Product Adoption Strategy: How to Get Your Users Craving More

You’ve poured your soul into crafting this incredible product. It’s your baby. And now, you’re standing at the edge of the market, looking out at the vast crowd of potential users, wondering, “How do I get them to not just try my product but to truly fall in love with it?” You, my friend, need a product adoption strategy.

You see, sticking your fingers into product adoption is a bit like trying to create a new and exciting dish that will have all the critics raving. It’s not just about whipping up a quick and easy meal; it’s about creating an experience that turns first-time diners into die-hard regulars who just can’t get enough of your cooking. It’s finding that path from “Hmm, this looks interesting” to “Where has this been all my life?”

Why does this matter so much? Well, no one really likes cooking a delicious meal just for themselves, right? There’s no point preparing a feast and having no one to enjoy it – no matter how delicious your dishes are, their value only gets to shine when they’re shared with others. Of course, the same goes for your product. Its success hinges not just on what it does but on how well it integrates into the lives of the people you want to use it, to keep them wanting more.

Now, crafting a strategy to win over hearts and minds isn’t about throwing a plate of spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks, or peeking at what the folks over the road are doing and saying “If it worked for them, it’ll work for me!” It’s about thoughtful preparation, understanding the palates of your audience, and experimenting with flavors until you find the perfect recipe for success.

So, grab a seat, and let’s cook up a storm together! We’re on a quest to transform curious onlookers into loyal enthusiasts, one delightful experience at a time. We’re going to take a look at: 

• Why is having a product adoption strategy so important?
• What makes for a successful product adoption strategy?
• What role feedback and data can play in developing your strategy
• Some proven real-world examples of successful product adoption strategies
• Current and future trends in product adoption

Why having a product adoption strategy matters

Let’s dive into what product adoption really means. Now you’ve developed a product you think people will love, the big question is: How do you get people not just to try it, but to really weave it into the fabric of their daily lives? That’s where the magic of product adoption comes into play. It’s about making your product really ‘sticky’ so it becomes well-embedded with a customer, and therefore very hard to remove. 

Adoption is the bread and butter of your product’s success. If people aren’t picking it over your competitors and using it, no matter how great you think it is, you’re missing the mark. And here’s the kicker: it’s not just about getting your product into users’ hands; it’s about making sure they quickly and clearly see its value, so much so that they’re willing to invest their time, or hey, even their money into it. 

And it’s not just about new customers, because understanding adoption is an important part of both preventing churn and increasing the lifetime value (LTV) of your current customers. You need to keep them engaged and deepen their connection to your product by getting them to use it more and more.

If they’re finding more value in your product, chances are they’ll be willing to spend more on it, be that an upgrade or a longer subscription, or however your particular model works to upsell your users. It’s about embedding your product within their lives, at work or at home, so deeply that removing it would be unthinkable, like cutting off a limb or giving up cheese.

It takes work to get sticky

Crafting a product adoption strategy takes thoughtful planning, a deep understanding of your users, and experimenting with different approaches to see what truly resonates with them. It’s about aligning your efforts with your broader company goals and breaking down the big vision into actionable experiments.

And speaking of understanding your users, that’s a non-negotiable part of the process. You need to think like a detective and gather as many clues as you can about what your users really need, and how your product can make their lives better. I’m a huge fan of the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework because it helps you to think beyond demographics. It’s about getting to the heart of why someone would “hire” your product in the first place.

Of course, feedback and data are our north stars. They guide us in refining our strategy, making sure we’re on the right track, and helping us iterate on our product in ways that truly matter to our users. It’s a mix of listening to what they’re telling us and watching what they’re actually doing with our product.

Understanding product adoption is about much more than just the numbers. It’s about making real connections with your users, solving real problems for them, and constantly evolving the product to meet their needs.

What makes up a successful product adoption strategy?

So, to keep this delicious metaphor rolling, let’s cook up a strategy with the same care, precision, and passion a chef pours into their signature dish. But what are the key ingredients?

Clearly understanding your target users

Understanding your users is the first step in creating an effective product adoption strategy. You wouldn’t serve a steak to a vegetarian, right? You’ve got to go deeper than just basic demographics though – you need to understand the challenges, behaviors, and motivations of your target audience.

This is where JTBD comes in, as it’s a way for you to work out what dietary requirements your potential guests have and what flavors they like. Put plainly, JTBD focuses on understanding the specific ‘jobs’ users are hiring your product to do, be it solving a problem or fulfilling a desire. By aligning what your product does and how you talk about it with these jobs they want to do, you can make your product an indispensable part of their lives.

