Understanding Product Led Growth
Marketing and sales in the modern world needs to be touchless. What is product-led growth? Modern consumers hate pushiness and pressured product adoption. They want a light touch and they want to feel like they made the purchase decision by their own choice, whether through self-discovery or through a trusted referral source.
Product led growth (PLG) is a sales growth model that focuses on the end-user. PLG companies rely on the product itself as the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion.
Product led growth (PLG) is a sales growth model that focuses on the end-user. PLG companies rely on the product itself as the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion.
The key to product-led growth in SaaS is creating or marketing your product in a way that your current users will have a vested interest in telling others about your product i.e. I have a specific piece of software that I personally use for file sharing and storage, I feel that the product is well designed and helps me work more efficiently, therefore I realize I have a vested interest in telling others to use the product so I can seamlessly share the files to securely within that software’s ecosystem. This saves the users and stakeholders time. It makes their work lives easier and gives them the peace of mind that the file was shared securely.
Focus on the product driven network.
Leveraging and tapping into product assets that can start a word-of-mouth network effect is essential, and reminding the product users of that subtly canhelp the process.
Half of the equation in mastering the network effect of PLG lies in communications and storytelling. The product not only has to be great but you must use the leverage of existing users to sell those products for you. You have to create an incentive, tap into the psyche of the customer and understand what self interest they would have in promoting that product.
Telling a product story to the customers that plants the idea in their mind how great the product is and why it is in their own interest to tell others about the product is essential in the marketing and sales process.
Are you identifying and defining the process.
What messages are you sending customers? Are you ensuring that the communications process is demonstrating the network use case through the messaging? Are you giving the customers enough clear examples of how the product is making people’s business lives better through an illustration of examples? Are you testing multiple communications strategies across your marketing strategies in all of your social channels that would help activate the network effect of PLG?
