Yea, I said it. Come at me bro etc.
I’ll stand by it and I’ll tell you why; Whether you’re a small indie builder, startup founder, or working in an enterprise, this shit is all the same. Retention is cheaper than acquisition. By a factor of 5-10x.
Now, I’ll no doubt have someone comment that they have people flocking to them and it costs nothing, which is lovely. Well done on being the outlier in this and come back in a few months, and you’ll still benefit understanding why your customers leave or why you’re not converting free customers to paying ones.
The simple fact is, it IS cheaper to retain customers than get new ones. More than this, it helps us really understand more about our product, the features and our users.
The emphasis for most is on building new things. We love to make things. Dark mode? Check. New button? Check. Crazy filtering system? Sure why not? But who is using this stuff? Do people even care? What features are my paying customers using? How does that differ to my free ones? What is the user journey of a customer who leaves? Are there any patterns in this behaviour?
Without the use of product analytics, it’s impossible to know any of this. We just build more features in the hope it plugs the hole in the bucket, but we really have zero idea on the actual impact.
You can watch the video below, or subscribe to my channel should you wish. I will be covering more topics on product management in the coming weeks, as well as other fascinating topics I’m sure you’ll enjoy.
If you haven’t considered the use of product analytics, I would make it a priority. So many don’t but it’s very easy to get started. You can use free tiers from the likes of Amplitude and get started with basic event tracking in no time.
If you don’t think it’s important, you will soon find that this data is at the cornerstone of scaling your product and really helps you focus on the features that do provide value to your users.
Any questions on product feel free to follow me on the twitter machine @randomshenans
Peace x