How to upgrade from free to paid?

[richardrussel]

What strategies do you all use to convert users from free to paid? Or from a paid tier to a higher tier?

I've recently built a tool to help with this but would love to hear about you all approach to the problem before mentioning my solution.

So far I've seen different approaches:

• Discounted / optimized pricing (pricing led growth)
  • you think the customer is already in the market for the solution but you're not sure on pricing, so you sweeten the deal and offer a discount / free trial, during that time you...
  • try to white glove onboard them during this evaluation period to convince them that your product has value for x use case. Doing things for them, creating records/resources in the app for them, not making them think in general...
• Job solving content (content led growth)
  • You have a good idea of what jobs the user is trying to solve, so you create relevant content (e.g tutorials / documentation) which helps them solve the jobs they need done in the hope that they realize that using your tool is a more cost effective alternative than what they are doing right now
• Make an awesome product (product led growth)
  • Obviously this is the no brainer that everyone is trying to achieve, but easier said than done. Your product is so well made / done that its value stands out amongst the crowd. It sells itself an its NPS is 12/10

Getting people to pay for your product is hard at the start! I'd love to hear how you all are approaching growth from first beta testers to 10 paid customers and beyond all the way to enterprise

 

[613jono]

@richardrussel I think this depends a lot on what experience the user has with you in the freemium. I sell my training to groups and upsell for one-to-one coaching.

Maximum sales happen when I shift my focus from upselling to adding extraordinary experience and value during the low ticket training.

 

[bubuka]

@richardrussel Begin with free, an useful but limited version.

Offer them something that it's really valuable for them, but in the next tier, for a small price to jump in the paid wagon.

You need to know more about your users workflow, but it is worth the effort, sometimes you find relevant insights to your niche that helps you to create a proper price ladder.

 

[tubz]

@richardrussel To begin with Free, it should start with lots of usage. Depends on where you are, Consumer vs Enterprise, make sure that you have something that people can use daily and/or weekly.