Have you hit a ceiling in your revenue growth?

Is your brand not doing as well as it used to?

Has your product or service become outdated and the market has moved on?

Are people looking elsewhere for their needs and wants?

I have sat in multiple revenue reviews where the first reaction to sales drops was to pump in more money towards marketing or to beef up the sales team.

Marketing is not the only answer

Most growth marketing strategies involve targeting repeat customers, engaging former customers, upsell and cross-sell.

Other logical strategic would be to improve pricing plan at the top line as well as improve cost and value chain efficiency for better bottomline.

Expanding geographic reach is another recognized approach. However, it is a longer term strategy as this is potentially more complex with new market dynamics and resource allocations.

There is a famous saying that states no amount of advertising can sell a bad product, and that is true.

Product experience, customer experience and ease of doing business are all the drivers critical for acquisition, retention and advocacy.

In one of sale reviews sessions with a client, the management team instinctively questions its marketing efforts. However upon further investigations, they realized that marketing had been driving healthy leads into its call centre but leads were dropped because of lapses in follow-up.

In another observation, there were stellar efforts by marketing  to drive app download but the app uninstall rates were also alarmingly high. This can point to the perceived value of the app and undesirable user experience. Until the app utility and experiences are improved, it would a waste in money to drive more app installs.

As such, before you pump in more money to sell products or hire new people for your sales team, you might want to check in on how  your product is performing.

Turn on product-led growth

In the recent years, the advertising industry that I had worked in was plagued with intense competition from both upstream and downstream service providers. The clients are cherry-picking among different service providers were spending less on their conventional services as they have more choices. It is also true that their needs have been changing over time.

Imagine, a customer who used to buy apples from you may now be looking at strawberries, it would be silly to try different tactics to try and convince them to buy apples again.

New products need to be designed and developed to drive new conversations and new interest – and that was exactly what we did and it worked.

Product led growth strategy is where user acquisition, expansion, conversion, and retention are all driven primarily by the product itself.

Does being product-led derail a brand from being customer-centric?

On the contrary, good product led strategies are built around the current as well as probable future needs of the target customer segments. Successful product-led companies like Slack, Figma, Typeform, Pinterest and prioritize on customer experience, personalization and ease of use.

They are able to rally the whole company to build better, stickier products.

Future proof your growth pipelines through products

Some companies found themselves unable to future proof their sales pipelines by failing to expand beyond their one hit wonders. Their products that sold well but they are now unable to get existing customers to return.  Just this morning, I was helping a small company owner strategize how she can enhance her revenue growth beyond her seasonal products. By develop new product lines, she would be able to upsell to potential customers and improve her appeal to attract returning customers.

Over the years, I have helped companies and led team to create new services, products and revenue channels, that opened new conversations with existing and new clients, and in turn drove new revenue growth. I had also worked with UX and engineering team to develop consumer tech products leverage insights from customer study and data.

Whether you are hitting your growth ceiling or hoping to future proof your growth pipelines with product led strategy, I can help you to

• IDEATE 
• LAUNCH
• GROW and MANAGE

Reach me for an exploratory chat.