🏔️ Product Led Growth

or how we will buy software soon

Author

Vlad Oleksiienko
April 04, 2023

Hey there,

Welcome to the SaaS Hill, a weekly newsletter that tries to predict the future of SaaS.

Let's discuss Product Led Growth 🔄.

⭐️️ Intro

With the rise of PLG, it seems like everyone is talking about product-led, freemium, reverse trial, and viral loops. And for good reason – these strategies have proven to be incredibly effective in driving growth for SaaS companies. Here is what we will discuss today:

  • 7 predictions about PLG

  • 16 products in this category

  • 4 states of PLG

  • 10 stats about PLG

  • 4 PLG communities

  • 19 experts to follow

  • 10 useful links

🤔 Predictions

  1. More and more SaaS companies will adopt PLG principles like freemium models, focus on end users, openness, product customization, and integrations. Read more about OpenView’s PLG principles.

  2. PLG will keep growing not because it's a shiny marketing buzzword everyone is talking about, but because it reflects important changes in the world:

    1. The more millennials and Gen Z move into management roles, the less time they spend with salespeople on sales and discovery calls.

    2. More and more B2B buyers are self-educated and able to research a product on their own.

    3. Buyers will spend more time reading reviews and testimonials. 84% of B2B buyers told us they self-educate as much as they possibly can when evaluating software solutions.

  3. As a result, PLG SaaS will have a competitive advantage over sales-led organizations.

  4. PLG companies will strengthen their growth by adding a few additional growth motions:

    1. Community (communities of product, communities of interest) > e.g., ConvertKit, Jasper, Keyplay, Notion.

    2. Product-led marketing (SEO optimized content, template libraries, product certification) > e.g., Hubspot, Miro, Airtable.

    3. Media company (niche newsletters, content libraries, data-driven content) > e.g., Toplyne, Lemlist, Gong.

    4. Events (webinars, podcasts, shows, in-person conferences) > e.g., Reply.io, Drift, ProfitWell.

    5. Word of mouth (free tools, product virality, network effects, referral programs) > e.g., Zoom, Dropbox, and ChatGPT.

    6. Building in public (share product updates, milestones, testimonials) > e.g., Andrew Gazdecki and Acquire.com.

    7. Data-driven growth (programmatic SEO, growth experiments, growth hacks) > Zapier, Grammarly, Gorgias, Clearbit.

  5. PLG companies will focus on the product as a key driver of their growth:

    1. Zero bugs and a seamless user experience.

    2. Seamless user onboarding.

    3. Quick time-to-value; this metric will become more important across product teams.

    4. User activation; lots of PLG companies will identify this metric as one of their North Star Metrics.

    5. Freemium to paid conversion.

    6. In-app growth experiments.

  6. Integrations will be an important part of any PLG company. It will be relatively easy to jump from one product to another product, so integrations will make it harder to switch a product. It also correlates with OpenView’s PLG principle of openness.

  7. Product-led growth will open new opportunities and trends in the SaaS space:

    1. Usage-based pricing and usage paywalls.

    2. Product localization and pricing localization.

    3. Reverse trial and freemium models.

    4. Network effects, product watermarks.

    5. SaaS communities and media companies.

    6. Rise of growth departments and data-driven experiments.

    7. No-code, AI, and integrations.

    8. Product-led sales and product-led marketing.

🏢 Products

  1. Calixa > Turn signups into revenue

  2. correlated > Turn customer data into revenue, faster

  3. Toplyne > The behavioral lead scoring platform to generate sales pipeline from self-serve funnel

  4. Endgame > Connect the dots between product signals and sales opportunities

  5. Pocus > Turn product data into revenue

  6. HeadsUp > The conversion engine for product led sales

  7. Breyta > Workspace for modern GTM teams to accelerate revenue across the entire customer lifecycle

  8. Groundswell > The only invisible product-led sales solution

  9. Koala > Discover the intent signals your CRM is missing

  10. Waitlyst > Product-led growth engine that fuels revenue, retention, and activation through product analytics

  11. journy.io > Drive product-led growth

  12. Ripe > Meet your best leads inside your product

  13. Humanic > Uncover your dark pipeline

  14. upmarket > Unlock intent data hiding in your product and convert sign-ups to customers

