EP38: Troubleshooting growth—What it really means for PLG SaaS
When we talk about “troubleshooting growth” at DemandMaven, we’re often met with confusion. It’s not exactly a mainstream concept, and for many founders—especially those running early-stage SaaS companies—it’s cryptic at best.
In this episode of the In Demand Podcast, Asia and Kim break down what troubleshooting growth actually means, why it’s different from marketing, and why focusing solely on marketing might be holding your SaaS company back.
Marketing vs. Growth
First, let’s clarify some terminology:
Marketing is about efficiency within specific marketing channels and programs. A Head of Marketing or Director/VP of Marketing typically:
- Analyzes which channels can be “exploded” for maximum impact
- Focuses on optimizing SEO, paid acquisition, or specific marketing channels
- Works primarily within the marketing function (though they may collaborate with other teams)
When talking Growth, a Head/VP of Growth or Growth Strategist takes a much broader view:
- Looks at efficiency across the entire business
- Examines not just marketing but onboarding, activation, retention, expansion, monetization, and revenue
- May even analyze pricing, sales processes, and other business functions
The trouble is that most early-stage founders put all their eggs in the marketing basket, and when growth is slow, their first instinct is to say, “We have a marketing problem.”
The bigger picture approach
When we’re troubleshooting growth at DemandMaven, we look at the entire business. Yes, marketing might be a challenge—but there might be bigger issues at play:
- Maybe your net revenue retention is the real problem
- Perhaps your activation rate is abysmal (even if you tripled your trials, a poor conversion rate means minimal impact)
- Your expansion opportunities might be the low-hanging fruit you’re missing
As Asia explains, “You could optimize marketing to death, but that’s not going to matter if you can’t upsell or cross-sell.”
Process for troubleshooting slow growth
When growth is slow, our process typically looks like this:
- Quantitative Analysis – We start by examining your metrics across the business:
- Subscription analytics
- Product analytics
- Web and marketing analytics
- Sales performance data
- Benchmarking – We compare your performance against industry standards:
- Free trial to paid conversion (should be 20-30%, industry average is 15%)
- Website conversion rates (2-5% is common, below 2% is concerning)
- Net revenue retention
- Customer balance (new vs. churned vs. expanding)
- Qualitative Research – Once we identify the weak spots:
- We talk to paying customers
- We interview churned customers
- We may speak with prospects or strangers who fit your ideal customer profile
- We conduct UX interviews or surveys as needed
- Root Cause Analysis – Through pattern matching, we identify what’s really holding you back
- Implementation – We either:
- Provide recommendations for your team to execute
- Guide the implementation process
- Help bring in the right resources to fix the issues
Common culprits of slow growth
When troubleshooting growth, we often find these issues:
- Acquisition problems: Positioning, messaging, channel selection, or landing page experience
- Activation issues: Poor onboarding, confusing first-use experience, or unclear value proposition
- Retention challenges: Product-market fit issues, customer success gaps, or competitive disadvantages
- Expansion limitations: Pricing strategy flaws, lack of upsell paths, or poor monetization
Growth vs. product marketing
A common question we receive is how troubleshooting growth differs from product marketing. While there’s overlap, they’re distinct functions:
Product Marketing focuses on:
- How to position and present the product
- Making the product irresistible to the target market
- Feature positioning and messaging
- Competitive analysis
Growth encompasses all of that plus:
- Efficiency across the entire business
- Behavioral optimization (getting users to take desired actions)
- Growth loops and network effects
- Nuanced optimizations throughout the customer journey
As Asia puts it, “A product marketer might not necessarily be looking at activation rates for all segments, or efficiency across the whole business. They’re very much concerned with the aspects of going to market with the product.”
When to bring in a growth expert
The best time to bring in growth expertise is when:
- You’re sick of trying to figure it out on your own
- Growth is clearly slower than it should be
- You’re ready to take action on the recommendations
The worst scenario? Learning what’s wrong but doing nothing about it.
The bottom line
For most SaaS companies under $10M ARR, there’s usually a fundamental issue holding back growth—not just a marketing problem. Troubleshooting growth means finding that issue and fixing it.
As one client discovered: “Even if I tripled our trials, we would only convert 8% of them.” Sometimes, the biggest growth opportunity isn’t getting more leads—it’s converting the ones you already have.
If you’re experiencing slow growth in your PLG SaaS and want to uncover the root causes, reach out to us. We’re your first head of growth—helping you identify the real issues and providing actionable solutions to get your growth back on track.