Product-Led Growth: Connecting website and SaaS product in a single user journey for revenue growth – SocialBase

About the company

SocialBase was a Brazilian startup, similar to Yammer and Workplace, offering a corporate social network platform to enhance internal communications within companies.

• Startup
• Brazil
• B2B SaaS 
• Over 40.000 users 
• 2019

The Challenge

• High customer acquisition cost (CAC);
• Lengthy 9-month sales cycle heavily reliant on outbound efforts;
• Time-consuming onboarding and implementation;
• Slow time-to-value for both customers and revenue generation, since monetization strategy were tied to active users; 

The Goal

• Reduce CAC for bottom-funnel marketing campaigns;
• Increase conversion rates from marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to sales qualified leads (SQLs) and shorten sales cycles; 
• Accelerate user onboarding and implementation, boosting monthly active users (MAUs); 

My Hypothesis and Initial Experiment

I hypothesized that providing potential customers with direct product experience would improve implementation speed, user engagement, and time-to-value. To test this, I created a staging environment and invited sales prospects to use the product. My goal was to gather data and assess whether these prospects would close deals faster and implement the solution more quickly than previous MQL cohorts. With this data in hand, I was able to sell this project to C-level and implement the product-led growth (PLG) to current business strategy. 

My Role

I led the PLG implementation at SocialBase, focusing on:

• Technical Collaboration: Partnering with the tech team to automate the creation of stable SaaS environments connected with the website conversions.
• Product and Design Alignment: Worked with product and design teams to define the free trial experience, encompassing featured functionality, trial duration, key user moments, and onboarding flow.
• Product Marketing: Refine platform positioning and messaging, develop inbound flows, CRM rules, and content for attracting and nurturing product-qualified leads (PQLs).
• Sales Enablement: Creating a playbook for sales development representatives (SDRs) and account executives to follow up with PQLs as a part of the sales pipeline.
• Performance Monitoring and Reporting: Tracked key metrics and reported results to C-level leadership.

Results and impact

• 30% CAC Reduction: Bottom-funnel acquisition costs decreased by 30% within the first month.
• Shorter Sales Cycle: The sales cycle was reduced from 9 months to 2.5 months.
• Improved Sales Demo Attendance: Monthly no-show rates for sales demos decreased by 40%.
• Faster Implementation and User Growth: Implementation time decreased from 90 days to 30 days, contributing to a 20%+ increase in monthly active users.

Key Learnings

We observed customer hesitation with in-platform payments, likely due to established purchasing habits. This led us to adopt a product-led sales (PLS) model, using PLG for lead qualification but retaining a traditional sales process for closing deals and billing.

This project helped me to develop peer-influence skills, by demonstrating to salespeople how it would enhance their productivity rather than replace them.

Also, the project emphasized the importance of cross-functional collaboration, clear communication, and a consistent message across product and marketing. My involvement in the product allowed me to identify and address gaps in positioning and messaging, ensuring alignment between marketing materials and the in-product experience.

Thanks to: Leonardo Camacho, Daniara Citadin and Lucas Silva.