  15. Pace > Get enterprise sales growth with product-led efficiency

  16. Coho > Transform your users into a goldmine of sales opportunities

📈 Trend Chart

Product-led Growth by OpenView:

📊 Statistics

  1. The growth rate of public PLG companies is nearly 25% higher than other SaaS companies (Source: OpenView)

  2. Freemium tools generate 33% more free accounts for every website visitor (Source: OpenView)

  3. 61% of SaaS companies used some form of usage-based pricing in 2022 (Source: OpenView)

  4. Usage-based companies outperform their peers. Usage-based businesses see comparable growth at scale (17% vs. 13%), driven by best-in-class net retention (125% vs. 114%) (Source: OpenView)

  5. The median free-to-paid conversion rate for free trial products is roughly twice that of freemium products (approximately 14% versus 7%) (Source: OpenView)

  6. 79% of people have watched a video testimonial to find out more about a company, product or service (Source: Wyzowl)

  7. 95% of people say that reviews – whether positive, or negative – influence their purchasing decisions (Source: Wyzowl)

  8. 64% of software buyers want to read at least 6 reviews before making a purchase (Source: Qualtrics)

  9. On average, B2B researchers do 12 searches prior to engaging on a specific brand’s site (Source: Think with Google)

  10. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian predicts that “more than half of the top-500 publicly traded companies are going to have a chief community officer in 5 years” (Source: Built In)

🔥 State Of

👔 Services

👥 Agencies

💬 Communities

📖 Experts to Follow

  1. Andrew Capland > Coach for SaaS growth teams | PLG advisor

  2. Aakash Gupta > Product leader

  3. Lenny Rachitsky > Self-employed

  4. Elena Verna > Growth hobbyist

  5. Zachary DeWitt > Partner at Wing Venture Capital

  6. Kyle Poyar > Operating Partner at OpenView

  7. Leah Tharin > LG, Product, Growth Advisor

  8. Ben Williams > Advisor (PLG / Product / Growth)

  9. Sam Crowell Richard > Self-Service and Product-Led Growth Leader

  10. Breezy Beaumont > Head of Growth @ Correlated

  11. Lauryn Isford > Head of Product Growth at Notion

  12. Dave Boyce > Product-Led Growth Practice Lead

  13. Priya Bhatia > Product Growth at 7shifts

  14. John Kotowski > Founder & CEO Buyerson Inc.

  15. Brendan Short > Co-founder & CEO at Groundswell

  16. Drew Teller > Senior Growth Lead at Netlify

  17. Adam Schoenfeld > CEO at Keyplay

  18. Melissa Tan > Head of Self-serve @ Webflow | Advisor

  19. Hila Qu > Growth Advisor | VP Growth | Investor | Author

🖼️ Pitch Deck

Here’s the deck the Pitch team used to raise $85 million in Series B funding.

🔗 Useful Links

  1. 12 top product-led newsletters by 🏔️ SaaS Hill

  2. How To Product > an Ebook By Sefunmi Osinaike

  3. Product Led Hub > Product-Led Growth Platform for Product & CX Leaders

  4. ProductLed Stack > The tools you need to successfully implement a product-led strategy

  5. Productloops > A library of best practices from top startups

  6. PricingSaaS > B2B SaaS Pricing Tracker

  7. Leah's Product-led Growth Guide 3.0 by Leah Tharin

  8. PLGeek - Snyk: 30/60/90 day plan by Ben Williams

  9. How to Set Up, Hire, and Scale a Growth Strategy and Team by Y Combinator

  10. PeerSignal PLG Index > Benchmark PLG companies and analyze trends

🐦️ Twitter Thread

Barrett O'Neill on how Elon Musk implemented PLG to sell Cybertruck

🤝 Related SaaS Trends

  1. 🏔 Community Led Growth > or how to strengthen your PLG

  2. 🏔️ Interactive Demos and Product Tours > experience products like never before - interactively

  3. 🏔 Building in Public > sharing journey leads to growth opportunities

Thanks for reading. See you next time 👋

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