3 things you can do right now to be more product led (for free with Pendo)

If you’re reading this, we’re going to assume you believe that the (not-so) secret sauce to a high-growth model is putting your product at the center of everything you do. (We know what they say about assumptions, but we’re working with limited word count and we want to skip to the good part.)  

Since we agree on the value of product-led growth (PLG), let’s jump right into three things you can do today to make this strategy work for your business. Whether you’re preparing to take the first step of your product-led journey or are deep into the process, these three actions will help you along the way.

Throughout the rest of this post, I’ll be pairing product-led tactics with simple product actions you can take in Pendo today (all with a free account). To follow along, sign up for your free Pendo account.

PLG tactic #1:  Get your product usage data in order 

Leveraging your product as the key driver of growth requires visibility into what is and isn’t working. If you want your product to take the lead, you need to know it better than ever before—which means there’s no room for secrets. Reliable data on how users are interacting with your product empowers you to make smart choices  on where to invest time, effort, and resources to get the best return. And the first order of business is cleaning out the data skeletons in your product’s closet.  

How-to in Pendo: Page tagging

While visibility sounds great, tracking and monitoring product usage can be an incredibly manual process. Enter: page tagging. This enables you to track critical data points like time spent on page, clicks on key elements, and where users may be dropping off in their journey. 

Once you install Pendo, you will receive a list of pages in your product that we recommend you tag (based on inputs such as page visits). The tagging process involves either accepting a recommended page, or adding your own. You can tag or untag any page, at any time.

Tagging is such a simple—but critical—step, because if you don’t know what’s happening inside your product, you can’t take the right actions to improve it. To make things even better, Pendo’s page tagging is retroactive in nature. As soon as you tag a page, you’ll unlock access to all of that page’s data from the time you installed the Pendo snippet. 

Ready to get started? Check out the step-by-step process for tagging a page in Pendo.

PLG tactic #2: Stop treating  all users the same

If the first building block of a product-led strategy is getting to know your product, a very close second is getting to know the people who use it. You’ve likely already done a lot of research into the target users you’ve built your product for. Now, your relationship is evolving from not just why they need your product, but how they are using it. Since no software product is a one-size-fits-all experience, successful growth models need scalable solutions that allow teams to understand and provide tailored experiences for different types of users. 

How-to in Pendo: Segments

Segments are a simple way to group and analyze users based on key traits, characteristics, and actions. And once installed, Pendo immediately relays this critical data on the people who are using your product. 

Say you want to understand how product journeys differ between users who registered a year ago vs. a month ago, or maybe you want to learn the behaviors of users who have engaged with a specific feature. With segments, the possibilities are near endless. Simply add the fields you want to pull in and Pendo will create a segment made up of the exact group of users you are interested in understanding. 

Ready to say goodbye to a one-size-fits-all approach? Learn more about what’s possible with segments in Pendo.

PLG tactic #3: Communicate with the right users, in the right place, at the right time

At this point, you now have the critical building blocks of product and user data. Now it’s time to put that data into action and guide users down the path in your product that’s right for them. The third piece of your product-led foundation is to bridge the gap between what users are doing now and what they should be doing to get better results—in order to achieve their goals and yours.

How-to in Pendo: In-app Guides

With Pendo’s in-app guides, teams have a no-code way to send custom messages to specific groups of users during any part of their product journey, without having to rely on development resources and timelines. My favorite way to put it is that guides are where the magic happens. 

Once you know the areas of your product that are worth investing in and how users are engaging with these areas, it’s time to bring it all together and fuel successful user journeys. An example I like to share is the “first this, now that” approach. 

Let’s imagine you’ve uncovered a data trend that users who took Action A followed by Action B are 10 times more likely to retain. That’s a powerful stat! From there, you could cross your fingers and hope that more users find their way down this path, or you could make sure of it with in-app guides. Simply create a segment of users who have only taken Action A and target them with a guide explaining the benefits of Action B along with a CTA that drives to that action.  It’s a win-win: Your users get more value, and you get higher retention rates.

Guiding users along their path to value is fast, simple, and scalable when you have Pendo on your side. Learn more about all the ways you can use guides to build better product journeys.

At Pendo, our goal is to ensure all product experiences are great product experiences. That’s why we’ve made it completely free to get started with a majority of our product-led tools. If you haven’t already, set up your free Pendo account and give the above steps a whirl. With no credit card required, these free Pendo tools are a no-risk step towards a high-reward product-led motion. We’re rooting for you!