7 strategies to nail your SaaS Product-led-growth (PLG)

Product led growth is when you leverage your product to acquire, activate, convert, retain, and monetize your users.

In PLG, your product is not only the set of features that solve customer pain points but also your go-to-market (GTM) motion, and your distribution and engagement channel.

This leads to (a) lower acquisition costs, (b) improved user experience (b) higher lifetime value and (d) greater expansion revenue.

Use these 7 strategies to pull your PLG levers for your SaaS:

1. Build your product as its own self-serve distribution vehicle - This means your product has distribution baked into it. For eg, when you host your website on Webflow, the free tier allows you to use a “webflow” subdomain and also have a banner that says “made in webflow”. Distribution baked right in.

2. **Get users to the aha moment instantaneously **- Buzzy helps you create an app from just an idea. The user can literally go from entering his idea to getting his app in literal seconds. The goal here is to get the user to experience the product’s core value as soon as possible & get them to the aha moment fast. Having a clean product UX is key here.

3. Focus on creating value at every step of the user journey - A PLG approach adds value to the user at every step of the user journey . Canva, for example, lets you start off with templates, allowing you to customize it, make changes etc. And then finally be able to download it without a fuss. It’s a legit end-to-end value delivery system.

4. Have a clear initial entry wedge → This can be through a free tool like Ahref’s keyword checker or you can go the freemium/free trial way where you give the user a taste of the product. The goal here is to make the product as low-friction as possible.

5. Generate virality using network effects → Growth loops are a great lever to pull in your PLG strategy. For Example, Mailchimp started off its user acquisition strategy courtesy of its “made by mailchimp” banner in all its emails.

6. **Decide on a freemium vs free trial model **→ This can be a tricky one to decide and depends on who your ICP is and their use case. Both models can work depending on your product, your users and other variables. Whatever be the case, be transparent about the pricing and take a value-based pricing approach for your SaaS.

7. Embed customer success levers → Use the data received from your CS team to uncover more information about your user, their use-pattern so you can identify opportunities to add more value to them while providing an enhanced user experience.

PS - If you liked this essay, you'll like my newsletter (www.marketcurve.substack.com) where I break down SaaS growth concepts based on my experience working on 100+ SaaS products