Product is becoming the customer acquisition, retention and expansion channel. As the product becomes the experience channel, companies with a customer-centric approach are starting to adopt product-led-growth strategy.

1. Product Led Growth Strategy
Mickey Alon, CTO & Founder – Gainsight PX

2. About Me
2
• CTO and Founder of Gainsight PX (Aptrinsic) - A Product Growth
Platform
• CEO & Co-founder of InsightEra (Marketo RTP), GVP at Marketo
• Co-Author of “Mastering Product Experience”

3. GTM Evolution
Confidential. Copyright © 2016-2017. All rights reserved.
Sales-led
Customer acquisition led
primarily by sales teams
Product Assisted
Driven by customer expectations
to try the product earlier in
buying process
Product-led
Features & usage are primary
drivers for customer
acquisition, retention and
expansion

4. MARKETING LED GROWTH
4
Sales driven buying
experience
Not realizing value
• Companies force prospects to
jump through hoops, such as
filling out lead forms or
requesting a free trial, a quote or
a demo to learn about the
product
• Companies focused on
marketing/sales funnels and the
size of those fiunnels as their
primary framework
(MQLs/SQLs)
• Product teams played limited
role in customer acquisition
process

5. PRODUCT LED GROWTH
5
The product is the
experience
Time to initial value Value Path / Realized Value
• Companies provide access to
products earlier in the buying cycle
via trials or freemium and
personalize each user’s journey
• Companies focus on customers
while they use product, throughout
the lifecycle, for increased sales
efficiency (Awareness -> PQLs)
• Product teams increasingly more
responsible for customer acquisition
metrics

6. Key Drivers
For PLG
6
Consumerization of customer
expectations, experience counts
Economics behind fast growth – it’s
a competitive advantage
Shorter cycles to launch new
features, experiment & learn =
faster innovation

7. B2B ENTERPRISE SAAS UNICORN
7

8. Creating A Product-Led Strategy

9. Define the North
Star Metric
9
Measure the success of your product by the
value it provides to your users

10. Freemium/trial, no
upfront commitment,
differentiated by
premium features or
usage
10
Transparent pricing

11. Expose users to
premium features, let
them try and apply
different levels of
paywalls
11
Apply Paywall
*Determine which features
to provide for free or full
access during a trial and
which one to lock-up

12. 12
Strive to be used as part
of the daily routine.
Make it easy to onboard
new users.
Viral

13. 13
Ungated signup and focus
on quick time to value,
enable growth loop
Frictionless Onboarding

14. 14
User Onboarding Experience
• Master The First Interaction: set user expectations as they
onboard to your product, engage & guide users consistently
to the first moment of value
• Capture the desired outcome: understand the customer’s
desired outcome as part of onboarding.
• Build A Nurture track: map the user journey and nurture
with best practices / webinars / community

15. Accelerate time to value
• Understand & Optimize the first mile
of product towards the moment of
value {Complete the first core task}
• Identify challenges and improve the
usability and discoverability for core
features.
• Prioritize product roadmap to
support exceptional product
experience – demo/trial/onboarding

16. Feature Activation
• Raise feature awareness through
outbound/inbound efforts
• Promote in-context based on who they are
and what they do
• Increase discoverability using shortcuts or
in-app engagement

17. Avoid The Product Death Cycle
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https://brianbalfour.com/landing/p-100m-frameworks

18. Focus On Product Adoption
• Adoption is the best cure for retention, helps drive sustainable
growth and advocacy
• Understand product market fit (PMF) & go-to-market fit (GMF)
• Tie usage to retention analysis of the different cohorts

19. Easy to expand by adding
new users, adds value
over time and hard to
replace.
19
Sticky

20. Closed Loop Feedback
• Capture user feedback to connect directly with end users rather
than extracting feedback from multiple layers.
• Stay close to users and close the loop instantly using tools like
Slack/Calendly.
• Capture the desired outcome (survey) as part of the on-boarding
experience
• Targeted NPS driven by usage
• Feature/release rating

21. Enabling seamless integrations,
data sharing through standard
interfaces & workflows
21
Enterprise Grade Ecosystem

22. 22
The Cross Functional
Team Effort &
Alignment

23. Marketing Focus
• Product Launch & positioning
• Driving trials/demos
• SEO & Paid media channels
• Social/Podcast/G2Crowed
• Promote webinars through the app

24. MQL to PQL
• Product-qualified lead represents a lead that signed up and
demonstrated buying intent based on product interest, usage,
and behavioral data.
• PQLs provide a more accurate method of tracking customer
journeys from signup to x-sell/upsell.
• PQL is a key metric for companies that’s transitioning to a tech
touch / product-led GTM strategy.

25. Sales
• Show me vs Tell me – using the product to demonstrate value
• Product oriented sales team – where the buyer tends to be in
control of the process
• Using usage and features as levers
• Land & expand strategy, incremental spend
• Strong understanding of the competitive landscape

26. Success
• Scaling Onboarding through the product
• Focused on outcome and expansion
• Drive Adoption Plays

27. Product
• Product road-mapping is shifting from feature-
centric to outcome and growth driven
• Drive cross functional alignment around growth
• Prioritizing usability enhancements to drive
adoption

29. Thank You!
Mickey Alon, CTO & Founder – Gainsight PX