Product-Led Growth: Where Users Swipe Right on Your Software

Make your customers chase you!

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Welcome to the new 1100 subscribers to the family! We are excited to have you here. 

Howdy 👋Andy in the house today! I have always been fascinated by Product led growth and I am going deep dive into how we do PLG at DocuSign to grow high 2-digit numbers YoY. 

Product-led growth (PLG) is one of the most popular buzzwords in Product Management but very few understand the power of PLG. If used appropriately, PLG can be one of the biggest levers you can use to have exponential growth. Not just in users but also in usage and revenue.

First things first, let’s define what Sales led growth strategy is, SLG is a very popular strategy that enterprise SaaS companies use to acquire new customers (NewCo) and expand current customers' revenue (Install base) 

While SLG is a great way to grow your business, SLG is limited to the number of sellers you have in your team, which in turn relies on demand generation. Sales in inherently outbound demand, you always need to seek demand. 

On the other hand, Product-led growth is predominantly inbound which means, demand finds you. You use your product itself as a primary gateway to attract new users, grow and retain them. Growth is not just with the number of users, It could be with the adoption, retention, usage, and revenue too

I made my own definition to remember and adopt PLG strategies to achieve that exponential growth. The simplest way I think about PLG is that customers should realize the value of your Product Out of the box. It should not have a 6-12 months implementation period. 

For example, Zoom, Figma, Slack, and, DocuSign. Yes, these are all enterprise products but you can realize the value within minutes, not months. 

With that, I will introduce the concept of a PLG funnel: 

Awareness

• If your prospects don’t even know that your product exists, how will you buy your products? Awareness is key to attracting prospects to your products.

• In DocuSign’s case, we have 1 Billion signers (1 in every 8 people on this planet who have signed a document with DocuSign) 

• They can know your product by using it, Ads, word of mouth, virality and referral or social proof

• Ads or word of mouth - Ads if done right is the best lever a company call pull, you increase a lot of inbound demand. 

Awareness through attention

Acquisition

• Now that your customers are aware, you want to acquire them. In DocuSign’s use case, the Post the sign page (for the signer) and ask them to sign up for free 

• Use very intentional copy and CTAs for example- Free sign-up, no credit card required, the goal here is to remove as much friction as possible in the signup flow

• Capture only a few vital data points like the type of industry the prospect operates in, and employee strength so you can use this info to get your sales team to reach out after the trial period ends

• Virality - Refer and earn programs, all of these are customer acquisition tactics. Making your customers your sellers is very powerful. 

• Remember getting the email id is one of the most important steps in converting a prospect to a customer. You can nurture the prospect and convert them to a customer later on.

Activation

• As soon as the user lands the product, we ask them what do you want to do today. Capture the user's intent and make them activate your product. Convert the layman's terms to actionable insights for the customer. 

• Gamify the experience, and reward the customer for completing each step

• This is where you should impress the customer by providing value out of the box with the minimal orientation possible

• Product tours and in-product communication are a great way to show how to use your product 

Retention 

• Use network effects to unlock more value for all parties involved thereby increasing the retention 

• Moment marketing is a key step in bringing back disengaged users to your product. You need to know the user journey in and out to have a more targeted moment marketing

• Define a key KPI like MAUs, the Number of tweets to measure the engagement rate. 

Monetization 

• A highly engaged user is worth exponentially more than a prospect as they have seen the value of your product firsthand. 

• Engage sales teams at this point when they a significant usage of your product and arm your sales team with data so they can close using data-driven approaches

• This is the essence of Product qualified leads (PQL). Sales teams love PQLs as this is a highly engaged cohort and the probability of them closing is very high.

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