Lokalise uses ICP insights to optimize sales & marketing efficiency

The Challenge: Increase sales and marketing efficiency with targeted ICP insights‍

After raising their Series B $50 million round, Lokalise aimed to boost sales and marketing efficiency for greater profitability and revenue growth. 

To achieve this, they needed to understand buyer behaviors in greater depth, specifically those of product managers. 

Whether they were selling to a Forbes 500 enterprise or a startup, the product manager was often a key buyer and decision-making persona.

However, Lokalise realized their data and research on this persona was outdated. In recent years (especially post-COVID), B2B SaaS buyer journeys have become more complex, with longer sales cycles and more decision-makers.

The Lokalise team wanted to refresh their personas and validate their assumptions on how product managers preferred to buy in their software category.

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The Solution: Up-to-date buyer behavior insights

Our research design included interviews with the following groups:

• Customers (Product managers currently using Lokalise)
• Non-Customers (Product managers who had not heard of Lokalise))
• Non-Customers (Product managers who had heard of Lokalise but were not customers)
• Lost Prospects (Product managers who had done a sales call with Lokalise but did not become their customer)

This allowed us to piece together a holistic view of product manager behaviours and key challenges to overcome. 

Over the course of 6-8 weeks, we collected insights on the following:

• The sources of information product managers trusted to learn about potential localization software solutions for their company
• What messages they needed to hear to be convinced to try Lokalise
• The content formats they preferred and when to leverage them in the buyer journey (e.g. short form video vs whitepaper)
• How they evaluate localization software during the assessment stage and what information they require (e.g. free trial, demo)
• How product managers work with other disciplines (e.g. developers, marketers, translators) during the evaluation stage, and how they make decisions as a team 

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Key findings

1. Product managers buy through peer recommendations.

Our research revealed that product managers primarily rely on peer recommendations when purchasing software. They reach out to trusted contacts at similar companies who have gone through the purchase process of the same solution category and ask for their opinion. 

To complement their search, or if they have no direct peers in their network, product managers will also turn to Google.

However, as time-poor professionals, a Google list that surfaces 8+ SaaS competitors and forces them to review multiple sites is not a compelling evaluation process for them, with many product managers reaching out to their peers for further feedback once they have compiled their shortlist.

2. The free trial needs to be easy for everyone in the company.  

We also heard that product managers want to avoid losing time ‘teaching’ other team members how to use localization software.

During their evaluation, product managers invite relevant team members (e.g. developers, designers, marketers, translators) to do the free trial alongside them.

If team members require extensive explanations on how to use the product, product managers would deem the solution ‘not a good fit’, and search for an easier-to-use alternative.

This insight presented an opportunity to win with segmented free trial and nurture experiences aligned to each role’s specific use cases and pain points.

3. Product managers prefer a self-serve process to assess localization software.

Our research confirmed this persona generally prefers not to engage directly with a human touch point unless they have a specific question.

Many product managers even mentioned they felt awkward if they had to physically call or email another human multiple times across the trial period. All interviewees we spoke to preferred self-serve resources with a free trial experience.

Strong documentation is also a must-have, especially as product managers work closely with developers.

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The Results: Full transparency of the product manager buyer journey

One of the first quick wins we implemented was aligning the free trial time period to the documented time to value for product managers (it was previously too short). 

We also refined the landing page for product managers with outcomes driven messaging we knew would resonate.

Using our research, the Lokalise team was able to create a experimentation and A|B testing program to better tailor their demo and free trial experience for product managers.

This also included experimenting with solutions to make the experience more self-serve-friendly for product managers, instead of pushing them to multiple calls through a demo flow.

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