Product-led growth strategy is a business model where the product is the primary driver of engagement, retention, and acquisition.
Some of the most important traits of a product-led growth model include customer-centric design, frictionless exploration, fast value, self-serve customer experience, network effect, and virality.
In contrast, marketing-led models rely more on promotional campaigns and sales efforts to create demand, rather than letting product usage drive customer acquisition and retention.
Examples of product-led growth companies that can help you achieve PLG success include:
- HubSpot offers a free grader tool to attract potential customers.
- Miro uses an optimized pricing model that caters to different market segments.
- Basecamp offers a free trial to generate product-qualified leads.
- Userpilot employs SSO options to remove friction from the signup process.
- Notion personalizes onboarding for new users to reduce time to value.
- JivoChat delays the email verification process to avoid user frustrations.
- Slack populates empty spaces with in-app messages that drive action.
- Kommunicate uses checklists to drive activation.
- Userpilot drives feature adoption with interactive walkthroughs.
- Calendly acquires customers through its viral loop.
- Dropbox reduces customer acquisition costs through referral programs.
- Userpilot drives product adoption through a self-serve resource center.
- Asana drives repeated product engagement through gamification.
- HubSpot offers extensive education to drive customer success.
- Buffer informs the product development process with a public roadmap.
- Figma implements secondary onboarding to retain existing customers.
- Loom creates FOMO through its reverse trial.
- Zapier maintains a tight feedback loop to build trust with users.
- Userpilot creates a digital community around its product to drive loyalty.
- Loom maximizes the customer’s lifetime value by triggering contextual upsell messages.
- Userpilot is one of the best product-led growth examples, with a strong digital community that can help you create a PLG strategy that works. Book a demo today!
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What is a product-led growth strategy?
Product-led growth (PLG) strategy is an effort or model that focuses on using the product, more than anything else, to attract customers.
Most companies are now adopting product-led growth strategies to stay competitive.
In this case, the product becomes the main vehicle for growth. It is a strategy that emphasizes the value of the product, drives product adoption, and aims to help the product sell itself to aid your growth.
Product usage data is crucial for understanding user behavior and optimizing the product-led growth strategy.
Key traits of the product-led growth model
Some of the qualities that truly define a product-led growth company include:
- Customer-centric design and interface: Strong emphasis is placed on positive user experience to ensure users can easily understand and take advantage of the product’s features.
- Frictionless exploration: Elevating value over features is one of the main principles of product-led growth. After the initial product discovery, your product-led growth company must ensure customers realize the value of your product within a short window.
- Fast value: Product-led growth model focuses on making the signup process seamless. Whether it’s offering a freemium product, single sign-on, or account creation without paywalls, the goal is to deliver value first.
- Customer journey optimization: Mapping and optimizing the entire customer journey—from initial discovery to ongoing engagement—is essential in a product-led growth model. By understanding each stage, companies can implement self-service resources, onboarding flows, and feedback mechanisms that drive user adoption, satisfaction, and higher conversion rates.
- Self-serve customer experience: SaaS companies that adopt the PLG strategy allow users to sign up and experience value from the product without the support of a sales team. The aim is to provide a self-serve, self service product that has zero learning curve.
- Network effects: As more users adopt your product, its value increases dramatically. Existing users promote the product by themselves because of the value they derive, making it more attractive for new users.
- Virality: PLG companies focus on building product features to get customers raving and create a network effect. As the product makes a significant impact and gets raving fans telling their friends and colleagues about it, it gains widespread popularity.
- User engagement: Increasing user engagement is a key driver of product-led growth. By enhancing user interaction and experience within the product, companies can boost customer loyalty, improve onboarding, and drive higher product adoption rates.
Benefits of product-led growth
Adopting a product-led growth strategy brings a wealth of benefits to SaaS businesses aiming for sustainable, scalable success. One of the most significant advantages is the ability to achieve lower customer acquisition costs. By letting the product itself drive user acquisition, companies can reduce their dependence on expensive sales and marketing campaigns, making growth more cost-effective and efficient.
