From enterprise rep to growth expert: Lessons from Noonbrew

Andrew Case is the CEO and Co-Founder of NoonBrew, a high-flying tea brand designed to help with the afternoon slump. Andrew’s story is incredible: he was an account executive selling enterprise SaaS at several product-led companies before jumping into the world of subscription e-commerce.

In just a year, he grew NoonBrew to over 50,000 customers and millions of dollars in revenue.

Andrew was kind enough to share his top five growth tips with me.

Many of the tactics Andrew uses to accelerate growth at NoonBrew are also relevant to go-to-market teams at PLG companies so, alongside each of Andrew's insights, I'll be sharing ways to apply Andrew's tips to a B2B SaaS company.

Tip #1: Take inspiration from others in your vertical  

Andrew: When I started NoonBrew, I took screenshots (great Chrome extension for this) of similar companies’ landing pages and copied a lot of what they were doing. I assumed it was working for them and didn’t want to spend time and resources (that I didn't have) reinventing the wheel.

I put all the different landing pages in Figma and then adapted the elements I liked from each.

I also did this with Facebook Ads. Anyone can see ads a brand runs by looking them up in the Facebook Ad Library. Generally speaking, ads with the most views (or likes) will be the longest-running (and therefore most successful) ads a brand has run.

I broke down the best ads of our competitors and tried to emulate what made them successful.

What can SaaS companies learn?

For enterprise SaaS, we can also learn a lot by looking at others in our space. Sign up for similar or adjacent products and go through their onboarding. Notice what your attention is drawn to and how they use different touchpoints like popups, chat, callouts, and email. While this exercise is useful for generating ideas, you should always try to validate with your users—either through user research or quantitative experimentation.

Tip #2: Use free gifts as a growth lever

Andrew: The biggest unlock for us was when we started offering a free gift with purchase for new subscribers. We gave away a 10-serving travel pack when a customer started a 30-day subscription. If they opted for a 90-day subscription, we threw in a free frother, too. We highlighted the free gift in both our ads and on our website. The result? Our email capture rate more than doubled from under 6% to 15%. Our conversion rate also increased by 25%.

What can SaaS companies learn?

Contrary to popular belief, product-led growth doesn't mean you have to give away your product for free. You can adapt product-led strategies even before you have a free trial or free tier.

For example, Hubspot builds free tools for their target audience of marketers at B2B companies (a marketing website grader, an email signature generator, etc.). Similarly, Intercom invests significant resources into producing content on product management to generate interest from their target buyer. 

Just like NoonBrew's free gifts, anything you can give away for free can be a great lever for growth.

Tip #3: Test your pricing strategy

Andrew: Like many companies, we had no pricing strategy when we first started NoonBrew. The first iteration of our pricing model was based on a combination of:

• Looking at competitors’ pricing
• Pricing to our margins
• Guessing what people would pay for our tea

That was a mistake that easily cost us six figures of revenue.

Since then, we’ve raised prices multiple times and haven’t seen any drop in conversion rates. Make sure you’re testing new pricing strategies, offers, and time frames (monthly, quarterly, annually) because it could unlock significant growth and help you become more profitable.

What can SaaS companies learn?

Just like with NoonBrew's B2C product, enterprise SaaS companies should expect to experiment with different pricing strategies. With PLG, you have additional usage dimensions you can price on (beyond just seats or licenses). Designing pricing models can be both an art and a science. For example, you should, wherever possible, try not to be too stingy with the “free experience” and provide features and functionality that entice the user to use the product long-term. However, giving away too much for free not only hurts margins but can reduce the perceived value of your product in the minds of your users. 

Tip #4: Constantly do user testing and review heatmaps

Andrew: You should always be talking to your customers, reading the reviews they leave of your product, and reviewing heatmaps.

You’ll find gold in your reviews—you can use a lot of what customers say about your product in your advertisements or on your landing pages. The heatmaps are great too because you’ll see what parts of your site or app are attracting your users' attention. Lastly, don’t be afraid to email or call your customers to get 1:1 feedback. You'll be surprised by how many are happy to share their feedback!

What can SaaS companies learn? 

Heatmaps help you understand how prospects and users interact with your website or app. They are particularly useful when in situations where you don't have enough volume for statistically significant A/B tests or if you're simply trying to identify high-impact areas of the funnel. Several tools (like FullStory) are well designed for SaaS companies and provide functionality like hiding sensitive information when recording usage behavior. 

Tip #5: Run split tests on your landing and pricing pages

Andrew: The best companies are constantly testing ways to drive more conversions. This is a great video by Chamath Palihapitiya, former head of growth at Facebook. In the video, he shares how incremental testing was a big driver of Facebook's early success.

At NoonBrew, we’re always running split tests on our call-to-action text, our landing page headlines, and how we frame our pricing, guarantee, and return policy. We use Google Optimize to run these tests as it’s free and super easy to use.

What can SaaS companies learn? 

Testing is an area where PLG companies can learn a lot from our B2C brethren. However, be careful about how much you rely on the results of tests, particularly if you don’t have a large volume of users. In such a situation, it might be a better technique to run user studies on variations of landing and pricing pages with live users with a platform like User Testing or Wynter.

Those were the top 5 strategies, and you can see all of them being used at noonbrew.co. If you’re interested in picking up a pack of NoonBrew, use the code friendsofpace for 25% off.