Detailed user segmentation

Picture this as organizing your dinner menu into categories. Some people might be hungry for a zesty appetizer, others for a rich, hearty main, and some for a light, sweet dessert. Segmenting your users allows you to tailor the experience you’re offering, ensuring each interaction is as satisfying as finding your favorite dish, cooked perfectly.

Effective segmentation lets you target and personalize your marketing and onboarding strategies, ensuring that each user gets the most relevant and engaging experience you can give them. This makes it a lot more likely that they’ll adopt your product because they get to directly see the value your product offers, and how it addresses their specific needs.

Strategic experimentation

Here’s where you get to play about a bit in the kitchen. It’s all about trying different cooking techniques, adjusting the seasoning, or even combining unexpected flavors to create something extraordinary. 

Each test and tweak in your approach to onboarding, engagement, and retention is like adjusting the heat, adding a pinch of salt, or a dash of oregano, all to find the perfect balance that will make your dish – and your product – stand out.

So, make sure that you are experimenting in a systematic way, clearly outlining the target outcomes for each change, improvement, or new initiative you are going to try. Then ensure you monitor those target metrics and measure whether what you’ve done has made an impact on adoption or not. 

If it has, what learning can you take from that? Can you apply those principles in another area and increase the impact even further? If the change or addition did not improve adoption, why not? Did you disprove any assumptions you had about what your users value? Can you use that learning to increase the chances of success for the next experiment? 

Knowing your “wow” moments

This sits alongside understanding your target users and segmentation, but it delves deeper into the specific value your product delivers for said user. And, even more specifically, the exact moments in the user journey where your users suddenly get it.

The point in their interaction with your product where they understand the true value the product will bring for them – the moment they go “Oh wow, this is really useful/delightful/fun!”. Knowing what and where these moments are is crucial in building an effective product adoption strategy. 

Once you’ve identified your wow moments – which you should do through user interviews, session recordings, surveys, and usage data – you then use that intelligence to optimize your onboarding process.

One of the key objectives of your onboarding journey should be how to get every user to the relevant “wow” moment in the quickest time possible. This metric is called time-to-value (TTV), and reducing the TTV is an important metric when measuring the success of any onboarding flow.  

All of which neatly brings us to…

A customized and continuous onboarding process

Onboarding is your whole front-of-house experience – it’s all about making sure each customer is taken to the right table, explaining your menu to them, telling them which member of the waiting staff will be taking care of them, and asking them what they want to start off with as they get settled.

In my opinion, you should always be onboarding! Just because somebody has used your product for 30 days, it doesn’t mean you give up on their onboarding flow. Your onboarding is in the first 30 seconds, the first 30 days, and the first 30 months.

Your goal should be to make sure that they go from a basic user to the most advanced user that they need to be to make use of your product to its full. That way they’re less likely to miss the important things that your product can help them with, and end up churning.

You should experiment with different approaches to delivering the onboarding and training to your users. From in-app product tours to training webinars and in-person sessions, to trying a series of emails, seeing how successful it is when you create a how-to video series, maybe even trying gamification with task rewards…

The point is, experiment and learn until you’ve found what gets the best results. And don’t forget about those user segments you created – find the onboarding approach (or combination of approaches) that gets the best results with each type of user you have. 

Pro-active engagement and support

You need to nurture your ongoing relationship with your users, much like a waiter attentively returning to the table and ensuring the diner’s experience is beyond reproach. It’s the follow-up, going back and ensuring the meal is being enjoyed, checking in to see if they need anything else. 

Keeping your users engaged beyond the initial onboarding phase is one of the biggest challenges of, and keys to, long-term product adoption. This means regular updates, valuable content, excellent support, and transparent communication to keep everyone informed, assisted, and interested. And, of course, taking advantage of user feedback to continually improve your product to keep it relevant and valuable to your users.

This is where, as a Product Manager, you need to work cross-functionality to ensure you have a holistic product adoption strategy. It’s here that you’ll need to work with Customer Success, Account Management, and Customer Support to ensure you have a joined-up view of the whole customer journey and a full understanding of all the touchpoints that contribute to keeping them happy and using the product. 

Measurement and analytics

Just as chefs taste their dishes, adjusting based on flavor, texture, and presentation, you too must measure and analyze how your product is being received. Are your users coming back for seconds, or is the dish not to their liking? This data helps you refine your product adoption strategy for better results.

That’s why it’s crucial to track specific metrics and KPIs related to user engagement, retention, and satisfaction, like your daily or monthly active users. Tools like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Amplitude, and Heap all offer really useful data about how your users are interacting with your product. By gorging yourself on these details, you can determine what’s working and what needs work, helping you make data-driven decisions to optimize your strategy.

Advocacy and referral programs

This is that five-star review in the NYT, and all the Instagram pics influencers take of your new tasty treat. It’s the satisfied diner who raves about their meal to all their friends, drawing them in to experience your delicious dishes for themselves. This is the organic spread of product love, the ultimate compliment to the chef.

