Growth Team Strategy

The Growth team tackles critical product initiatives to help drive lead generation, user activation, and ultimately revenue expansion.

Quick links:

Mission

In FY ‘23 the Growth team is focused on the product experiences of website visitors and new users. Specifically our vision is that by the end of :

  • Website visitors understand and experience the value proposition within minutes of landing on any page on sourcegraph.com
  • Onboarding is seamless, intuitive, and ensures users are introduced to SG’s key product features in ways that are useful to them and not intrusive to their personal exploration
  • Marketing, Sales, and the Growth team work in tandem to provide the user with optimal introduction to the product, creating a positive impression of the company.

Guiding principles

  • We are customer centric; we believe building the best experience for individual users is the best long term growth strategy
  • We are data driven, aiming to always have at least one test running with clearly state hypothesis and carefully established data pipelines so we can always monitor and evaluate outcomes
  • We move quickly, but thoughtfully; we aim to be clear on the outcomes each initiative is intended to drive - ensuring they align with our vision and strategy
  • We support the sales led motion while also exploring the future of product led growth at Sourcegraph

Where we are now

The growth team is a newly formed team, having formerly been combined with integrations. The team has run some experiments around onboarding and feature introduction, but 2023 is our first dedicated quarter as a team focused completely on growth initiatives.

Top customer, support, sales and marketing issues

In feedback from our customers and internal stakeholders we have identified the following problems to solve:

  • We know our product is incredibly appealing and sticky to users once they understand what it does, know how to use it, and have figured out how to integrate it into their workflows. We also know users struggle to learn how the product works and to understand exactly how it will help them solve critical problems.
  • We see sharp drop off in the funnel of website visitors -> sign ups / active trials. Current user flows do not gather contact information early enough nor do they obtain the necessary legal clearance (acceptance of terms & privacy policy) to allow product and marketing to re-engage website visitors.
  • We lack comprehensive onboarding in the self-hosted product. Ensuring that allocated licenses have high rates of usage is critical in driving renewal and expansion within our enterprise customers.
  • Product owned and marketing owned web pages do not feel like a single cohesive web experience. More unified language and user flows are needed to drive each user persona to the optimal assets and experiences that will help them understand the product and move toward conversion.

Strategy and Plans

The growth team’s focus is to increase activation of two distinct groups: website visitors and new enterprise license holders. Sourcegraph’s product is powerful, but also complex and technical. Helping new users understand what Sourcegraph can do and developing new habits to incorporate it into their workflow will require a robust and finely tuned activation journey. In order to increase activation the growth team will focus on several key areas:

  • Increasing registrations of website visitors by removing friction in the registration process and clearer CTA in the product experience outside the login wall. Registrations provide key information and fulfill a critical legal requirement to unlock opportunities to nurture users from early in their journey through activation.
  • Improve retention & engagement through early onboarding to the product. Both new website visitors and new customers will need personalized guided product experiences that help them reach the aha moment where they understand the value of the product and have it integrated into their environment and workflows. We will partner with existing customers and enterprise users to discover the most optimal way to onboard to SG.1
  • Improve cohesion between product and marketing/sales language by aligning messaging on sourcegraph.com with the five use cases. Customer feedback and traction in sales have shown the use cases resonate with our customers. Though the language around the use cases is apparent in the newly refreshed marketing site, these value stories can be better told throughout the product experience - particularly for new users.

Goals

  • Improve visitor registration rate (# of visitors who sign up / # of users visiting over the period)
  • Reduce 1 and done rate
  • Improving 1 week and 2 week retention
  • Increasing # of visits in the first 30 days
  • Improving activation (definition pending)

What’s next and why

For we have four main initiatives, which can be found in the roadmap.

  1. Unified Registration Optimization tracking issue
  2. Next Stage Iteration of Onboarding Flows tracking issue
  3. Optimize Email Campaign & Landing Flows for Unactivated Registered Users tracking issue
  4. Improve Growth Infrastructure to Better Support Experimentation tracking issue

What we’re not working on & why

  • Driving adoption of Cloud SAAS by teams (Teams on cloud has been paused in favor of other critical priorities)
  • Driving new user invitations & license expansion from in-product triggers (May be a focus area in future quarters, but not right now)
  • Driving revenue expansion through in-product triggers for add-on features (e.g. Code Insights, Batch Changes, Managed Instances) (We are currently sales led, true PLG for add-on features is a ways off operationally as well as in product)

Footnotes

  1. Though lead generation is not a primary focus of the Growth team, by focusing on registration & activation we will help contribute to PQLs. We will also work with our analytics partners to help ensure data pipelines allow for improved tracking of visitors throughout the pipeline. ↩