7/10 of the fastest-growing SaaS companies use templates to get:

• deeper product adoption
• new activated users to their product.

Here's how to use templates to boost growth

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Templates reduce the time to value for new users.

Users don't always want to start from scratch.

A good template gets them closer to their goals.  

Faster.

Here's how to use templates to increase activation:

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1) Understand the Jobs to be Done

To make templates work, you need to know the ideal use cases.

This starts with knowing what customers want.

Ask new users why they signed up.

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A large part of Canva's success is down to its templates.

During onboarding, they ask about specific jobs to be done in relation to your organisation.

It's not based on demographics.

It's based on desired outcome.

2) Use the responses to find relevant themes

Andrew Capland says you will get 4-5 common themes from asking this question.

And you should make templates specifically for those use cases.

This way you can surface relevant templates like Canva does.

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3) Personalise

Let's see how other leading SaaS companies do this:

Miro provides templates based on the user's goals.

They show you the relevant templates so the user is able to get started quicker.

Simple personalisation that makes a huge difference to the product experience.

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Asks about goals:

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Shows relevant templates:

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Airtable

Airtable finds out what team you are on.

After selecting marketing, they show a content calendar template.

And a marketing tracking template.

They also make it clear that personalisation is happening.

"Recommended based on your team"

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Asks about team:

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Shows relevant templates:

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Video Ask

Video Ask gives context around the template.

Their onboarding form uses video to ask about goals.

Then suggests some templates.

They outline the benefits of each template and how to use it.

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Asks about goals:

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Shows relevant templates:

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Fable

Fable knows their audience is Product and Project Managers.

So they creates specific templates for their needs.

When you first use the product, give suggest relevant questions for you to answer.

You can then quickly start making your product docs.

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Apollo

Writing outreach scripts is one of the trickiest parts of sales process.

So Apollo starts you off with cold outreach templates.

This means that that sales reps can start sending to prospects quickly.

They don't have to worry about to write in their email sequences.

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Figma

Figma gives you style templates so you can speed up your workflow.

Creating a unified design style guide saves designers tons of time in the long run.

By showing you how, they also highlight some of the key differentiators of Figma.

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4) Leverage Templates for SEO

Templates are powerful because they also act as content.

They are easily shared & bring activated users to the product.

But it's SEO helps these companies to explode.

Notion gets tons of search traffic for its templates.

In general, Notion gets 139M monthly visits.

Around 8% comes from SEO.

The keyword Notion Templates has 110,160 monthly searches in the US alone.

Tons of traffic is driven due to templates.

Each template drives further growth back to Notion via SEO.

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Templates are a great way to get users to see value in your product and drive adoption quicker.

Adam Schoenfeld and Camille Trent wrote a great report on Product-Led Growth companies using templates.

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