25% of AWS Marketplace buyers won't even consider products without 🎁free trials. Free trials + PAYG show the highest conversion rate for customers and Marketplace. Yet most sellers still don't offer them…
Here's how and why use free trials to accelerate marketplace growth:
Amazon Web Services (AWS)'s latest customer analysis shows a simple truth: marketplace buyers now expect to try before they buy.
The most successful marketplace sellers are turning this shift into a competitive advantage.
The Proven Three-Step Framework:
1️⃣ Start with Free Trials
- Remove signup friction
- Make trials instantly available
- Focus on core product value
2️⃣ Add Pay-As-You-Go Options (if available)
- Enable gradual usage expansion
- Let customers control spending
- Build trust through transparency
3️⃣ Scale to Enterprise Contracts
- Convert proven value to commitments
- Leverage usage data in negotiations
- Maintain flexibility in contract terms
Why This Works:
AWS data shows that conversion from Free Trial to PAYG is 3X higher than to Contract. The reason is simple: it matches how modern tech buyers actually want to purchase software.
As Salvador Lopez Beneyto, Sr. Product Manager, highlighted at AWS re:Invent: "Today, majority of decision makers are millennials who ideally don't want to interact with a salesperson through the funnel."
He emphasized that this evolution - from free trial to pay-as-you-go to contract - shows "the highest conversion rate for customers and Marketplace."
Important note: Even without pay-as-you-go capabilities, free trials remain valuable in driving conversion.
💡 The Critical Question:
With AWS confirming "94% of customers have told us that free trials are important" and a quarter essentially disqualifying products without trials, can you afford to ignore this shift in buying behavior?
👍 Follow for more insights on #Cloud GTM
PS. Want to dive deeper into the AWS presentation on this topic? Comment "TRIAL" below and I'll DM it to you 📊
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AI is growing fast, but this number⚠️ stopped me in my tracks:
Bain expects the AI market will grow 5X from $185 billion to nearly $1 trillion by 2027.
Here's where it gets actionable for alliance leaders
⬆️ 5X AI Market Growth
Bain & Company forecasts 5X growth in the AI market in just four years. The real question is: Will this reshape the tech industry?
Where AI Growth is Happening:
✔️ AI Models are the key driver, expected to grow at an incredible 110%–135% CAGR
✔️ Applications and Marketplaces follow close behind, growing at 60%-85% annually
✔️ IT Services Related to AI are expanding by 40%-50% annually, in lockstep with compute growth.
These growth vectors reveal something important: AI isn’t just about advanced models—it’s about how AI gets distributed and implemented.
The fact that marketplaces and services are in second and third place emphasizes that how you deliver AI solutions will be as important as the solutions themselves.
🎯 AI Workload Shift: Public Cloud Dominates
AI workloads are projected to grow by 25%–35% annually through 2027, driving further expansion of the public cloud.
Bain’s recent survey and forecast show that two-thirds of AI spending (covering fine-tuning, model training, inference, and vector storage) will take place on public clouds.
📊 What this means for Alliance Leaders:
1️⃣ Cloud Commitments Will Accelerate
AI’s insatiable need for compute power means reliance on cloud services is only going to grow. This is an incredible opportunity for alliance leaders to deepen partnerships with cloud hyperscalers to capture more value from this shift.
2️⃣ Cloud Marketplaces Will Boom
Already becoming the primary channel for AI solutions, cloud marketplaces are where customers go for convenient purchasing and deployment and to optimize their cloud spending.
ISVs and AI vendors will increasingly use these platforms to scale their reach, and smart alliance leaders will find ways to align their offerings with these rapidly expanding ecosystems.
Alliance and tech leaders who will act on these trends will be in prime position to capitalize on the trillion-dollar AI race.
👍 Follow for more insights & share with others
PS. Accelerate your growth in cloud marketplaces with 10+ top experts.
Join our 5-week Cloud GTM Leader cohort course starting on October 29th - last cohort this year.
www.partnerinsight.io/course-marketplaces
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Public cloud is set to reach 💰 $2 trillion by 2030 or >3X its current size per Goldman Sachs forecast. We're still 70% of growth to go.
But it's a nuanced story of sustained growth and evolving tech that savvy industry players and investors expect.