Product-led growth also puts customer satisfaction at the forefront. When users can experience value quickly and independently, their overall customer experience improves, leading to higher retention rates and stronger loyalty. Satisfied customers are more likely to become advocates, fueling organic growth through word of mouth and referrals, creating a self-sustaining viral loop that accelerates user acquisition.
Another key benefit is the continuous flow of user feedback. As users engage with the product, their interactions generate valuable insights that can be used to refine features, address pain points, and enhance the user journey. This feedback loop ensures that the product evolves in line with customer needs, further boosting satisfaction and retention.
Ultimately, a product-led approach enables companies to drive growth by focusing on delivering real value, fostering a loyal user base, and building a business model that thrives on customer success rather than traditional sales methods. This shift not only reduces customer acquisition costs but also positions the product as the engine of long-term business growth.
Identifying customer pain points for product-led growth
A successful product-led growth strategy starts with a deep understanding of your customers’ pain points. By identifying the real challenges and unmet needs of various user segments, product-led growth companies can design solutions that deliver immediate value and drive user adoption.
The process begins with thorough user research—analyzing user behavior, collecting feedback, and engaging with your existing customer base to uncover obstacles and opportunities. Leveraging a feedback loop, companies can continuously gather insights from users, ensuring that product development is always aligned with evolving market demands.
Segmenting users based on their roles, goals, or usage patterns allows businesses to tailor both the product experience and marketing efforts to different audiences. This targeted approach increases the likelihood of attracting new customers and retaining them over time. Key characteristics of product-led companies, such as a user-friendly interface and collaborative features, help address pain points by making the product intuitive and valuable from the very first interaction.
By focusing on solving real-world problems and delivering a seamless, self-serve experience, businesses can create a product that not only meets user needs but also encourages organic growth. The ongoing feedback loop ensures that improvements are data-driven, keeping the product relevant and competitive. In the end, identifying and addressing customer pain points is at the heart of any effective product-led growth strategy, enabling companies to drive growth, boost user satisfaction, and achieve long-term success.
20 Product-led growth examples from top software companies
Nothing brings a topic to life more than seeing it in action.
These 20 product-led growth examples will help you anticipate and address users’ pain points while guiding them toward value discovery. By leveraging these strategies, SaaS companies can achieve sustainable growth through continuous user engagement and iterative product improvements.
Each example demonstrates how real companies use product-led tactics to drive adoption and retention. Customer feedback plays a crucial role in refining these product-led growth strategies, enabling teams to create feedback loops that inform product decisions and enhance user experiences.
1. HubSpot offers a free grader tool to attract potential customers
HubSpot’s product-led growth strategy includes a free plan that gives users access to a grader tool that analyzes the most critical aspects of a website.
HubSpot also ensures the product is easy to use. All users need to do is enter their website domain name and personal email. The grader tool provides quick value by evaluating the website based on its performance, SEO, mobile traffic, and security. The grader tool leverages product usage data to deliver personalized recommendations to users.
2. Miro uses an optimized pricing model that caters to different market segments
Miro’s customer acquisition and PLG strategy involves using a freemium model and pricing structure that caters to the specific needs of different users.
From small teams to large enterprises, Miro offers solutions that address their challenges. For instance, enterprise clients have access to bespoke features, priority support, and higher levels of security. Miro’s product-led growth strategy also aligns various business functions, such as sales, support, and product, to ensure a seamless user experience across all segments.
As a result, Miro’s pricing model encourages viral growth. From freemium users who have access to key features like Unlimited Teammates, Core Functionality, and Basic Templates to enterprise users who receive priority support, Miro allows users to quickly experience value and encourages adoption.
3. Basecamp offers a free trial to generate product-qualified leads
Basecamp offers free trials that allow new users to experience the value of the product firsthand. Once prospects sign up for the 30-day free trial, Basecamp collects their emails and shares newsletters and educational content.
