How do demand generation KPIs change with a self-serve product?

It's not too different from your traditional demand funnel/waterfall and KPIs, but instead of leads > MQLs > SQLs > Opportunities > $ pipeline, your funnel should start with web traffic, both from an aggregate perspective, as well as the core pages you want to drive users to sign-up for your self-service offering. Quality web visitors are essentially your "leads," and from there you measure conversions to your sign-up pages, web trial downloads and starts, paid users, and eventually ...Read More

In a self-serve world, you don't have the traditional sales funnel stages of MQL, SAL, SQL and closed/won to manage. You are probably focusing more on things like traffic, sign ups, activations, product engagement and invoices/customers. The levers you pull here are probably more around website optimization, paid ad programs, email + lifecycle programs and in-product optimizations. In a sales-driven world you'd be talking more about offline channels (events, direct mail, lead gen programs, etc.) ...Read More

You could just rename MQL to PQL (product qualified lead) and, voilà! Just kidding. Many teams treat sales-led and self-serve as entirely separate models, but in my view, the KPIs don’t need to change much. In most companies, it’s actually helpful to keep KPI names consistent so that new hires familiar with a sales-led funnel can easily understand the different stages. You’ll still track Leads/MELs, PQLs/MQLs, paid users/SQLs, and ARR/revenue. Of course, in self-serve, you won’t have stages like ...Read More

Self serve is slower so you really need to keep a close eye on time to activation, lifetime value, and usage data to revenue ratio.  Self serve requires a lot of attention through automation and email marketing to ensure these self serve users are aware of how to use the product and understands the values of paying for the premium.  It's similar as a traditional b2b tech demand gen function that you need to build awareness to each feature, and ultimately get them to convert for a demo or trial a ...Read More

Demand generation KPIs change with a self-serve product because the goals are different with this framework. The buyers’ patterns are different based on the mechanism you have in place to convince them to purchase your product. Some of the KPIs you’ll focus on include the following: Customer acquisition cost (CAC). How much did it cost you to acquire the customer versus how much revenue did you generate? Engagement. How does the customer engage with your product? What are the sticky features? Ac ...Read More