Most growth teams are obsessed with acquiring new users. They pour budget into ads, optimise landing pages, and chase vanity metrics like sign-ups. But there’s a massive blind spot in this approach: the users who already know about your product but aren’t using it properly.
This is where the Adjacent User Theory comes in. It’s a framework that shifts focus from chasing completely new users to converting the ones sitting right on your doorstep.
What is the Adjacent User Theory?
The Adjacent User Theory was developed by Bangaly Kaba, former VP of Growth at Instagram. The core idea is simple: adjacent users are people who are aware of your product and have likely tried it, but haven’t become engaged users due to specific barriers.
Table of contents
Open Table of contents
- Why Adjacent Users Matter More Than You Think
- How to Identify Your Adjacent Users
- Understanding the Barriers
- Strategies for Converting Adjacent Users
- Measuring Success with Adjacent Users
- Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Case Study: How Duolingo Applied Adjacent User Thinking
- Making Adjacent Users Part of Your Growth Strategy
Why Adjacent Users Matter More Than You Think
Here’s the thing about adjacent users: they represent your biggest untapped growth opportunity. While most companies focus on acquisition or retention, adjacent users offer a middle path that’s often more efficient and cost-effective.
The Math Makes Sense
Converting an adjacent user typically costs less than acquiring a completely new user. They already know your brand, understand your value proposition to some degree, and have shown initial interest. The friction isn’t awareness – it’s activation.
At Instagram, Kaba’s team found that focusing on adjacent users was more impactful than traditional acquisition channels. Instead of spending more on ads to bring in new users, they identified why existing users weren’t engaging and fixed those problems.
They’re Easier to Identify
Unlike potential users (who could be anyone), adjacent users leave digital footprints. They’re in your CRM, they’ve visited your website multiple times, they’ve downloaded your app, or they’ve signed up but gone dormant. You have data on them, which means you can understand their behaviour patterns.
How to Identify Your Adjacent Users
The first step is mapping out who your adjacent users actually are. This requires looking at your user journey and identifying the drop-off points.
Common Adjacent User Segments
-
Sign-ups who never activate: People who create accounts but don’t complete the onboarding process
-
One-time users: Users who engage once but don’t return within a reasonable timeframe
-
Incomplete adopters: Users who engage with basic features but never progress to core functionality
-
Dormant users: Previously active users who’ve stopped engaging
-
Partial feature users: Users who only engage with a subset of your product’s capabilities
Data Points to Track
To identify these segments, you need to track the right metrics:
-
Time to first value (how long it takes users to get meaningful benefit)
-
Feature adoption rates across your product
-
Session frequency and duration
-
Drop-off points in your onboarding flow
-
Support ticket themes and frequency
Understanding the Barriers
Once you’ve identified your adjacent users, the next step is understanding why they’re not progressing. The barriers usually fall into several categories:
Onboarding Friction
Your onboarding process might be too complex, too long, or not clearly demonstrating value. Slack is a great example of a company that continuously optimises for this. They realised that teams who sent 2,000 messages were much more likely to become long-term users, so they focused their onboarding on getting teams to that threshold quickly.
Value Clarity
Adjacent users might not understand your core value proposition or how to achieve it. This is especially common with complex products. Notion faced this challenge – users would sign up attracted by the flexibility, but then feel overwhelmed by the blank page. Their solution was to introduce templates and guided setup flows.
Feature Discovery
Users might be engaging with your product but missing the features that would make them stick. Twitter’s “Who to Follow” feature was designed specifically for this – helping new users find accounts to follow so they’d have a more engaging timeline.
Habit Formation
Some products require behaviour change to be valuable. Fitness apps, productivity tools, and learning platforms often struggle with this. The adjacent users understand the value but haven’t formed the habits necessary to get that value consistently.
Strategies for Converting Adjacent Users
Converting adjacent users requires targeted interventions based on the specific barriers they face. Here are proven approaches:
Improve Your Onboarding
This is often the highest-impact area to focus on. Good onboarding doesn’t just explain features – it gets users to their first meaningful outcome as quickly as possible.
-
Reduce steps to value: Eliminate unnecessary form fields, streamline setup processes
-
Show, don’t tell: Use interactive tutorials instead of static explanations
-
Personalise the experience: Tailor onboarding based on user type or use case
-
Celebrate small wins: Acknowledge progress to maintain momentum
Targeted Re-engagement Campaigns
For dormant or one-time users, strategic re-engagement can bring them back. But this isn’t about generic “We miss you” emails.
