From Broad Ambitions to Hyper-Focused Success: A Transformative Journey with ActiveDraft

When I first partnered with ActiveDraft , I had no idea how much of a transformation we were about to undertake. This is the story of how a team of experienced consultants helped a company achieve success by combining our focused marketing expertise with a shift to a Product-Led Growth (PLG) strategy. 

The Initial Challenge

ActiveDraft was at a critical juncture when I joined their team as a consultant; they were just a few weeks away from launching their initial product—an intuitive, realtime-collaboration platform aimed at the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) vertical.  Michael Folkers , the GM of ActiveDraft, brought me on board to help tighten the product’s positioning, pricing, and sales narrative in support of the impending launch.

ActiveDraft launched in November of 2023. It was a hopeful time as they had a very high number of leads and many high-profile customers of incumbent solutions that had expressed dissatisfaction. Unfortunately, the quality of the leads was poor and ActiveDraft found itself competing against established vendors who had been entrenched in the market for decades. It’s one thing for their customers to be dissatisfied, but it’s entirely another for them to incur the switching costs of going to a brand-new solution. The launch did not yield the engagement or commercial response the team had hoped for. The ActiveDraft team was eager to make a change.

The Pivot

The ActiveDraft leadership team recognized they would need to lean into marketing research to gauge next steps. I brought in Miguel Fernández , a product marketing consultant I had previously collaborated with, to conduct a comprehensive customer problem validation exercise. Within weeks, through a combination of user interviews—leveraging the UserTesting platform—and a thorough post-launch competitive analysis, Miguel helped us to uncover a niche market opportunity: a specific workflow problem faced by a sub-segment of the AEC audience.

Around this time, Michael also brought Tom Jackson on as VP of Product & Marketing. With deep expertise in industry and cloud-based collaboration solutions, Tom was the perfect fit to lead a strategy pivot.

“I joined ActiveDraft with enough information to know the team and product were in need of a change in business model and strategy. I jumped at the opportunity. It was a great chance to combine my background in transitioning teams to Product-Led Growth (PLG) with my related industry experience at Adobe and Autodesk, and transform a team and product that was ready to disrupt the industry.” – Tom Jackson

After a post-mortem of the launch and reviewing the key learnings from the customer validation research, it became clear that we had an exciting market opportunity. However, it would require a rework of the product, its packaging/pricing, and the go-to-market strategy – all while the original offering was already in market.

The Rebuild and Relaunch

Armed with the data we collected from the launch, Tom quickly pivoted our focus from a traditional sales-led motion to a PLG motion. The product and product marketing teams quickly went to work, narrowing the scope of the original browser-based PDF markup and document collaboration solution to support this new approach. There was no time to spare: Michael set the relaunch for ninety days.

To support the relaunch, Jeff Mack joined our consulting team, adding deep PLG and demand generation expertise to the team. Together—the leadership team, consultants, and I—devised a comprehensive launch readiness plan.

This plan involved developing differentiated positioning and messaging, launching a new website from scratch, refreshing our SEO strategy, and building hyper-targeted campaigns to attract the right leads—all while the team was updating the product with the new focused PLG motion in mind. We also reworked packaging and pricing, resulting in a freemium model aligned with our product-led approach.

Additionally, we recalibrated our paid media strategy, advertisement content, and user acquisition mechanisms.

The pivot and relaunch united the entire team around a shared goal and purpose. We aligned on aspects of the product, marketing strategy, and tactics that reshaped ActiveDraft.

“As those who adopt Product-Led Growth know, it is as much about preparing for PLG within the organization—in terms of process, goals, data readiness, and operational execution—as it is about marketing or product experience. Our team converged on the opportunity with the guidance of the leadership team and marketing consultants.” – Tom Jackson

Early Signs of Success

We relaunched the product and started to see signs of improvement immediately. Interested users surged to try the product, engaging with it like never before, largely due to our targeted acquisition tactics, new user onboarding, and an easy-to-understand user experience.

Within 30 days, we surpassed each of our key performance indicators (KPIs) for the relaunch—taking a product with little traction to one consistently adding hundreds of new users a month. Even better, we achieved this at a fraction of the original acquisition costs, reducing the cost of acquiring a user by 90%.

Three months in, we continue to make great progress. Our refocused marketing tactics are driving the appropriate users to explore the product, and we are converting new visitors to active users at double the rate we initially expected. With thousands of users entering our “flywheel,” we are learning more with each user about how they intend to leverage ActiveDraft.

“The Product Led Growth strategy thrives on achieving ‘Product/Market Fit,’ which requires a relentless focus on data and customer insights. Our leadership and product teams have adopted processes to ensure we listen, react, and continuously improve the user experience.” – Tom Jackson

In parallel, the team is reviewing the most active users within the product and investing in understanding who they are, their workflows, and the expanded use cases we can explore to serve their broader needs.

“All this while keeping an eye on the virality of the collaborative platform to ensure we see teams actively engaging in collaboration on documents, assigning tasks to team members, and sharing with stakeholders in the field or in the boardroom. This is the core of our PLG flywheel and essential to our growth objectives.” – Tom Jackson

Reflecting on the Journey

Looking back, what seems like a success now underscores the massive change management effort we undertook. We didn’t just rethink who we were going to serve and how to position and message the product—we had to rebuild it, rethink the go-to-market strategy, and revamp our entire marketing engine.

Compared to where I started working with ActiveDraft, it feels like a rebirth. There’s still a lot of work ahead, but I’m extremely proud of the transformation we’ve achieved—from launching a product with broad ambitions to relaunching with a hyper-focused strategy that’s all about building strength for the long haul.

There is a key lesson here, particularly for startups that are entering a mature market with dominant incumbents: you have to be flexible in your approach until you hit the value prop that users respond to, at a Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) that you can maintain until you can achieve critical velocity.  Kudos to the ActiveDraft team for being so quick to pivot to a new approach until they found something that worked.

“A key element of this transformation was how deeply our team of consultants integrated with the Product team. They weren’t just coaches or advisors; they became embedded partners who took on the responsibility of helping the team navigate this transition. Their hands-on involvement in driving and supporting the changes, relaunching ActiveDraft, and building a sustainable growth engine was crucial to the success we’ve achieved.” – Tom Jackson

I am glad Michael recognized the need for additional marketing expertise to fortify the product’s entry into the market. Our team integrated with the ActiveDraft counterparts in every aspect. 

“I am proud of how the ActiveDraft team proved to be resilient and focused throughout the entire launch and relaunch process.  The team chemistry was aided by the way the consulting team leaned in to help and how our internal team aligned to the new Product Led growth motion” – Michael Folkers

Perhaps the most important lesson we learned here is that it’s about building muscle for a marathon, not a sprint, and ensuring that the entire team reaches the destination together.

That’s the journey we’ve been on—a truly transformative experience for both the client, ActiveDraft, and our consulting team—demonstrating the power of true partnership.