Encouraging and incentivizing your users to share their positive experiences can bring in a swathe of new ones, and can help to reinforce the value of your product (especially for things like social media apps that live or die on drawing in networks of people). If someone publicly celebrates your product, effectively lending it their own good name and social cachet, they tend to become even more invested in proving its value and defending its usefulness.

How can feedback and data help you refine your product adoption strategy?

Just like the secret process behind a chef’s signature dish, developing your product adoption strategy is as much a science as it is an art. Every taste test and stir helps to understand what your product needs to be as palatable as possible. Does it need more salt? A simpler sign-in process? A pinch of herbs? A new integration? That’s how the feedback and data you gather can guide you in tweaking your recipe until it’s just right.

Stirring in user feedback

User feedback tells you whether anyone is enjoying what you’re dishing out. Some might want it spicier, some less, while others love it just the way it is.

Listening to your users is crucial because one person’s tasty chicken satay starter is another person’s hospital trip. It’s about finding that balance that pleases most and delights many. You can gather this feedback through direct conversations, surveys, or observing how they interact with your product (either directly or with session tracking tools) – each piece of feedback is a gold nugget that can make your product better if you use it right.

Some approaches that might help include:

• Regularly conducting user interviews – Direct conversations with users can give a deeper look into how they use the product and the challenges they face.
• Implementing feedback loops – Make it easy within the product for users to provide feedback at any point in their journey.
• Analyzing support tickets – Customer support interactions are a goldmine of information on common user issues and areas where the product might be lacking.

Measuring with data analytics

Data analytics gives you precise readings of what’s happening with your product. How many people are coming back for seconds? Which features are, like garlic bread, the most loved?

This data is your reality check, ensuring you’re not just making something to our taste but to our users’ liking. Tools like Google Analytics and the others listed above are like your high-tech kitchen gadgets, helping you measure every aspect of your product’s success, from prep to plate.

Some effective strategies include:

• Setting clear KPIs – Define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that align with your product adoption goals to focus your analysis efforts.
• Segmentation: Analyze data based on user segments to understand different behaviors and preferences within your user base.
• Iterative experiments – Conduct experiments to test your hypotheses about product changes and their impact on user behavior, using data to inform your decisions.

Blending feedback and data

The real magic happens when you blend feedback with data. For instance, if the feedback suggests that your users find a particular feature confusing, checking the data on feature usage can confirm the issue.

This enables you to work out how to refine that feature based on user suggestions and data analysis and then to keep checking back with both feedback and analytics to see what difference your changes have made.

Real-world examples of product adoption strategies that worked

Now I’m going to serve out some proven product adoption strategies, sprinkled with a dash of real-world examples, just to keep things spicy and interesting:

Gamifiying your onboarding

Think of it as turning the chore of learning how to use a new app into a fun, engaging game. You know, like when you turn cleaning up after dinner into a dance party for the kids or write yourself a quest log for the day rather than a to-do list.

Duolingo does this beautifully. They make learning a new language addictive by rewarding you with points, levels, and virtual high-fives. Challenges, rewards, and milestones can really help to engage and motivate users new and old.

Here at ProdPad we take a similar approach with our free trial. Our users can earn extra days of trial time when they complete various onboarding tasks. It’s a strategy that has proven very successful for us! Sign up for a trial today and see how it works for yourself. 

Personalize your onboarding

Customize each dish to suit the dietary preferences of your guests (like their job roles, industries, and specific needs) to provide a more relevant and engaging introduction to your product.

Spotify does a great job of this by mixing up playlists that feel like they were curated just for you, right from your first login. Soon enough they get you wondering why you even made playlists yourself in the first place.

Provide interactive walkthroughs

This is like offering cooking classes where you get to make your meal under the guidance of a professional chef. Instead of reading a recipe book, you’re in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, learning by doing.

Ever noticed how Canva guides you through designing your first graphic? It’s so seamless that before you know it, you’re creating masterpieces, feeling like a pro designer without ever having attended art school.

Here at ProdPad, we have a few ways of doing this, from offering demos from members of our team, as well as a live Sandbox, populated with data, where you can play around with the product to see how it will help you.

Build a community around your product

This is like those supper clubs where everyone shares a love for gourmet food. It’s not just about eating; it’s about connecting, sharing recipes, and learning from each other. A user community that provides support, allows for the sharing of ideas and gives a space for providing feedback fosters a sense of belonging and loyalty among your users.

GitHub has cultivated a massive community of developers by providing them with a platform that doesn’t just host projects but also fosters collaboration and learning. They’ve created an ecosystem where users can contribute to each other’s work, offer feedback, and share insights, all within the context of their product.

