“We want to grow active users. Fast.”That’s what the founders of a community-driven financial analytics platform told me when they briefed me for an audit 2 years ago.
In these processes, I don’t just look at the marketing stuff such as channels, tactics, and attribution. I also look deep into the business number and plan.
And that’s when it got interesting: They didn’t need more MAUs/DAUs – as a matter of fact that would even make their numbers worse. Instead, they needed more paying premium users.
So when I presented the audit, I first showed how more users means actually more burn, due to high acquisition cost without corresponding revenue.
While this user growth looks great on a pitch deck, it is those premium users that look great on the P&L.
From there I recommended the way forward: focus FIRST (for the next 18 months) relentlessly on converting users to the premium category and only once blended LTV across ALL users has increased as a result, THEN scale up marketing.
This was followed by a suggested roadmap for monetization:
1. Refine the value proposition for premium users
2. Develop CRM and in-app tactics to convert free into paying users
3. Focus product strategy around creating a premium experience worth paying for
Fast forward 18 months (this is straight from the Founder’s LinkedIn post):
📈 Over 400% YoY growth in paid subscribers and the strongest business results they’d ever seen.
Now, that’s a strong position to start investor conversations from.
If you think an audit just confirms what you already know? I’d challenge that. Sometimes it is the one step you need to take to understand the real problem to solve.
If you’re not sure whether you’re solving the right problem to increase the value of your company, let’s talk.