Companies that choose product-led growth are either founded on these principles (such as Slack, Dropbox, and Calendly) or are transitioning over from traditional sales-led GTM models (like Guru, Vendasta, and Zoom). All-in alignment is key to achieve the flywheel of acquisition, retention, and expansion that characterizes this approach.
Internal teams capitalize on customer feedback analysis to deliver experiences that sustain engagement levels and drive upsells. To do so, they follow a few core metrics.
1. Customer-centricity
Customer-centricity is about putting customers first in everything you do. This includes bringing them into your company’s culture, processes and even policies.
Companies with a product-led mindset don’t prioritize traditional growth tactics like sales, marketing and advertising as much as they put their focus on building a world-class product that can solve real problems for users. This translates into low (or no) customer acquisition costs and a product adoption flywheel that does the heavy lifting for you.
For instance, software company Heap offers free trials and a freemium model so that interested users can easily upgrade to a paid plan without needing a salesperson’s help. Then, they keep track of feature usage to anticipate users’ needs and make helpful suggestions for them. This helps them reduce trial-to-pay conversion rates and overall churn.
2. Experimentation
Product-Led Growth is a go-to-market strategy where the product itself is the main driver of growth. This means that the team invests a lot of time and resources into building an excellent product that solves real problems for users.
When users experience this great product, they will want to share it with friends and colleagues. This can create a viral loop that drives user acquisition.
This is why so many digital-first companies are product-led. Examples include Slack (growing to a market cap of $15 billion) and Warby Parker (who just IPO’d with a $4.5 billion valuation). They don’t depend on sales teams for user acquisition but rather on their products themselves. This allows them to focus on user onboarding and activation. They also can use their products to drive monetization by encouraging upgrades through free trials or freemium models.
3. Data-driven decision-making
When it comes to data-driven decision-making, it’s important to focus on business goals first and then find the answers that will help achieve those goals. By weeding out all of the noise and data that isn’t relevant to your goals, you can make better decisions.
A key component of product-led growth is using behavioral analytics to learn about user preferences and behaviors. These events, or digital actions, show what users find valuable and don’t find valuable in your product. This allows you to improve the product experience and introduce features that users will actually use.
Many software companies follow a product-led strategy, including popular SaaS products like Slack and Dropbox. They often offer free trials or a freemium model, which encourages users to become familiar with and dependent on the product.
4. Alignment
The goal of product-led growth is to rely less on sales and marketing and more on a remarkable product to acquire, onboard, delight, and retain users. This approach reduces customer acquisition costs because it doesn’t require a large sales team or marketing budget.
The product-led growth strategy often consists of free trials or a freemium version of the product that lets prospective buyers discover its value themselves. This is in stark contrast to a sales-led approach, which requires prospects to be told about the value of the product by marketing or a salesperson.
Achieving product-led growth requires cross-collaboration amongst the digital-facing teams at a company. Pinterest’s engineering and product teams work together on features, which results in a personalized experience for their users. The end result is a highly engaged, highly satisfied user base that can easily be converted to paid customers.
5. Data-driven marketing
Data-driven marketing is all about targeting your client’s customers with personalized content that builds brand loyalty and improves their customer experience. McKinsey reports that personalized experiences generate 5-8 times the ROI of traditional marketing tactics.
Companies adopting a product-led growth model often focus on decreasing customer acquisition cost by encouraging users to self-serve through free trials or freemium models. This allows them to build user engagement and a loyal community, which ultimately generates revenue for the company.
Companies that are product-led have a deep understanding of their users’ needs and pain points, and they design features with those in mind. Providing in-product support and training, such as email lifecycle campaigns, online forums, and product tutorials, is another way that companies can help their users get the most out of their products.