The educational guides are crafted to help project managers effectively manage and execute their projects using Basecamp. Basecamp’s extensive resource library supports users throughout their trial and onboarding process, helping them navigate the platform, address obstacles, and discover the product’s value.
At the end of the free trial, prospects who experienced value become paid users. But Basecamp doesn’t stop there. They offer a range of support tools, including tutorials and email support, to help users get the most out of the product.
4. Userpilot employs SSO options to remove friction from the signup process
Userpilot lets users get started with the platform as quickly as possible with a frictionless signup process.
If users spend too much time on complex signup forms, they could get frustrated and abandon the process. On the other hand, a single sign-on not only reduces signup time but also helps users discover value faster. SSO options empower users to start using the product independently, reducing reliance on support or sales teams.
5. Notion personalizes onboarding for new users to reduce time to value
Notion employs a personalized learning-by-doing onboarding process to quickly give users access to the product’s core values. Notion’s onboarding process is designed to optimize the customer journey from the very first interaction.
First off, Notion has preloaded templates for specific use cases (personal use vs school). When users land on the Getting Started page, they’ll find tooltips as they hover over certain elements. These tooltips provide clear instructions to help users explore the product on their own.
Notion also uses the information provided by users during signup to offer a personalized selection of templates. These templates instruct users and have accompanying demo data that visualizes the value users will derive from the product.
6. JivoChat delays the email verification process to avoid user frustrations
JivoChat is one of the best product-led growth examples. Its users don’t meet an email verification wall when they try to access the product, which reduces friction and accelerates time to value.
They allow users to use the product immediately and experience value. However, to ensure users still verify their emails, JoviChat uses a small banner as a reminder.
7. Slack populates empty spaces with in-app messages that drive action
Slack is a true self-serve product that guides users through in-app messages in empty spaces.
The visual hierarchy created by empty spaces directs users to the most important information, making Slack’s content more appealing.
The in-app education, coupled with the empty spaces, makes it easy for users to understand how to navigate Slack.
8. Kommunicate uses checklists to drive activation
Kommunicate uses 5 ‘Aha!’ moments to show users the tasks they need to complete during their user journey toward other important milestones.
Kommunicate first draws user attention to the integration button, the initial ‘Aha!’ moment, then uses small cues to reveal features that users need to adopt before conversion.
9. Userpilot drives feature adoption with interactive walkthroughs
Userpilot uses contextual interactive walkthroughs to help users gain a better understanding of the platform and become power users.
They ensure users don’t feel intimidated by exposing them to the tool’s features one step at a time. Users can only move to the next step after completing an action.
For example, if the walkthrough tells a user to filter out the properties they want to exclude from their analysis, they cannot proceed to the next stage without completing the step.
10. Calendly acquires customers through its viral loop
Virality is central to Calendly’s product-led growth strategy.
Calendly can’t function with a single user. User A, for instance, can’t use Calendly on his/her own. For a successful meeting, User A must send their Calendly link to User B. At the end of the meeting, both users receive value.
This collaborative model lets Calendly create a viral loop. So, every time user A wants to schedule a meeting, they use and promote Calendly. As User B realizes how easy it is to schedule a meeting with Calendly, they will likely start sending others their link.
This growth loop ensures exponential growth for Calendly as the product walks the talk.
11. Dropbox reduces customer acquisition costs through referral programs
Dropbox is one of the top product-led growth companies with its low customer acquisition cost model.
The cloud storage company offers immediate, tangible value to its existing users for referring new users. Basic accounts on Dropbox can earn up to 16GB through referrals, while Plus, Family, and Professional accounts can earn up to 32GB through referrals.
This user-friendly, product-led growth strategy helped Dropbox acquire millions of users within a short period.
12. Userpilot drives product adoption through a self-serve resource center
Userpilot’s self-serve help center acts as an extensive resource library, empowering customers to solve their problems and ensuring customer satisfaction.
