Idea of Product Led growth
The excitement surrounding the idea of “product led growth” has been growing, and more and more businesses are actively searching for a change away from depending entirely on external variables to drive their company outcomes. But what does product led growth actually mean? Is it really a matter of allowing customers to try the product before they purchase it? Is there a game involved in comparing the real product experience or expectation to the perceived expectation or experience? What are the obstacles or limitations that prevent every firm from pursuing product-led growth and letting their products speak for themselves alone?
As the future of the IT sector hinges around the product they offer in such a competitive landscape, I’ll attempt to answer these questions today based on my understanding of the entirety of the concept of Product Led Growth and how businesses capitalize on using it effectively.
The Infamous Freemium Model
The freemium business model, in which customers may access a limited number of the product’s features but must purchase a product in order to get the full version, is the first thing that everyone thinks of when discussing product-led growth. However, does this restrict the concept of product-led growth to simply allowing people to experience the product before they buy it? I think there are a lot of additional aspects that contribute to user acquisition and stickiness in a firm with a product-led growth strategy. Instead of promoting the product’s solution, businesses must start selling the problems themselves. Early-stage businesses must act quickly to establish themselves as industry thought leaders and win the market’s confidence and goodwill so that consumers will first be eager to test their products.
The value gap that your product delivers is the most crucial component of product-led growth. Companies must determine the supposed expectations of the market for the product and make an effort to align their product offerings with those expectations. The product led growth strategy won’t be successful for the firm if there is a value gap between the perceived experience and the real experience. Only by putting the product on the market, being extremely agile, and paying close attention to user input can this value gap be discovered. The biggest misconception about product-led growth strategies is that you should release the ideal product that can completely satisfy all of your customers’ needs. However, because customer centricity is at the heart of product-led growth, businesses must first release a minimum viable product (MVP), obtain market validation, and demonstrate consistent improvement in order to satisfy customers’ needs and win their trust.
The belief that businesses must have a wide range of products and services is also prevalent in the sector. However, I disagree with the view that businesses should focus on starting small and expanding quickly rather than on starting large and eventually increasing slowly. Let the customers drive the company’s growth and future prospects. Companies that start small and develop their expertise in a particular field have an advantage over their competitors in that they can quickly build an ecosystem of offerings because the customers have grown reliant on the offerings and have gained the system’s trust. As a result, the product will determine the company’s growth.
Things to understand in PLG Framework:
It is crucial to realize that product-led growth is heavily reliant on the platform’s whole user experience and goes beyond simply onboarding new users. The customer life cycle is characterized by the whole experience and the hooks that keep consumers using the platform, even though the onboarding process is becoming increasingly streamlined and is constructed entirely from the perspective of users. Because there are so many businesses competing in the same market sector with the same growth strategy, upscaling is another major difficulty that businesses must address. They must also find strategies to convert free users to paying customers. If businesses don’t upscale, then big businesses may utilize their infrastructure to entice customers to their platform and eliminate competitors.
Although Product Led Growth appears to be a strategy that is entirely focused on the product, it also necessitates making strategic decisions about how to position the product first and determine not just the product market fit but also the product channel fit. It is crucial to position the product in a way that can establish a value proposition and target a niche market that can expand over time as more and more businesses aim to concentrate on product-led growth business models.
