Product Led Growth

Every startup irrespective of their stage of growth aspires for efficient growth. 

However, how do you achieve efficient growth in an almost over-saturated market?
Successful companies like Slack, Zoom, and Duolingo, among others, have successfully shown that you can achieve exponential growth by adopting what is known as product-led growth.

What is Product Led Growth

Imagine if your customers were the primary source of acquiring new customers. Imagine if instead of spending billions on expensive marketing campaigns, your product could do the “selling” for you. 

Wouldn’t that be great? Well, that’s Product-Led Growth.

Product-led growth is a growth strategy that leverages the product as the primary driver for customer acquisition, conversion and retention. Instead of solely relying on your sales team to persuade potential customers to buy your product, the product is designed to sell itself.

Here’s what you need to know to adopt the growth strategy:

1. Take A User-Centric Approach

Adopting a user-centric approach is at the heart of the strategy. This involves creating a product that users find so valuable and easy to use and adopt that they become advocates and champions of your product. 

2. Virality and Referrals

Product-led growth often includes referral and virality features. This allows users to invite and refer others easily. 

Dropbox is a very good example of this – when you refer a friend and they sign up, you get extra storage space. This not only rewards users but also drives organic growth.

3. Freemium Models

Many startups that adopt product-led growth offer freemium models. This is a model that allows users to have access to a limited version of the product for free, with the option to upgrade to a premium version for more features or capabilities. 

This helps to increase the user base and allows users to experience the product’s value before committing.

How to implement a product-led growth strategy

The key starting point to implementing product-led growth is to make your customer the focal point of all your company’s activities, from product development to marketing.

In addition, this is a list of essential activities to bear in mind while implementing this strategy:

1. Build a Great Product

A great product is the foundation for the success of any growth startegy. Your product must genuinely solve a problem or address a need in a way that is easy to use and adopt.

2. Make It Easy To Onboard Users

Ensure to design “user onboarding processes” that are smooth and can help users quickly realize the value of your product.

3. Incorporate Virality

Virality is an essential part of product-led growth, Incorporate a viral feature into your product. Features like referral programs, social sharing features, or in-app communities will help users quickly get your product to others.

4. Adopt the Freemium (or Free Trials) Model

Consider offering a free version of your product that allows users to experience your product value without a financial commitment.

5. Collect Data, Analyze Data and Iterate

To know if your strategy is working, you need to collect data on user behaviour, feedback, and conversion rates. Use this data to continuously iterate and improve your product to achieve exponential growth.

Conclusion

Aside from the fact that product-led growth is inherently scalable and cost-effective, it helps startups reduce their dependence on traditional sales and marketing channels. This enables companies to expand rapidly without the need for a proportionate increase in resources.

How can you start adopting this strategy? 

Schedule a free 15-minute growth discovery call so we can help figure out what you need to do, to get your product to your audience.