Offer incentives for early adoption

Ever seen a new restaurant offering deals to bring people in? After all, who can say no to a free dessert or a half-price bottle of bubbles? Discounts, extended trials, or the chance to test out exclusive features can really help to draw in the early crowds.

Dropbox used to entice its users with extra storage space for every friend they invited, turning them into their most passionate marketers.

Provide continuous user education and support

Offering comprehensive resources, tutorials, and customer support to educate users about your product ensures they can overcome any obstacles they come across, and also clues them in about new features, and how to use them.

That’s the kind of ongoing support and learning tools companies like Semrush offer, not only providing one of the industry standard SEO tools but also a comprehensive knowledge base in the form of their Semrush Academy content. It’s so effective that it’s basically required reading for people entering the industry.

Feedback loops and product iteration

It’s akin to tweaking your grandma’s secret recipe based on what your dinner guests liked most about it. Implementing mechanisms for collecting user feedback and rapidly iterating on your product based on what you find out will help to meet your users’ needs better and faster.

Spotify (again!) is always tuning its playlists and recommendations based on feedback and usage data, ensuring that the more you listen, the better it gets at being DJ to your life’s soundtrack.

There you have it – a veritable feast of strategies that have helped products you probably use to go from being unknowns to must-haves on the menu.

Upcoming trends in product adoption strategies

The world of product adoption is always evolving, and there are some pretty exciting trends on the horizon.

AI and machine learning

Think about how Netflix keeps getting better at knowing what you want to watch next. That’s AI and machine learning doing its thing, getting smart about what you like. Companies are getting better at using this tech to figure out what you might enjoy or find useful, even before you do. So, when it comes to getting folks on board with your product, AI done right could help it be so spot-on with what each user needs that it feels like magic.

Voice and conversational interfaces 

More and more, we’re just speaking up to get things done. “Hey, Siri, turn on the lights” or “Alexa, play some chill music.” Products that respond to people talking, and even being a part of that conversation, are becoming a big deal. It’s all about making it super easy to use something without even lifting a finger.

AR and VR

Picture this: instead of reading about a travel destination, you’re suddenly transported there, feeling the breeze, and hearing the sounds, all from the comfort of your couch. Products are already becoming something you can experience before you ever make a purchase, like test-driving a car, trying on clothes in a virtual fitting room, or walking around a house in 3D.

Learning and sharing with others

As stuff gets more complex, having a place to learn the ropes and share tips with others is becoming key. YouTube, Reddit, Quora, and all sorts of bespoke forums are where it’s at. They might not be brand new, but they are increasing in popularity when it comes to communities centered around particular products. It’s like having a massive group of like-minded friends all figuring it out together, which makes trying something new less of a solo adventure and more of a group journey. One of us!

Digging into the data

With all the analytics tools on the market now, companies can get super smart about what works and what doesn’t, almost in real time. And again, AI could play a larger and larger role in this, providing detailed analysis quicker and faster than ever before.

Being good to the planet and each other

People care more than ever about products being kind to the earth and fair to the folks making them. Products that nail this are winning hearts and minds, big time.

Subscribing instead of buying

You know how you can subscribe to movies or your favorite snacks? That’s happening with more and more types of products. It’s all about keeping you hooked with great stuff on the regular, instead of just a one-off purchase. It’s also why Home Depot only really sells annual plants. You’ve gotta keep ‘em coming back for more.

So, there we have it – a glimpse into the present and future of product adoption strategies, seasoned with a bit of imagination and a lot of anticipation. The key will be to keep experimenting, stay adaptable, and always, always keep the user at the heart of everything we do. Let’s toast to that future, shall we?

Takeaway (get it?)

We’ve explored the essential ingredients that make product adoption strategies successful, the emerging trends that are shaping the future, and the timeless techniques that bring products and users together in perfect harmony.

As we dab our sweaty brows and, like Mr Creosote, refuse just one more wafer-thin mint after this delightful culinary journey through the landscapes of product adoption, remember this: the key to a memorable meal – or a successful product – is not just in the quality of the ingredients but in the passion of the chef. It’s all about understanding your diners, experimenting with new flavors, and always being ready to adapt the recipe based on the feedback you receive.

The future of product adoption promises to be a blend of tradition and innovation, like a vegan steak tartare. As we look ahead, let’s carry forward the lessons learned and the insights gained, ready to meet the evolving tastes of our users with creativity, empathy, and a dash of daring.

So, let’s raise a glass to that future – a future where your product isn’t just used, but loved; where your users aren’t just numbers, but members of your community; and where the journey of product adoption isn’t just a process, but an adventure. Let’s keep cooking up something special, shall we?