Classic widget PLG loop.
Algolia really crashed it with these. Here is how they made it so successful.
Some time ago I did some research on Algolia marketing looking for gems. Found quite a few as they are truly amazing at this.
One angle that is bringing a lot of traffic to their site is that classic PLG widget.
So what they did is:
- They gave away their search box for free (under conditions)
- They made sure that folks who do get it for free have some (ideally a lot of) overlap with their target audience.
- People who added that search box got the branded "Powered by Algolia" version of it
- Some devs who used the sites with the Algolia search box liked the search and went to their site
- Some of them started using it and spreading the word further
And the sites that brought the most traffic were:
- Hacker News search (that is not exactly the widget but a standalone site)
- Fontawesome (site with fonts for devs)
- Open-source documentation sites (they give away free docsearch to OS projects)
- SteamDB (gaming site)
I love this tactic as it aligns:
- the value their product provides
- the value that site users get
- the value that the company gets from developers finding out about it
Win Win Win
When you find those "Win Win Win" tactics/strategies you are golden.
