Product-led growth
Why it matters
Paying for product work that makes the thing easy to try is a different bet from paying for sales to persuade people, and for many products the first costs less per customer. A free trial or freemium plan that gets someone to value fast removes the persuasion step a salesperson would otherwise do by hand.
This only works if the path to value is fast. A self-serve flow that nobody finishes is simply a trial that nobody completes.
How to apply it
- Check that a new user can reach real value in the first session, not only see a tour of features.
- Cut onboarding down to what a person can finish without support.
- Set limits that nudge heavy users to upgrade instead of blocking them.
- Find the in-product action that best predicts upgrading, and help free users reach it sooner.
- Add a light sales option for larger accounts rather than forcing every deal through self-serve.
What it is
In a product-led model the product does most of the selling. A visitor can try it, usually through a free plan or free trial, get something useful quickly and pay when they need more. Slack and Dropbox are often cited as examples. The opposite approach is sales-led growth, where a salesperson explains the product and closes the deal.
Say an analytics tool lets anyone sign up for a fourteen-day trial with full features. Most small teams upgrade at the end without talking to anyone. Larger accounts that need a security review book a call instead.
Common mistakes
- Making the free plan so generous that nobody needs to pay.
- Making it so limited that nobody reaches the point of value.
- Applying the model to a product that needs a long setup or training.
