The 7 key strategies for Product growth - Aakash Gupta (PLG Expert)
Jan 29, 2025
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Aakash Gupta, a PLG expert and VP of Product at Apollo, shares his 15 years of experience in product management. He explains the fundamentals of Product-Led Growth, including seven essential strategies for success. The conversation contrasts growth tactics of Slack and Canva, emphasizing user-centric approaches. Aakash dives into retention strategies with insights from Evernote and Figma, as well as innovative monetization models seen in companies like Trello. He also discusses building trust between product and sales teams to streamline collaboration.
Product-Led Growth (PLG) is an organizational approach requiring alignment across departments, challenging the misconception that PMs dominate the process.
Successful PLG strategies incorporate a sequential approach through seven layers, ensuring companies address specific obstacles like user conversion effectively.
Deep dives
Defining Product-Led Growth
Product-led growth (PLG) is a strategy centered on allowing the product itself to drive user acquisition, conversion, activation, monetization, and expansion. A common misconception is that PLG means product management led, which implies that PMs hold more power than sales or marketing teams. Another fallacy is that PLG is simply about creating self-serve models. In reality, PLG represents an organizational approach that demands alignment across various departments to succeed.
The Seven Layers of PLG
There are seven crucial layers in the PLG framework: go-to-market, information for decision, activation, retention, monetization, expansion, and free-to-conversion. These layers must be approached sequentially, and organizations should first identify where they face obstacles. For instance, a company struggling with user conversion should begin diagnosing its go-to-market strategy before trying to address retention or expansion. Each layer plays a vital role in creating a robust product-led strategy that can effectively drive growth.
Effective Go-To-Market Strategies
Organizations like Canva and Slack have showcased differing go-to-market strategies within the PLG model. While Slack relied heavily on traditional marketing channels to reach users, Canva effectively used search engine optimization and targeted landing pages to capture users' immediate needs. By aligning product offerings with user demand, Canva created a streamlined onboarding experience that quickly illustrates its value, in contrast to Slack's long-term lock-in focus. A successful go-to-market strategy must adapt to the current market landscape and prioritize immediate, user-centric solutions.
Monetization and Market Expansion
To successfully monetize a product, companies are now shifting towards hybrid pricing models that incorporate usage-based elements alongside traditional seat-based pricing. This approach enables firms to capture ongoing value from existing users and enhances overall revenue growth, as seen with businesses like Apollo. Furthermore, after achieving saturation in a primary market, companies must identify opportunities for expansion into new segments. This continuous growth stage allows organizations to diversify and maintain profitability while engaging with a broader audience.
In this week's podcast episode, Akash Gupta delves into the concept of Product-Led Growth (PLG), exploring its definition, misconceptions, and the seven essential layers that contribute to a successful PLG strategy.
Featured Links: Follow Aakash on LinkedIn | Aakash's Product Growth website | 'What we learned at Pendomonium and #mtpcon Raleigh NC: Day 2' feature by Louron Pratt
Our Hosts Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.
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