What exactly is Product Led Growth (PLG)?
PLG is a means of improving your go-to-market and product strategy by enhancing the ways of acquisition, retention, and growth for your product. Openview Venture Partners originated the name.
PLG is based on the idea that businesses should enable customers to use a restricted version of their product for free. As it adds value to consumers’ lives, it gets ingrained in their routines. Users eventually suggest the product to their colleagues, and more people begin to use it, resulting in adoption.
PLG typically leads to word-of-mouth marketing since customers receive direct experience with the product and may sample it without making any obligations. Rather than a corporation pushing the initial introduction, many customers encounter a PLG product for the first time because their friends or colleagues reveal it to them.
If a company’s product generates virality or the networking effect, it may be well-positioned to leverage PLG.
A wonderful example of virality comes from Zoom Video Communications, a software firm. Zoom is a conferencing application that allows users to share meeting links to others, giving them access to a one-of-a-kind location to hold their chats.
A person’s first encounter with Zoom is often via an invitation to meet with an existing Zoom client on their platform. Accepting a meeting allows these non-customers to get a real-life demo of the product without interacting with sales or making any kind of commitment. When customers have an experience that surpasses their expectations, they are more inclined to not only buy the product but also completely embrace it inside their business. When this new Zoom client issues their first meeting invitation to a non-customer, the process begins all over again.
This is characterised as virality because it enables the product to expand from organisation to organisation simply by utilising the technology as intended.
Meanwhile, Slack, an instant messaging application, exemplifies the networking effect. Users must invite people to communicate with them in order to utilise the site effectively.
As more of your employees join that network and start to appreciate the speed and simplicity of the programme, communicating through Slack becomes more efficient than communicating via traditional channels like as email. Again, product usage leads to adoption.
Overall, PLG is a method for making product utilisation easier. As consumers receive benefit from engaging with a product, they will incorporate it into their day-to-day operations. When people embrace a product, the next obvious step is for them to buy it. Customers who make a purchase and become frequent users automatically become evangelists, utilising the product and recommending it to their friends.
Of course, in order to completely comprehend PLG, you must also understand the notion of product marketing.
What exactly is Product Marketing?
Product marketing is the process of bringing a certain product to market and guaranteeing its ongoing success.
The work of a product marketer comprises directing a product’s internal strategy. It is their responsibility to permit all marketing efforts related to the product inside their business. While marketing is in charge of sales enablement, product marketers are in charge of “product enablement,” which is the creation of sales enablement materials for individual products. To discover a solution, you must first analyse the market into which your product will be introduced, asking yourself questions such as “what do people need?” and “what are people’s pain points?”
When it comes to product creation, you may build demand through providing value by addressing people’s concerns. You may define your product positioning and construct your promise of value, also known as your unique value proposition, by beginning with a customer issue and working backward.
What Role Does PLG Play in Product Marketing?
Product marketing is a difficult endeavour. When you introduce a product, you must promote it, which is why product marketers exist. In essence, prioritising product marketing inside your organisation means stressing the continuous development of your offering in order to bring consumers to higher success.
PLG is much more precise. You may decide to use PLG as part of your company model in your product marketing plan. This allows you to stress your product even more, putting it at the forefront of your marketing campaign.
Traditionally, marketing and sales outreach would be used to drive sign-ups, product uptake, and extra users. You may now utilise PLG to essentially provide self-service sales, placing your product as the primary method for customers to sign up for, adopt, and use your offering.
Finally, PLG places your product as both the ends and the means, enabling people to sample your solution in the hopes that they will be so pleased that they will buy it.
Key Takeaway
PLG supports a philosophy akin to inbound marketing, emphasising offering value before getting profit. It is an excellent approach to build an extraordinary customer experience with your product marketing efforts, tying everything you do back to your consumer and ensuring their continuing success.
Ultimately, ensuring your customers’ continuous success should be a major goal of your product marketing activities regardless of what, so including PLG in some manner is generally a good idea. Whether you have a full-fledged PLG strategy or not, proving the value of your product and organisation to contacts before they become paying customers will help your product adoption and education efforts.
