How to Maximize Your Product-Led Growth (PLG)
Today, in the SaaS business market, they say that customer experience is the essence of the retention rate. However, we say, the essence of customer experience is product-led growth (PLG). No matter how much you spend on marketing campaigns, in the end, it is the product that the user needs from you.
It is high time to opt for the product-centric approach rather than the customer-centric business approach. You cannot think of increasing the product value and improving the SaaS product metrics without working on the PLG.
Also Read: Product-Led Growth for Your SaaS and B2B Business: A Strategy that Thwarts Traditional Growth Models
Practices That You Need to Opt for PLG
So, here we are to share some of the best practices that SaaS businesses can opt for to increase product-led growth (PLG).
1. The Solution to the End-Customer Issues
First, you must consider the fact that if you have B2B customers, then there are end customers to your customers. Try to work around the features and applications that can benefit the end customers. For instance, SubscriptionFlow has a highly customized customer portal where the end customers can manage their subscriptions themselves (activation or cancellation etc). While you work on PLG, make sure that your product is user-friendly in all respects.
2. Drive Demand around key Features
Next thing is to identify the key features of your product—meaning—you need to identify the features that the customers love the most. They sell like hotcakes. So, make these features the centre of your marketing campaigns. You can also start working on the relevant features. Launch upsell and cross-sell features and applications that you think the customer will surely need to have. Offering add-ons is one of the best strategies for PLG. Technology changes every moment and to cope with the changes, you can offer add-ons. They will keep your product up-to-date as well as maximize PLG.
3. Data Analysis
It must be part of your B2B SaaS growth strategy to keep monitoring customer data continuously. You need to have details of the traffic that visits your website, leads that convert, and those that do not convert. Even monitor the customer activities after the customer is onboarded. This data analysis will show the features that the customers love so that you can speed up working on these features. You can either enhance these features or offer relevant add-ons.
Also Read: How PLG Companies Can Optimize Their Sales with SubscriptionFlow
4. Less Focus on Marketing
The focus of the businesses opting for PLG is on the product rather than marketing where the focus remains on the customer. Also, when PLG is maximized, various chatbots and in-app pop-ups are used so as to make the SaaS platform more user-friendly. So, the companies opting for PLG can increase their budget for product development and cut the margins for the marketing and sales side. It is not like a deliberate act to decrease resources for marketing, but product-led growth itself is a way to cut resources for many other business activities.
5. PQLs Vs SQLs
When companies are focusing on their SaaS product, their focus is product-qualified leads (PQLs) rather than sales-qualified leads (SQL). And PQLs are the leads that use your product via free trials or freemium, then show interest in buying the product. When you are focusing on product-led growth, your focus will remain on PQL rather than SQLs.
Here, though the focus is not on customers or marketing, indirectly the focus remains on the customer experience. The product is improvised and made mature to facilitate customers. The product is improved to the level where the customer will least need to contact and communicate with the customer support centres.
Product development is a never-ending process. In one way or the other, almost all businesses focus on the PLG. However, when it is made the centre of business growth strategy, all other factors become secondary. When you opt for PLG, the ultimate goal of marketing activities becomes to just bring customers to the demos, freemium, or free trials. The rest is left for the product development team. As the users find the product useful, they recommend it to others as well. So, another point of focus comes for the marketing team—word of mouth.
Also Read: The Account Expansion Best Practices from the Perspective of PLG
If you need to opt for the PLG strategy, then you can discuss it with SubscriptionFlow experts and schedule a demo for this platform. Adoption of this platform can help you materialize your plans.
