The way people discover, evaluate, and purchase software has changed over the last ten years. What once set companies apart—flashy marketing campaigns and persuasive sales pitches—has become merely the baseline, no longer enough to drive growth. Today’s customers demand more; they seek products that deliver immediate value, are intuitive to use, and evolve with their needs.
In response, businesses are constantly exploring new ways to stand out and achieve growth. This shift has given rise to a powerful new strategy: product-led growth (PLG). But what exactly is product-led growth, and why is it rapidly becoming the go-to approach for modern businesses?
What is product-led growth?
Product-led growth (PLG) is a business strategy that puts the product right in the center of growth. It prioritizes the user and product interaction by offering free access to the product and building a product experience that leads self-serve sales.
The user has access to the product and can decide to make a purchase on their own accord, instead of spending time on long demo calls or cold emails.
Instead of relying on long demo calls, cold outreach emails, or advertising budget issues, you can focus on enhancing your product. And this way, your product will sell itself.
What has changed and lead to product-led growth?
The change in user experience
In the past, SaaS businesses created products based on enterprise checklists. Now, people are making solutions that not only solve problems for the company but also make the user experience better.
The change of decision-maker
Another important change in B2B SaaS is how we identify the decision-maker. The power of decision-making is now not only on founders but also on the actual users of the product. We often identify them as “promoters.”
These individuals now play a real role in choosing the products and solutions they use. The redefinition of who the “customer” is in B2B contexts has been pivotal. Once the customer was considered the enterprise buyer, it’s now the end user.
This shift is important for all aspects of product development, from onboarding to activation experiences and beyond. It emphasizes the importance of building products that resonate with users, encouraging commitment.
The change in the end-user behaviours
Just like the decision-maker process has changed, end users’ main activities and behaviors have changed a lot too. In SaaS, especially in B2B SaaS, teams can now adopt solutions better because they are more connected in creating strategies and workflows.
The evolution of collaborative tools and platforms, which promote easy communication and integration across different departments, has mainly driven this shift.
The change in lead scoring
SaaS companies value customer usage, advanced ICP-fit, and product data more than ever. I couldn’t be able to get answers 4 years ago when I asked “What are the key events in your product that a user MUST complete to be identified as “likely to buy.” But now, businesses have more than one key event, for different segments and even in different scenarios.
Because, they cannot waste time on leads that aren’t likely to turn into sales, and they also can’t afford to miss out on high-potential leads.
So, the change happens as SaaS teams look for solutions that provide customer-product analytics to identify high-potential leads, rather than sales and meeting notes.
Why it matters?
Traditional sales and marketing strategies are no longer enough to capture and retain customer attention. Buyers are more informed, empowered, and selective than ever before. This shift in customer behavior has made it clear that a product-first approach is essential for sustainable growth.
Product-led growth (PLG) matters because it aligns perfectly with these evolving customer expectations. By putting the product at the heart of your growth strategy, you allow users to experience its value firsthand, leading to more organic, user-driven adoption.
PLG reduces the friction that often comes with traditional sales processes, enabling customers to explore, adopt, and advocate for your product at their own pace. This not only enhances the customer experience but also drives more efficient and scalable growth.
Moreover, PLG empowers businesses to focus on what truly matters: the product itself.
By continuously improving the product based on user feedback and usage data, companies can create a more compelling offering that naturally attracts and retains customers.
In a world where consumers have little patience for anything less than excellence, product-led growth is not just a trend—it’s a necessity. It’s about letting the product do the talking and allowing customers to discover its value on their terms, leading to a more authentic, enduring connection between the product and its users.
Benefits you can get from product-led growth
1. Reduced Cost of Customer Acquisition
- Reduces the workload on your sales team, allowing them to focus on higher-value deals and enterprise contracts.
- Filters out low-quality leads, freeing up time for your sales and support teams.
- Decreases the number of repetitive support tickets through continuous improvement of the onboarding process.
- Improves team morale by minimizing time spent on non-converting prospects.
2. Enhanced Customer Retention
- Increases customer retention by allowing users to self-educate and make informed purchasing decisions.
- Encourages long-term customer loyalty by providing a product that users find valuable and relevant.
- Strengthens the onboarding experience, leading to higher conversion rates and sustained customer satisfaction.
- Builds trust by letting users explore the product without direct sales pressure.
3. Faster and Easier Growth
- Aligns marketing efforts with product development goals, creating a unified growth strategy.
- Enhances product development by incorporating direct customer feedback and needs.
- Streamlines the growth process, making it easier to acquire and retain customers.
- Fosters a cohesive company culture focused on delivering value through the product.
Real-life examples from product-led companies
Unicorns, huge startups that are on the edge of becoming unicorns, and even giant corporations are switching to PLG nowadays because the ROI of PLG is higher.
People have gotten used to fast and efficient processes. No one has time for email threads just to make a purchase. And definitely, no one will trust your product unless they get to experience it first.
That’s why Slack, Monday.com, GitLab, Zoom, Dropbox, Docusign, Asana, Squarespace, HubSpot, Shopify, Wix, Zendesk, and many more are focusing on product-led growth.
