5 Steps to Creating an Effective User Adoption Strategy

By
Ioana Wilkinson
December 23, 2022
min read
Updated
September 19, 2023
Photo credit
Discover how to overcome the 5 most common barriers in customer acquisition when designing your user adoption strategy.
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Introduction

Eager to acquire more customers for your SaaS or tech business, but keep running into barriers?

We understand. 

With a seemingly endless stream of tech apps in sight (and more on the horizon), finding ways to stand out and nurture your audience to conversion can feel like a full-time job. 

That’s why it’s essential to understand what’s keeping prospects from taking a chance on your tool and pivot accordingly. 

No time for trial-and-error or lengthy research? 

Luckily, we’ve put together a helpful guide to help you understand the “whys” behind some of those “nos” as you sharpen your user adoption strategy. 

In today’s article, we’re sharing five common barriers in customer acquisition — and how to overcome them.

Ready to learn more? 

Let’s begin!

What is a user adoption strategy? 

An integral pillar in SaaS marketing, user adoption strategies aim to help companies streamline customer acquisition and onboarding processes by showing leads how to use, buy, and implement their tools.

An effective user adoption strategy can help brands nurture leads, convey value, and — most importantly — overcome common objections.

Let’s take a look at some of the most common barriers in customer acquisition SaaS and tech brands like yours are currently facing, and how to conquer each one. 

Barrier 1: Lack of trust 

How likely are you to invest if you don’t trust a brand or the product it sells? 

To truly hand your money or time to yet another app, you need to have faith in the maker of the tool and understand how their technology works. 

In other words, don’t expect a yes if you haven’t earned it yet.

Start by nurturing trust and building relationships with prospects before expecting them to invest in your business.

Here are some simple practices you can implement to position your tech solution as a trusted tool:

  • Offer free trials and free-forever options: Offer tiered plans with at least one free-forever option and/or a free trial so prospects can test drive your product before they commit to spending any money.
  • Demonstrate your unique expertise: Why should your audience trust your brand? Use content marketing to show off your brand’s unique expertise. Showcase your content on your website and on channels your target audience frequents most. (Hint: If you sell a B2B tool, that might be LinkedIn, Facebook, and/or Twitter!)
  • Highlight your brand history and how you got where you are today: What made you decide to create your product? What was the evolution and creation trajectory like? What pivotal milestones helped make your tool what it is today? Use these answers to create brand story content initiatives on your marketing channels and website.
  • Show the behind-the-scenes of how your technology works and how it's revolutionizing your industry.

Pricing plans with a free-forever option.
(Source)

And that brings us to …

Barrier 2: Lack of perceived value 

Your customer also needs to know why your product is worth investing in. They need to understand how your solution can bring tremendous value and impact their lives for the better. 

For instance, if you sell a pet screening SaaS tool that helps property managers streamline and implement pet policies and management processes, be sure to highlight how much time, money, and energy prospects can save by using your tool.

In other words:

  • Showcase the top benefits of using your tech product.
  • Highlight any must-have/unique features that solve audience pain points better than other tools do.
  • Demonstrate how your tool solves other key pain points, such as pricing, speed, and intuitive design challenges.

Here are some content assets you can create and market to help demonstrate your tool’s intrinsic value:

  • Social proof: Collect and showcase customer testimonials, stories, and user-generated content. 
  • Short videos: Create bite-sized videos that visibly demonstrate how your product saves customers time, energy, money, resources, etc.
  • Knowledge base: Equip prospects and customers with a knowledge base or blog on your site, complete with tutorials, fast answers to their questions, and instructional guides.
  • Case studies, testimonials, and use cases: Gather clear examples of industry and/or consumer use cases and testimonials to demonstrate your product’s relevance, practicality, and success.

Barrier 3: Too many barriers to entry 

It’s no secret that online users have little patience and no tolerance for outdated, lengthy, or cumbersome processes. That’s why it’s crucial to make the sign-up process as seamless as possible.

So, take inventory of your current subscription process, and ask yourself the most important question of all: 

How simple have I made it for users to sign up to use my tool?

Hint: If they have to jump through hoops to get started, you can expect higher bounce rates. 

Here’s a checklist you can use to eliminate unnecessary barriers to entry:

  • Enable the auto-fill feature.
  • Let new users sign up using their Google or social media profiles.
  • Make sure all related forms and pages load quickly. 
  • Avoid lengthy sign-up forms. Keep your fields short and sweet. 
  • Avoid requiring approval before a user can use your app.
  • Use tiered pricing plans with at least one low-cost or free option.
  • Make sure all subscribe buttons and CTA buttons are easy to spot and use. 
  • Double-check that none of your buttons lead to broken pages.

Barrier 4: Lack of visibility 

Promotion plays an integral role in any successful user adoption strategy, so make sure you design eye-catching content for your social media, website, and ad campaigns. 

Keep your images congruent by hiring a graphic designer or opt for the DIY route and use graphic design templates instead.

It’s also important to commit to showing up consistently on the marketing channels your audience frequents most. 

Create a dedicated sales and customer nurturing goal for each marketing strategy you employ to help your marketing team stay focused and motivated. 

It's also crucial to understand the effectiveness of your user adoption strategy. Customer monitoring can help you make sense of customer data and turn insights into action. Use a tool like Plus to stay on top of KPI metrics and insights and analyze them with the most recent data in real-time.

Use this data to further tailor your marketing campaigns and outreach processes. You might also consider employing retargeting ads to help nurture prospects who showed specific interest in your brand, but bounced before buying.

Barrier 5: Clunky onboarding processes 

Make it easier for customers to say yes by creating a pristine onboarding process. 

Always offer customers the chance to sign up for demos and trainings so they can get a complete walkthrough of how your tool works. If they’re switching over to you from a competitor, offer to make the transition smoother with tailored onboarding — especially important if you have users on a tight time crunch or if your customer is an enterprise brand.

PS: Tired of manually plugging screenshots and writing down every step when documenting processes? How about recording (and re-recording) another demo? Scribe automates process documentation — so you can build SOPs without writing another word!

With Scribe, you can create visual, dynamic how-tos, in half the time.

Scribe captures your screen while you work to generate step-by-step guides — including annotated screenshots, text, and links.

Generating step-by-step guides with Scribe.
(Source)

Onboard customers, highlight new features, or offer ongoing support. You can share a Scribe via a link, export to PDF, or embed in any tool. Scribes are also easy to organize in-platform, so you can build a knowledge base that's easy to use, share, and update.

And with Scribe Pages, you can combine Scribes with video, images, and more!

Wrap up 

If you’re ready to create a user adoption strategy that works, it’s absolutely essential to learn how to overcome the most common barriers in customer acquisition. 

That’s why we created this helpful guide. 

If you’ve been feeling stuck and wondering what to do next, we hope today’s article has helped shed light on at least one key practice you can implement to earn more SaaS subscribers.

For good measure, here’s a quick overview of the common barriers we shared today:

  • Barrier 1: Lack of trust
  • Barrier 2: Lack of perceived value
  • Barrier 3: Too many barriers to entry
  • Barrier 4: Lack of visibility 
  • Barrier 5: Clunky onboarding processes

And that’s it for today, friends.

Are you ready to overcome your audience’s most common objectives?

Here’s to your success!

Author Bio:

Ioana Wilkinson

Ioana is a freelance content writer and SEO strategist for B2B and B2C brands specializing in Business, Digital Marketing, SaaS, Tech, and Mental Health. Born in Transylvania, raised in Texas, and transplanted to Barcelona and Mexico, Ioana’s most recent move has taken her to windy Oklahoma City.

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