📈 Cloud is projected to grow 22% CAGR from 2024-2030
This 22% CAGR growth number isn't a radical departure from recent trends. Rather, Goldman suggests a continuation of the robust cloud growth we've witnessed since 2019. In the last 5 years, public cloud grew at a 26% compounded rate.
This consistency, even as the cloud market scales, speaks volumes about cloud enduring value proposition and expanding use cases.
Goldman estimates that only 30% of workloads have migrated to the cloud, echoing Amazon Web Services (AWS)'s longstanding claim that "80% of workloads are not in cloud." This suggests we're still in the early innings of cloud adoption, with ample runway for growth.
👩💻 Perhaps most intriguing is the persistence of SaaS dominance in the coming years
At 41% of the projected 2030 market, SaaS is set to remain the largest segment. This underlines a critical insight: the future of cloud and AI isn't just about infrastructure, but about reimagining business processes and applications.
✨ While generative AI continues to garner breathless headlines, Goldman Sachs offers a more measured perspective.
Read the full breakdown here
www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:72414…
👍 Follow for more insights & share with others
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Discover how 50% of #SaaS companies recently changed their Go-To-Market, leveraging #partnerships 📈 to boost growth & sales efficiency. Top consultants & VCs emphasize the power of ecosystem-led strategies to expand and lower churn. Explore this trend to unlock the SaaS growth in our latest newsletter.
Don't miss out! 🚀 partnerinsight.substack.com/p/how-partner-led-stra…
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CrowdStrike is a disruptor 🗽 in the cybersecurity industry, the 2nd fastest SaaS company that reached $2bn ARR. It’s also a “partner-first company” with ~75% of its sales via #channelpartners . Let’s look at the role that #partnerships, platform and network effects play in their success.
🎯 “We're a partner-first company, that's the way I built it. We haven't wavered from that…” CrowdStrike CEO and Co-founder, George Kurtz
In numbers: $2.3Bn ARR, 21K customers, incl. 258 of Fortune 500
CS's Partner-Led growth in FY’22 was impressive (see graph):
Partner Sourced ARR +83% YoY
MSSP (Multi-service security providers) Partner ARR +200%
AWS Marketplace ARR +100%
Read the full breakdown of CrowdStrike's partnership #playbook 👇
www.partnerinsight.io/post/crowdstrike-s-partnersh…
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Today Box (BOX) is ~ $1Bn ARR, where ~ 40% of New ARR 🏆 comes in-directly via partners. But let’s look at how they started #partnerships, their key drivers and the evolution of their playbook from the early days.
www.partnerinsight.io/post/box-s-box-partnerships-…
Box is a cloud content management platform - it could be compared with Dropbox, but focused on enterprise with more features and built as an #api #platform from the early days.
Today it has 100K+ customers with 1420 of them paying $100K+.
🤝 Box partners to:
Differentiate its solutions - 1500+ tech/integration partners, ISVs that built on Box platform or embedded Box as a content layer into their applications
Reach new customers, as partners deliver a significant portion of their ARR.
In the process of scaling partnerships they learned that 🎯 “technology was probably 1/10 of what you had to do, to get right” (Aaron Levie, Box CEO),
and you need a great BD leader, a strong partnership team and much more to make them successful.
Full breakdown of Box's partnership #playbook 👇
www.partnerinsight.io/post/box-s-box-partnerships-…
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📈 Subscribe to Accelerate Cloud Marketplaces and Partnerships with Weekly Data-Driven Insights.
In this channel Roman Kirsanov, CEO of Partner Insight explains winning strategies in #Cloud Marketplaces and SaaS #Partnerships with leaders from most prominent tech companies.
Over the past decade, Roman helped building 100s of partnerships, launched SaaS startups to helped to turn around $1B+ ARR tech companies.
Now, he distills those insights into actionable content and tools. Join 15,000+ partnership experts leveraging these cutting-edge strategies:
📈 Newsletter: Join 3,500 alliance leaders getting weekly insights on what actually drives Cloud GTM growth partnerinsight.substack.com
🎯 Master Cloud Marketplaces in 5-week cohort course:
www.partnerinsight.io/course-marketplaces
💡 Follow Roman for Daily Data-Driven Insights on LinkedIn
www.linkedin.com/in/romankirsanov/
29 July 2019