-
Highlight new features: Show how the product has improved since they last used it
-
Share relevant content: Provide value even when they’re not using your product
-
Offer assistance: Proactively help them overcome the barriers they faced
-
Create urgency: Limited-time offers or expiring trials can motivate action
Feature Discoverability
Help users find and understand the features that will make your product valuable to them.
-
Progressive disclosure: Introduce advanced features gradually as users become more engaged
-
Contextual tips: Show relevant features at the moment they’d be most useful
-
Success stories: Share how similar users are getting value from features they haven’t tried
Measuring Success with Adjacent Users
Traditional growth metrics don’t always capture adjacent user progress. You need to track metrics that reflect the journey from awareness to engagement.
Key Metrics to Track
| Metric | What It Measures | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Activation Rate | % of sign-ups who complete key onboarding steps | Shows how well you’re converting interest into initial engagement |
| Time to Value | How long it takes users to get their first meaningful outcome | Shorter time to value typically means higher retention |
| Feature Adoption Depth | How many core features users engage with | Deeper adoption usually correlates with stickiness |
| Resurrection Rate | % of dormant users who become active again | Measures effectiveness of re-engagement efforts |
Setting Up Your Measurement Framework
Create cohort analyses that track adjacent user segments over time. Look at how changes to onboarding, features, or messaging impact conversion rates from adjacent to engaged users.
Set up automated alerts for when users show signs of becoming adjacent (e.g., declining usage, incomplete onboarding) so you can intervene quickly.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Working with adjacent users isn’t just about sending more emails or adding more features. Here are the pitfalls to watch out for:
Treating All Adjacent Users the Same
A user who signed up yesterday has different needs than someone who was active six months ago. Segment your adjacent users and tailor your approach accordingly.
Focusing Only on Product Changes
Sometimes the barrier isn’t in your product – it’s in your messaging, pricing, or positioning. Don’t assume every adjacent user problem needs a product solution.
Over-Communicating
Bombarding adjacent users with notifications and emails will push them further away. Be strategic about when and how you reach out.
Ignoring Feedback
Adjacent users often provide the most valuable feedback because they’re experiencing the barriers firsthand. Create channels for them to share their struggles and act on what you learn.
Case Study: How Duolingo Applied Adjacent User Thinking
Duolingo faced a classic adjacent user problem: lots of people would download the app and try a few lessons, but most wouldn’t stick with it long enough to form a learning habit.
Instead of just focusing on acquiring more users, they studied their adjacent users – people who had downloaded the app but weren’t using it consistently. They found several key barriers:
-
Users felt overwhelmed by daily streak pressure
-
Lessons felt too long for busy schedules
-
Users lost motivation when they made mistakes
-
The connection between lessons and real-world language use wasn’t clear
Their solutions included introducing shorter lesson options, making streaks more forgiving, adding more positive reinforcement, and creating clearer progress indicators. These changes helped convert many adjacent users into regular learners.
Making Adjacent Users Part of Your Growth Strategy
The Adjacent User Theory shouldn’t replace your existing growth efforts – it should complement them. Here’s how to integrate it into your broader strategy:
Audit Your Current User Journey
Map out every step from awareness to engaged user. Identify where people are dropping off and why. This becomes your adjacent user opportunity map.
Allocate Resources Appropriately
Don’t abandon acquisition, but consider whether some of that budget might be better spent on converting adjacent users. The ROI is often higher.
Create Cross-Functional Alignment
Converting adjacent users requires coordination between product, marketing, and customer success teams. Make sure everyone understands the strategy and their role in it.
Test and Iterate
Like any growth strategy, working with adjacent users requires experimentation. Test different approaches, measure results, and refine your tactics based on what works.
The biggest growth opportunities often come from the users you already have, not the ones you’re trying to get.
Focusing on adjacent users offers a strategic pathway to enhance user engagement and drive growth. By systematically identifying and addressing the barriers these users face, businesses can unlock new opportunities for expansion without the high costs of traditional acquisition.
The beauty of the Adjacent User Theory is that it forces you to look inward at your product experience rather than outward at your marketing channels. It’s about making your product more valuable to people who already see some value in it.
Growth Method is the only AI-native project management tool built specifically for marketing and growth teams. Book a call to speak with Stuart, our founder, at https://cal.com/stuartb/30min.