Customer-led growth | Georgiana Laudi (Forget The Funnel)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2022

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Georgiana Laudi is the co-founder and CEO of a consulting agency called Forget The Funnel, where she helps SaaS companies scale and improve conversion rates through customer-led growth. She’s also a marketing and growth advisor to companies like MarketerHire, SparkToro, and Sprout Social. Previously, she was the VP of Marketing at Unbounce and has worked in growth marketing for over 20 years. In today’s episode, Gia speaks about how to identify your ideal customer, how to map their user flows in order to find the biggest growth opportunities, and examples of product changes she’s recommended that have led to the largest growth unlocks. She shares the exact process she works through with founders to uncover opportunities, as well as how to increase subscriptions and retention for SaaS businesses.

—

Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/customer-led-growth-georgiana-laudi-forget-the-funnel/#transcript

—

Where to find Georgiana Laudi:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ggiiaa

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgianalaudi/

• Website: https://www.forgetthefunnel.com/

—

Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

—

Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:

• Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/

• Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lenny

• Maven: https://www.maven.com/lenny

—

Referenced:

• How SaaS Marketers Can Hold High-Impact Customer Research Interviews: https://www.forgetthefunnel.com/resources/saas-customer-research-interviews

• Jobs To Be Done: Email Invite Template & Interview Questions by Forget The Funnel: https://docs.google.com/document/d/183PzYjQi2vsIRlPMUrtzRwZF1VdnZWNDAZsrJ4MRT4Q/edit

• The Growth Framework for Customer-Obsessed SaaS Teams: https://www.forgetthefunnel.com/resources/saas-customer-journey-mapping

• Project Snow White: https://marker.medium.com/what-seven-years-at-airbnb-taught-me-about-building-a-company-e1d035d49c56#:~:text=middle%2C%20an[…]0White,-was%20one%20of

• Startupfest: https://startupfestival.com/for-startups/

• Pirate Metrics: https://fourweekmba.com/pirate-metrics/

• How Airbnb Proved That Storytelling Is the Most Important Skill in Design: https://www.inc.com/yazin-akkawi/the-surprising-technique-airbnb-uses-to-better-sell-an-experience.html

• Jobs to Be Done: https://jtbd.info/

• Demand-Side Sales 101: https://www.amazon.com/Demand-Side-Sales-101-Customers-Progress/dp/1544509987

• When Coffee and Kale Compete: https://www.amazon.com/When-Coffee-Kale-Compete-products-ebook/dp/B07C7HH662

• Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning So Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It: https://www.amazon.com/Obviously-Awesome-Product-Positioning-Customers/dp/1999023005

• Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products: https://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products/dp/1591847788

• Forget the Funnel: https://www.forgetthefunnel.com/customer-led-growth/book

• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Thousand-Weeks-Management-Mortals/dp/B08XZY5ZF7

• Shine Theory: https://www.shinetheory.com/

• April Dunford’s website: https://www.aprildunford.com/

• SparkToro: https://sparktoro.com/

—

In this episode, we cover:

(04:33) Georgiana’s background

(07:03) Why funnels are antiquated

(08:52) Better positioning and messaging to find the ideal customer

(13:59) How Gia was inspired by Airbnb’s storytelling

(19:23) How to analyze what’s successful and what to invest in

(21:54) The ideal customer to learn from

(26:37) How to choose which customer job to prioritize

(32:21) Value moments in the customer relationship

(36:45) Applying customer feedback

(44:40) Metrics for measuring the customer’s meaningful engagement

(49:45) What’s included in the messaging and positioning guidebook

(51:15) Tips for messaging

(54:13) Example of a customer job at SparkToro

(55:58) What is the Jobs to Be Done framework?

(59:50) Lightning round

(1:04:18) How Gia manages her time

—

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The problem with funnels and pirate metrics and you know the them favorites that I love to pick on are like mqls and
0:06.1	SQLs is that like nobody knows what those mean it puts every customer in like these the same sort of buckets it assumes that all customers and all products are the same
0:16.9	It puts businesses or they I should say puts businesses at the center of the business versus putting customers at the center, right?
0:25.0	It's about the values of the business, the value to the customer that's being measured.
0:29.0	Also, it just kind of feels gross for people, right? Like this idea of pushing people through a funnel.
0:35.5	And then probably a particularly relevant for SAS companies is that recurring
0:41.2	revenue businesses you cannot think about, you know, marketing and growth and the business overall as ending at acquisition, otherwise you're not in business anymore.
0:51.0	And the vast, vast majority of these models don't take post acquisition,
0:56.3	retention expansion, all of that into account.
0:59.2	So yeah, in a nutshell, funnels are bad.
1:02.1	Welcome to Lenny's podcast.
1:06.0	I'm Lenny and my goal here is to help you get better at the craft of building and growing
1:10.0	products.
1:11.0	I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and scaling today's most successful companies.
1:18.0	Today my guest is Georgiana Loudie.
1:21.0	Georgiana, aka Gia, runs a consultant see called Forget the Funnel, where she works
1:26.2	hands-on with SAS companies to help them unlock and accelerate growth.
1:30.5	As you'll hear, she often finds huge unlocks and opportunities, often doubling or tripling
1:34.8	conversion in various points in their product flows.
1:37.9	In our conversation, she shares the exact process that she goes through to help companies figure
1:42.0	out where their biggest growth opportunities lie and also how to execute on them.
1:46.0	We chat about how to identify your most important customers,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Lenny Rachitsky, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Lenny Rachitsky and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.