1. Slack – Instant user engagement
Slack is a $26.23 billion worth company. If you aren’t using Microsoft Teams, chances are that you use Slack for business communications.
And not only businesses, but clubs, communities, schools, and other organizations ditched loooo..oong email threads thanks to Slack.
There are 2 reasons why Slack became so popular:
- They allow users to get the most out of the product without paying.
- They have a fantastic user onboarding journey.
And those two factors combined make the keystone of being a product-led company.
Let’s face it: Slack has way too many functionalities, integrations, benefits, and so on. But most users can comfortably use almost all of them because Slack teaches how to use itself perfectly.
The image below shows how simply they announce a change.
But the actual factor that made Slack the go-to tool of large enterprises is the fact that they didn’t leave out the sales team entirely. PLG doesn’t solely rely on self-serve marketing and sales; it still requires marketing and sales efforts.
The only change is how much importance you put into those.
Slack perfectly onboards users without needing the help of a human, but when it comes to big decisions, Slack’s sales team handles it well.
2. UserGuiding – Transparent pricing and endless help
UserGuiding is a digital adoption platform that provides onboarding and surveying features.
As an engagement tool that aims to make PLG companies reach their goal easier, there is a thing or two that can be learned from their PLG methodology.
The first and most important aspect is their transparency in pricing. Apart from providing a free trial, they list out all the details of the pricing and what each tier includes.
The second great thing about UserGuiding’s Product-led approach is how they provide fast and instant access to both the signup button and the resource center.
Providing self-serve onboarding doesn’t end with walking them through your product. You also have to make sure that they get all the answers to possible questions as soon as they ask one.
Providing a live chat option, an on-page resource center or an interactive help center will help you reduce the number of support tickets and convert more easily.
3. Dropbox
Dropbox uses WOM marketing along with PLG strategies, and that is how it still competes with Apple’s iCloud and Google Drive.
Never have I ever seen someone that had to interact with a human – even an email written by a human – while deciding to buy cloud software (for personal use). But I have seen and known people that signed up to Dropbox with a referral code in order to get free storage. Well, most of those people paid for more afterward, but the initial reward they got made them stick with Dropbox for longer than others.
All in all, Dropbox is a prime example that proves good engagement and a bit of virality are the best friends of a solid PLG strategy.
5. Intercom – Clean and easy UI
Even if some doesn’t really put Intercom in PLG category, Intercom has a very clean and understandable dashboard and platform that make it a PLG.
At the heart of Intercom’s PLG approach is its self-serve model, which empowers users to explore, adopt, and expand the use of the platform independently.
By minimizing barriers to entry and making it easy for users to get started without sales intervention, Intercom leverages its product as the primary driver of growth.
By focusing on making its platform understandable, Intercom ensures that new users can quickly find value without extensive onboarding.
Insights into product-led growth
- 91% of companies plan to invest more in PLG, while no companies plan to decrease their investment.
Big companies like Slack, Intercom, and Pendo are focusing on product-led growth. 90% of these companies are increasing their budget, showing that PLG has been successful for them.
- 65% of companies that have $10-20M ARR plan to double their investments in PLG.
When was the last time you responded to a cold-outreach email? When was the last time you even opened it? If there are 2 products with the same capabilities, one requires you to pay upfront, and the other has a free trial, which one would you go with?
The answers to these questions show why the majority of products are willing to invest more in product-led growth instead of a larger sales team or spending more on ads.
- Product-qualified leads – are 3 times more likely to convert into paying users.
The majority of companies used to collect MQLs and create email lists to rely on as their main source of leads. This strategy still works but isn’t as effective as focusing on the users that are actually willing to pay.
What is the future of product-led growth?
Layering sales-led and product-led
For companies that offer SaaS, success means combining product-led methods with traditional sales techniques, AKA, sales-led. The key is to use both together, making sure that one doesn’t overpower the other.
Sales-assist
If you ask me, a little bit contrary to the above, even if product-led is placed on the top, sales-assist will continue playing an important role. I mean, maybe product-led overpower sales-led, but it should still hold the power.
We can create great product experiences and rely on product-led sales strategies, but, at some point, sales touch fasten or better the deal processes. How? When sales collect enough data about the lead account (product usage data, key events, customer product fit, etc.), they become more powerful.
Personalization
The future of product-led growth will rely more on personalizing the user experience. Companies will use advanced tools like data analytics, machine learning, and predictive lead scoring to better understand each customer’s behavior.
This deep understanding will help companies offer more custom experiences, leading to stronger customer loyalty and ongoing business.
Getting customer signals
PLG enables – if a company is using an advanced product and customer analytics to analyze activities and behaviors – identifying real customer signals about if they might churn or upgrade.
These insights reveal a lot about the customer’s position and engagement with the product. By identifying such signals early, companies can prevent users from churning, or support them to upgrading.
Conclusion
Product-led growth is a popular concept for a reason – that reason being that it works. It gives all teams more time to prioritize the product and the customers a better overview of the product before making a purchase. If you weren’t considering PLG as your main strategy by far, now is a great time to start. If you were considering it, I hope I could help you strengthen your arguments.