It goes beyond simply educating users on how to use the platform. It guides them through the user journey, helping them overcome pre-sale obstacles.
The self-serve resource center gives customers a feeling of control. It also aids conversion as users realize they can experience lots of value with the product.
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13. Asana drives repeated product engagement through gamification
Asana’s gamification makes it one of the best product-led companies as it uses magical creatures to celebrate users’ achievements.
As users tick the boxes for completed tasks, a unicorn flies across the screen. This encourages repetition as users are encouraged to complete more tasks to get that dopamine boost again.
14. HubSpot offers extensive education to drive customer success
HubSpot’s product-led strategy is aimed at helping users learn how to use the HubSpot software to improve their inbound marketing efforts.
Users have access to how-to tutorials, boot camps, lessons, and courses that are self-paced and validate knowledge and expertise.
The instructors are industry specialists, and the platform is free, ensuring users can enjoy immediate value once they sign up. Ultimately, this drives users to make use of the HubSpot platform for their inbound marketing needs. HubSpot’s educational resources are also valuable for customer success teams aiming to maximize user outcomes.
15. Buffer informs the product development process with a public roadmap
Buffer’s product-led growth strategy involves sharing its truth with the public. The company’s public roadmap gives stakeholders a clear picture of products in progress and products they are considering.
This community-driven effort is a conversation starter and encourages user feedback. Buffer also makes collecting feedback easy; users can click on a prototype and leave their comments.
This gives Buffer users a feeling of control as they feel a part of the development process.
16. Figma implements secondary onboarding to retain existing customers
Figma prominently highlights new features or updates that have been added to the platform since the user’s last visit. But Figma doesn’t stop here.
Users receive a refresher on basic functionalities, including how to develop and organize. Figma’s secondary onboarding keeps existing users engaged, encourages a deep understanding of the product, and aids user retention.
17. Loom creates FOMO through its reverse trial
Loom uses its reverse trial freemium model to provide value immediately to users. It is a tactic Loom uses to convince users to switch to paid plans after experiencing the benefits of paid features.
Towards the end of the free trial, users receive notifications about the paid plans. At the end of the free trial, users receive a notification that they no longer have access to the advanced features.
Users also receive a ‘See Upgrade Options’ on their screen. The fear of missing out on the advanced features they already experienced will likely convince users to subscribe to a paid plan.
18. Zapier maintains a tight feedback loop to build trust with users
Zapier is one of the most successful product-led companies because commitment to quickly resolving user issues.
Developers at Zapier reach out to users, get their feedback, and turn it into actionable user insights to help design and product teams address issues before they become bigger problems.
Zapier also uses a series of centralized surveys to gauge user sentiment and resolve their challenges.
19. Userpilot creates a digital community around its product to drive loyalty
Userpilot has a digital user community on Facebook to help product managers, customer success teams, and marketers grow their products.
This user community provides value and drives loyalty as users can learn from real people, ask questions, and receive support when they need it.
20. Loom maximizes the customer’s lifetime value by triggering contextual upsell messages
Loom is a product-led company that gets it right with its timing and upsell messaging. Users have up to five minutes to record their screens and share video messages.
At the end of the five minutes, users receive a prompt to extend the time limit or improve the video quality.
Loom also provides a micro video to show users what a perfect video from Loom might look and sound like. These upselling messages are aimed at motivating users to subscribe to advanced plans.
Conclusion
Relying solely on a sales-led approach is outdated. Product-led growth reduces reliance on traditional sales teams by empowering users to experience value directly through the product. A product-led growth strategy shifts your perspective on your product and its end users. Focus on building a product that solves problems and resonates with your users.
The product-led growth examples discussed above can help you maintain focus on your users and discover strategies that drive long-term growth. These examples are designed to achieve sustainable growth by enabling continuous user engagement and iterative product improvement.
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