Essay · 12 min read

Reframing 'Freemium' by charging the marketing department

Jason Cohen · A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen) Free Intermediate

This directly names the trap in your situation: free users are not your ICP, and your real conversion math (about 1 percent) means the free tier only works if you treat it as a paid marketing expense, not a product decision. If your non-paying users are the real market, this tells you exactly how to structure it so it doesn't bankrupt you.

  • Your ICP lives inside your free user base, but it is a small fraction of it.
  • Free-tier costs (support, infra) should be budgeted like a marketing line item, not ignored.
  • Freemium works when the ROI on the free segment beats other acquisition channels, not by default.
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The question it answers

  1. My ideal customer can't afford my product. Did I define them wrong?

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