapter 01: A Quick History Lesson HubSpot’s History with Freemium Products.
6. 2006 2014 2016 2018 A Timeline Of HubSpot’s Product
8. 2006 One “Premium” Offering
9. 2006 2014 Our First “Freemium” Offering
10. 2006 2014 2016 2018 Leaning into the “Freemium” Motion
11. We need to make our Marketing Hub mirror the way people today want to buy.
12. 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.”
13. HubSpot CRM Conversations Forms
14. HubSpot CRM Ads Email Conversations Forms
15. Chapter 02: Positioning How we decided to position our free marketing tools in the market.
17. What truly separated HubSpot from all the other free ESPs out there?
18. What’s the Status Quo? Why this is a problem? What’s the alternative? The solution.
19. What’s the Status Quo? System of Engagement -EMAIL -Ads -CHAT System of Record -CRM
20. Personalization Always Wins.
21. Personalization without a CRM is just a parlour trick.
22. Why this is a problem? System of Engagement -EMAIL -Ads -CHAT System of Record -CRM
23. What’s the alternative? System of record System of Engagement -EMAIL -ads -CHAT -CRM Personalized Marketing
24. The Solution CRM
26. Chapter 03: Post-Launch Plays What we are doing post-launch to ensure our success.
27. With a freemium product, the real work starts after you launch.
28. Heavy users of our free tools. Light users of our free tools. Current paying customers.
29. Heavy Users Run review campaigns. Generate case studies. Show the value in upgrading to paid tiers in-app.
30. Light Users Show value of other free tools. Leverage our community.
31. Current Customers Adjust positioning of our paid tier. Show value of current tier vs free product
32. Chapter 04: What Really Worked A few launch tactics that took us over the edge.
33. This launch was a company-wide effort.
34. Some unique tactics that were essential to the success of our launch.
35. PR & Communications We had a global PR campaign in support of this launch that included media exclusives and partner activation.
36. 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.
37. HubSpot Execs activated for the launch. Media articles that we tracked. Countries with media hits. 14 33 10
38. 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.
39. 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.
40. YOUR GOAL: Get your product within the top 10 products launched that day.
41. 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
42. 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.
43. Bogota Cambridge Portsmouth Dublin Berlin Paris Tokyo Singapore Sydney We have a captive audience of ~3000 people globally, waiting to help support this launch.
44. 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.
45. Individual HubSpotters who participated. Shares of launch content. Lucky winner of an all-expenses paid vacation. 900 3,597 1
46. 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.