Secure your path to revenue growth
API-led product growth might be the essential part of your digital business transformation strategy that you’re missing.
A strategy that can enable the monetisation of data sources, product innovation to be fast-tracked, and enhanced engagement with your community of API consumers.
What is API-led product growth?
API-led product growth is a business strategy where product growth is derived from an API product-centric approach to developing APIs.
Traditionally, businesses have favoured a code-first approach. They focus on building the software first, then create the API after they have a working platform. The software is the foundation; connection and integration come second.
With an API-first approach, APIs are treated simultaneously as foundations and building blocks. Every development decision considers its impact on integration and API consumption.
You can measure API-led product growth in terms of growth in customer base, usage/ consumption, product engagement and API product-driven revenue.
What are the key benefits of API-led product growth?
API-led product growth is an extremely powerful way to build and scale a business. There are three key benefits to an API-led product growth strategy:
01. Direct monetisation
API products that are sold independently on a pay per month or pay as you go basis.
02. Indirect monetisation
APIs that are bundled with your premium product offerings to promote up or cross-sell.
03. Community engagement
Free APIs that enable you to reach a wider developer and end user audience.
The API-first approach allows for continuous improvement in the development process, which solves some immediate shortcomings, but also provides a more stable and long-term vision.
Michael Marschean
CIO at SubCom
API-led product growth essentials
API management platforms, specifically Developer Portals, are essential to enable organisations to meet the required demand for faster innovation, improved operational efficiency and the levels of API product observability required to achieve API-led product growth.
Real-world examples of API-led product growth
Businesses born online often use APIs as the de facto standard for connecting data, apps, and services. Well-known examples of everyday businesses that have been successful with API-led product growth strategies include:
Initially, a standalone direct-to-consumer product that eventually pursued an API-led product growth approach by becoming an API product available to third parties to embed into their product experiences.
A direct-to-consumer neo-bank that also provides B2B banking services via its banking-as-a-platform API products offering.
AccuWeather uses APIs to provide weather data to partners across various devices, such as mobile apps, wearable devices and connected cars.
The company has pushed further into the business market with its WhatsApp Cloud API for businesses of any size around the world – one of the key ways the otherwise free messaging app would make money.
API management is essential for API-led product growth
An API management platform is crucial to ensuring your whole architecture is observable, especially who is using your APIs and how those APIs are being leveraged. This can provide crucial insights into bottlenecks, successes and potential opportunities. Here are four key benefits an APIM platform can provide:
- A single view of your API ecosystem for effective administration.
- Improved security and compliance regardless of geographic location.
- Enable API management independently of API standards.
- Data-driven decision-making, with finely tuned access controls and analytics
How can an API management platform accelerate growth?
Tyk helps companies generate new revenue streams and monetise their APIs more effectively. With our API management platform, you can:
- View and manage API catalogues, products, policies, users and usage through a single pane of glass
- Provide business partners with the API service support they need
- Go to market with multiple API products and control them simultaneously
- Provide better DevX for API consumers as APIs get easier to discover, understand, adopt and consume
- Enable API consumers to get richer support from API providers
- Enable API providers to engage with API users and understand API product requirements that will drive adoption
