Product-led growth (PLG) delivers the best outcomes when it’s integrated with human-powered strategies.
We talked to Peter Zawistowicz, Head of Marketing at StackBlitz, about all things PLG as part of our recent event: PLG playbooks to run in 2024.
Here are three of the top takeaways from that conversation (check out the full recording above).
According to Peter, go-to-market teams at companies with a PLG motion are trying to do one of five things at all times:
But it all starts with customer activation.
You can’t turn free trials into real revenue—or establish long-term customer relationships—if people aren’t experiencing product value.
“Sometimes it’s just a matter of getting people to actually use your product,” Peter said. “This makes enablement hugely important.”
Once a customer converts, retention should be an equally high priority.
Providing white-glove support to each and every customer is impractical, if not impossible. So you’ll need to find the right balance between low-touch and high-touch retention strategies for different customers.
For example, sending automated emails that summarize product usage and customer value is a scalable, low-touch way to build customer loyalty.
At the same time, if you monitor accounts for major shifts—such as product champions leaving—you’ll know when to give certain customers extra attention.
How you approach expansion will depend on whether your business model is consumption-based or seat-based, according to Peter.
With a consumption-based model, the goal is to inspire users to use the product more. This can be accomplished by introducing new use cases or highlighting helpful features that are being underutilized.
Meanwhile, seat-based models are dependent on the number of users actually using the product. The goal here is to uncover which teams or individuals at an organization aren’t currently using the product but could benefit from it.
In either case, the common thread is value-adding.
No matter your business model, you can’t depend on the product itself to drive expansions.
“Sales has a huge role to play here as well, whether that's getting additional users of the company by finding out different working groups that might be able to get value [...] or literally working with their existing champions and asking for introductions and referrals,” Peter said.
While expansions entail using more of the same product, upsells involve additional products.
Beyond driving net new revenue, upsells can also boost customer retention, according to Peter. The more SKUs a customer has, the more likely they are to stick around.
But organizations must make sure customers are in a healthy place before trying to upsell them.
“It's a big mistake to try and upsell a customer if you actually should be focused on retaining them,” Peter said. “You're not going to win a renewal by ignoring the original reason your customer bought and instead trying to sell them something else.”
That said, the same tactics you use to support other plays can be applied to upsells, such as highlighting product add-ons that benefit different teams.
While it may sound counterintuitive, consolidating accounts can also be a great way to grow revenue.
It’s common for multiple stakeholders from different teams to sign up for self-serve products for different use cases.
By consolidating accounts under one roof in exchange for a long-term commitment, you can deliver customers a smaller overall bill while increasing long-term revenue.
“Instead of having a variable monthly spend that might actually sum up to be something higher, you're securing an annual commitment at a lower dollar amount,” Peter said. “So the win-win is you get predictable revenue and the customer gets a lower spend. Most CFOs are going to sign that all day long.”
Keep in mind that consolidation plays can also apply to your competitors.
If your product can serve the same function as another tool in your customer’s tech stack, it’s worth exploring how you can help them cut a line item and save some money.
Of course, running these and other plays requires human-led initiative and data-driven insights.
Make sure your customer-facing teams have access to the intelligence they need to take the reins.
“One of the challenges that I've had pretty much everywhere where we've had both a sales team and a product-led motion is sales is an afterthought for a lot of the product team and the marketing team,” Peter said. “We forget to or deprioritize making sure our sellers and our customer-facing roles have access to that [information].”
Your product creates opportunities, but it’s your people who pull the levers.
These are just a few of the takeaways from our conversation with StackBlitz.
Watch the recording for the full story.
Get started for free or get in touch to see how Common Room can help you put the “growth” in “product-led growth.”