What do you find are the fastest paths to product adoption growth? Messaging, positioning, competitive comparisons, education/training, longer format ebooks vs. short-form social posts and blog posts, customer evidence?

For existing customers one of the fastest paths to growth I've seen is creating virality. Find a way to get other users into the product and getting some value. Many B2B services offer read-only users that can see dashboards, reports, comment on stuff, whatever it is. Those users then become potential multipliers of access, which then can inform additional teams at an organization that might need to use a platform, etc. All the other tactics you listed are valuable in different ways for different users, but for me the fastest path is sharing the value of the product itself.

For new customer adoption, to me the fastest path to product adoption is a good, easy to understand, and easy to extract value from, product. You have to make it easy for users to get to a point where they can be wowed by the potential of what you offer.

That's easy to say for a SaaS product that does something really straightforward like identify all the pictures of hot dogs in your photo library, but what about super complex products that take configuration and work to get initial value from? You have to find a way to get that value easy to achieve or understand. Some companies do this by manufacturing an experience through things like clickable demos that shows placeholder data, setup, etc. to give an example of what a great experience looks like before then having customers begin their own journey. Some companies do this with great positioning, if you get somebody bought in on why they NEED your product, really bought in, you'll find them much more forgiving if it takes work to setup.

And of course I'm thinking only SaaS here because that's my default. This changes significantly for companies selling manufactured products, services, etc. I could write for hours more and still not fully answer you.

The fastest path to product adoption is meeting your customers where they are.

What this looks like will vary from company to company. It will almost always be a combination of the factors listed, rather than just one thing. But what does it mean to meet your customers where they are? It means having a deep understanding of your customers and their goals. You need to tell a compelling story that explains why they should care about what you have to offer. Whether this takes the form of an eBook or a blog post depends on each element's place in the customer journey.

The fastest path to product adoption is enabling your customers with whatever they need to become activated and engaged as quickly as possible, based on what makes sense for your product.