Product led growth
Product led growth - Now, this is a buzzword (s?) that has been making the rounds for some time. For those of you who have not heard this or have not delved deep into it, here is a short primer/quick read on what you need to know.
Product led growth (PLG), is a paradigm/go-to-market strategy, where the product itself is at the center of the buying journey. And a product-led organization (PLO) is one which rallies the entire company and its operations around the product.
Sales -> is driven by providing free-trials, freemium products -> generates leads
Support -> is enabled by in-app support, links to self-help and issues logging
Marketing -> can embed new feature intros, value prop within the product
A PLO is typically characterized by
Each function aligned around the product
Product itself is a marketing channel, lead generator
An established framework to collect and utilize user feedback from the product
Decision-making based on data gathered from the product
With that background, lets look at how a PLO drives PLG and what the guiding principles are
Provide a free product/services. There are 2 ways that PLOs typically do this
Free trial - provide the full version of the product, free of charge, for a limited period
Freemium - provide a subset of features, free of charge, presumably forever/longer time period
Ensure a friction-less experience (including onboarding) so users can get to the engagement PLO needs (Note: Here’s how I define “engagement”- A user needs to go through a “core flow “and perform a “key step” for me to consider them “engaged”. For example - User opens the Facebook app - looks at feed - reads through a post and reacts (like, comment, or share)
Provide a consistent, delightful user experience to ensure stickiness. Encourage user to get to the paid version of the product (CTA to purchase)
And once they are a buying customer, continue to provide value and drive outcome, so they become advocates
Collect usage data, analyze the data to understand points of friction and to drive better results for the user
And there you have it! PLG therefore, leverages the product itself as the main vehicle for customer acquisition, engagement, retention and of course, monetization.
Before I go, let me leave you with this little nugget. As a product manager, think about how AI can help you in this journey. Here are a few ways that I can think of
Deeper personalization
Help with faster testing
Analyze vast amounts of usage data to help PMs identify friction in user flows (and other decision-making)
