Forget the Funnel by Georgiana Laudi
Forget the Funnel by Georgiana Laudi offers a revolutionary approach for SaaS marketers and founders, focusing on a customer-led growth strategy to drive sustainable and predictable success. The book teaches readers to abandon traditional, metrics-heavy marketing funnels, instead prioritizing insights drawn directly from customer needs and journeys. This guide is essential for those looking to align their product growth and marketing with customer-driven outcomes.
Who May Benefit from the Book
- SaaS founders and entrepreneurs
- Marketers and growth strategists in tech
- Product managers seeking customer-centric solutions
- Teams struggling with inconsistent growth
- Leaders aiming to deepen customer understanding
- Businesses transitioning from paid to organic growth models
Top 3 Key Insights
- Customer-Led Growth as the Growth Model: Shifting to a customer-led growth model helps SaaS companies create sustainable success by focusing on understanding and responding to customer needs.
- Jobs-to-Be-Done Analysis: Discovering the specific “jobs” customers hire your product for enables more targeted, effective marketing and product development.
- Customer Experience Mapping: Visualizing the entire customer journey highlights growth opportunities, allowing you to improve engagement and conversion rates.
7 More Lessons and Takeaways
- Customer Research: Deep customer interviews are the foundation of understanding what drives customers, empowering businesses to make data-driven decisions.
- Metrics that Matter: Define KPIs that represent customer value, focusing on leading indicators over lagging metrics to drive meaningful growth.
- Success Gaps: Identify gaps between what customers want and what’s offered; address these to improve satisfaction and retention.
- Collaborative Teams: Implement cross-functional teams to ensure that customer insights permeate the entire organization.
- CX Mapping for Optimization: Mapping customer experiences through each stage provides clarity on pain points and guides areas for improvement.
- Customer-Centric Culture: Building a company culture that values customer insights fosters long-term growth and adaptability.
- Iterative Process: Regularly updating research, customer journeys, and KPIs ensures alignment with evolving customer needs, promoting consistent growth.
The Book in 1 Sentence
A customer-focused growth guide that helps SaaS businesses replace traditional funnels with sustainable, customer-driven success strategies.
The Book Summary in 1 Minute
Forget the Funnel offers a strategic pivot for SaaS marketers: transitioning from tactics-based growth to a customer-led approach. By deeply understanding customer needs, motivations, and the jobs they hire products for, businesses can craft growth strategies that resonate, leading to predictable growth. Laudi presents actionable methods for mapping the customer experience, defining customer-led KPIs, and fostering collaborative, cross-functional teams. This book is ideal for SaaS marketers, founders, and teams striving to make informed, customer-centric growth decisions, supported by case studies like Unbounce, which achieved remarkable growth without paid acquisition.
The Book Summary in 10 Minutes
Customer-Led Growth: The Foundation of Success
Forget the Funnel reimagines growth for SaaS businesses by centering on customer needs. Traditional funnel models focus on driving metrics through paid channels or tactical experiments, often leading to unsustainable growth. In contrast, Laudi’s customer-led model focuses on real, actionable insights derived from customer feedback and engagement, ensuring that growth is aligned with actual customer outcomes.
Identifying Customer Jobs-to-Be-Done
The Jobs-to-Be-Done framework uncovers the specific reasons customers “hire” a product. This approach begins with in-depth customer interviews to understand underlying motivations, struggles, and desired outcomes. For instance, Alistair, a marketing tool company, identified two core jobs customers needed help with: expanding their marketing reach and automating tasks to save time. By prioritizing the automation need, Alistair saw significant growth in signups and conversions.
Mapping the Customer Experience
Laudi emphasizes Customer Experience (CX) mapping, a visualization of each stage in the customer journey. Breaking down the experience into three phases—Struggle, Evaluation, and Growth—helps organizations better understand customer thoughts, actions, and emotions at each point. This process reveals key value milestones and identifies opportunities for strategic improvements.
| Phase | What They Think | What They Do | What They Feel |
|---|---|---|---|
| Struggle | Need a solution | Search online | Frustration |
| Evaluation | Comparing tools | Sign up for trial | Cautious hope |
| Growth | Trust your solution | Engage and buy | Satisfaction and relief |
Mapping the customer experience in this way enables teams to see where current gaps might be holding back growth, such as a lack of onboarding support or missing features.
Customer-Led KPIs: Tracking What Counts
Customer-Led KPIs are crucial to measuring success meaningfully. Rather than focusing solely on lagging indicators like revenue, Laudi suggests leading metrics such as product engagement rates. Each phase of the customer journey should be mapped to specific KPIs, with examples like website visits in the Struggle phase, feature usage in Evaluation, and customer upgrades in the Growth phase. By monitoring these KPIs, companies can accurately track the customer’s progression and adjust strategies to increase customer success and satisfaction.
Bridging Success Gaps
Success gaps arise when there is a difference between customer needs and the experience provided. Bridging these gaps can increase revenue and boost retention. For example, SparkToro enhanced its onboarding checklist, doubling conversion rates. By addressing these gaps through small yet impactful changes, companies can significantly improve customer experience.
Building Cross-Functional Teams
A successful customer-led strategy requires collaboration across departments, as each team offers unique insights into the customer journey. Laudi outlines the roles within a Customer-Led Growth team, including a primary stakeholder, a departmental champion, and contributors from each area. This approach enhances buy-in and ensures that each customer insight is maximized across the organization.
Continuous Improvement with Iterative Research
Laudi encourages readers to integrate customer-led practices by continuously iterating. Regular updates to CX maps, customer interviews, and KPI tracking can adapt strategies to meet changing customer expectations. This iterative approach creates a virtuous cycle of improvement, reinforcing customer loyalty and growth.
About the Author
Georgiana Laudi is a marketing strategist and the author of Forget the Funnel, focusing on SaaS marketing and customer-led growth. Her expertise in customer experience and product-led strategies has shaped SaaS companies worldwide, helping them achieve sustainable growth by centering on real customer needs.
How to Get the Best of the Book
To fully benefit from Forget the Funnel, approach it with an open mind toward customer feedback. Begin implementing the customer research and CX mapping techniques, even on a small scale, to witness the potential impact on growth and customer satisfaction.
Conclusion
Forget the Funnel is a must-read for anyone in SaaS looking to replace guesswork with genuine customer insight. By adopting a customer-led approach, teams can create tailored growth strategies, ensuring they not only meet customer needs but also foster loyalty and steady revenue. This practical, research-backed guide empowers marketers and founders to unlock sustainable growth by keeping customers at the core of every decision.