Demand generation isn’t something that happens overnight. The flywheel concept helps explain why it takes time for customers to convert into paying clients and revenue.

Once you start generating leads through marketing activities like email blasts, cold calling and social media ads, the next step is converting those prospects into paying clients.

What is a product-led flywheel?

Product-led flywheel (PLF) describes the concept of a company creating a new product or service because they believe it solves a problem their customers have.

This often leads them to create a brand identity around that idea, which eventually becomes its own unique culture.

Product-led flywheel is a strategy where entrepreneurs build companies around solving problems their customers are having.

The goal is to get customers to come back repeatedly and pay high prices for a product or service – without ever being aware of the underlying problems.

On the inner circle, visualize the different stages of your user’s product journeys. Here are some common examples:

Product qualified leads
Customers
Loyal customers
Active customers

At the same moment, imagine another rotating circle on the outside of your flywheel.

This wheel shows the different stages of product development:

Onboarding
Adoption
Retention
Growth

You can spin up different instances of the customer’s experience as they progress through the funnel.

Unlike traditional funnels, the flywheel allows you to target different segments of users at different stages of their journey—spinning faster and promoting more growth as you enhance different instances of the user’s experience.

What are the benefits of product-led growth

Product-led growth is essentially a strategy or approach to scaling a startup that focuses on building products rather than services, and growing organically through word of mouth and partnerships.

The idea behind product-led growth is that focusing on creating great products allows startups to generate revenue more quickly and efficiently than they would otherwise.

1. It’s a better fit in the modern SaaS market

The traditional sales and marketing funnel was designed for companies that need to attract a wide range of new customers and land one-off sales.

The modern SaaS market relies on recurring revenue to be successful.

Nowadays, SaaS businesses must excel within subscription, freemium, or more product-oriented business models.

The flywheel makes it easier to prove product value and keep users buying from you on an ongoing basis.

2. It leads to higher NDR

You must master the art of the long game if you want to succeed in the product world.

It means focusing less on short term gains and more on long term retention.

The fly wheel makes it easier for new users to sign up for NDR by providing them with stellar user experience.

3. It speeds up over time

Product-led growth is a proven strategy that can accelerate your company’s growth rate.

In addition to being easier to implement, it also helps reduce costs because fewer resources are needed to reach more customers.

That means less money spent on marketing and customer acquisition.

As soon as you have put your flywheel into place, your next stage of development will be able to use its momentum to produce even greater results.

Once it’s in place, your flywheel will become more effective at producing growth as you go because your growth stages feed on one another.

Eventually, that lifts work off of you and drives faster growth for your business.

How can you propel your flywheel and supercharge your product?

The flywheel model is a proven sales strategy that helps businesses get their products to market faster and increase revenue.

If you haven’t already got one, now would be a good time to start building one.

1. Understand customer experience

The Flywheel principle states that companies should focus on creating positive experiences for their customers and then build these experiences over time.

Simply put, a company should create the best possible customer experience (CX) over time.

Businesses who apply the Flywheel technique achieve better retention rates, higher customer satisfaction scores, and loyalty.

The goal of customer service is to create repeat customers.

Your customers don’t come back because you have good products and service. They come back because you deliver what they want, when they want it.

2. Take a smarter approach to segmentation

Segmenting customers into groups based on their behavior enables you to send them tailored messages at the times they prefer, which increases conversion rates.

In other words, you can optimize the customer journey and boost conversions.

Understanding your user base helps you design products that meet their needs.

You can begin by using surveys and customer satisfaction surveys to identify different user groups.

You can also drill down further into user segments by using behavioral segmentation.

Next, develop a plan to eliminate as few pain points as possible and then build bridges between each customer and his/her objective as soon as possible.

3. Target product qualified leads.

Lead generation is a crucial part of every marketing strategy. The more leads you generate, the better chance you have at closing deals.

That said, generating high-quality leads, or qualified leads, requires time and effort.

You should try using the target product qualified lead flywheel to achieve greater success with lead generation.

This is because it helps you identify the most likely prospects from your database, before sending them messages. Thus, boosting response rates.

4. Make onboarding easy

To create a positive onboarding experience, you need to focus on two things:

1) Make sure new employees know exactly what they should be doing every step of the way.

This involves creating a clear vision of the company culture, ensuring that everyone knows where they fit and having a plan for training and development.

2) Provide helpful resources

Some organizations send out welcome emails or host informational sessions to explain key processes, policies, and procedures.

Others offer free training courses and workshops to teach important skills and provide guidance on common issues.

Structuring Your Website for SaaS Demand Generation Success

There are two main reasons why websites need updating.

First, they might be out of date because their underlying code has changed. In other words, they’ve become obsolete.

Second, they may contain outdated information that could confuse potential clients. There are ways to address both issues, such as using RSS feeds to automatically update content.

It takes a lot of preparation to get your site ready for success, and you shouldn’t expect to launch overnight. Below are five steps for creating a successful web presence for your SaaS solution.

Create a compelling value proposition.
Identify user personas.
Ensure your site meets Google criteria.
Test your mobile experience.
Build an email campaign.

It also comprises of focusing your attention and refining your website by targeting these areas:

Homepage
Product and feature pages
“Who It’s for” pages
Pricing page
About page
Blog page
Resource pages (support, quizzes)

Executing SEO for SaaS Demand Generation

How often should you execute SEO for SaaS demand generation?

There are several ways to measure the effectiveness of your SEO strategy, such as traffic, conversions, and other KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

The goal is to improve each metric over time, until you reach your target goals.

There are three major phases of an effective SEO campaign: Onsite Optimization, Offsite Optimization, and Content Marketing.

In order to rank higher at Google, you must ensure that your site meets their requirements. It takes months or even years to build these strategies into a successful campaign.

We believe that the most effective way to improve your site’s SEO is by using a structured, systematic approach.

That’s why we break it down into three main categories:

1. Technical SEO

Technical SEO means optimizing websites for performance, accessibility and security.

These three components play important roles in helping visitors navigate your site and convert them into paying customers.

If you want to rank higher in Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), then you need to optimize your tech SEO.

This entails ensuring that your pages load fast without errors or warnings, and that your website loads properly across browsers and devices.

2. Content Marketing

Content Marketing is free or low cost whereas paid advertising requires a large budget. As such, content marketing will always remain the preferred method for most companies.

This is because it allows them to reach out to customers without having to spend a fortune on advertising.

With content marketing, marketers create valuable content that attracts traffic, engages visitors, and builds trust.

Once established, these websites continue to attract new visitors through effective marketing techniques.

To sum things up, once you decide to go ahead with content marketing, you’ll want to focus on creating high quality content that provides value to your readers.

If you do this consistently then your readership will increase over time.

3. SEO Outreach

Organic SEO is one of the most important aspects of marketing today because it helps customers find your company through natural search.

This means you don’t pay for ads or sponsored posts. You also rely less on paid advertising such as PPC (Pay Per Click).

Instead, you focus on building relationships with potential customers through quality links from high authority sites.

Final Thoughts on Demand Generation Flywheel:

It’ll be hard to create a demand generation flywheel if your business is having trouble generating qualified leads.

Once it begins to spin, the system can be used continuously for consistent outcomes.

Always remember to put the consumer at the heart of your business building process.

Think about how you could help them solve their problems by writing blog posts, creating webpages, and providing freebies for them to download.

Use all the tools discussed in this article to not just communicate the benefits of your SaaS solution, but to also create a connection with potential clients.

If you do, you can convince them to know, like and trust your business as a solution to their struggles.