Prior to the concept of product-led marketing, the decision makers of each company steered the market direction like a boat.

Now, however, things are different. The end-users have more say and control over what should be and should not.

Customers no longer need to blindly anticipate what their favorite brands have to release.

Instead, these brands now queue at the doorstep of each end-user for an opinion before making a decision.

What Is Product-Led Marketing?

Product-led Marketing, also known as product-led growth (PLG), is a customer-centric marketing strategy where you use your product as clickbait to generate more sales.

It involves offering users an unlimited freemium model of your product with certain functionalities restricted or giving them a time-limited complete product package.

You can extract helpful experimental results and hard-to-find data through some metrics.

These reports can then be directly used to improve your product and provide a better user experience.

But don’t forget that the goal is to use your product to nudge them through the whole sales cycle, from lead generation, qualifying, and nurturing to conversion.

First-Hand Product Experience Over Content Marketing

Users want a taste of what they want to buy. They want to know how it works and experiment with it to solve their problems.

While content marketing strategy is very effective, it will never be enough to satiate that desire.

Let’s say you own a mileage tracking app, and you decide to offer your users a freemium model with limited tracking functionalities.

Over time, you can monitor how your customers interact with the tracking tool and use the report to make adjustments that will positively impact your users’ experience.

Coupled with the chance to experience your app first-hand, freemium users have a high probability of converting to premium members without much need for extra marketing strategies.

This means first-hand product experience is often more useful than a couple of other marketing strategies combined.

How Dropbox Adopted Product-Led Marketing Strategy

Dropbox is a very popular file-sharing and data synchronization SaaS company.

When the product team started, they focused on developing a valuable and user-friendly online storage web tool.

There was no monetization or complex marketing and sales strategy.

The goal was to build a product that fills in the solution for every job to be done (JTBD) of each user when it comes to data management.

To grow its user base, Dropbox introduced a new file-sharing feature where more than two users can work on the same file.

Later, Dropbox users were allowed to share files with non-Dropbox users using personal links.

By the time monetization came in, this SaaS company had a solid user base.

There was no need to generate leads since there were millions available already.

And with the excellent user experience and previous first-hand experience, most freemium users had no problem switching to a paid plan.

But it didn’t end there.

Dropbox introduced a referral incentive program where users can invite others to use the online storage tool.

Customers will receive 500MB of additional storage space for every successful referral.

And from there, Dropbox scaled its marketing game and made $10 billion in 10 years without breaking a sweat.

4 Reasons You Should Choose Product-Led Marketing

A product-led growth is all sweet, but you need to have a matching product before it works.

Unlike other marketing strategies where users are led by the hand, product-led marketing emphasizes giving users the power to personally navigate their journey.

So, if your product is overly complex and difficult to use, you might need to introduce other marketing strategies. This includes using content marketing to provide in-app guides.

And if you’re still skeptical about adopting this bottoms-up approach, here are a few reasons that might change your mind.

Effortlessly Convert Your Leads

Remember how Dropbox moved from building a customer base to monetizing its product?

The whole process was seamless without much need for overly pushed marketing efforts.

You will effortlessly generate conversions when you develop a product that effectively addresses customers’ pain points – and they know how it works.

Cut Customer Acquisition Cost

Another favorite SaaS product to leverage as a perfect example is Calendly.

This product was built to help customers schedule meetings, book appointments, and effectively manage monthly timelines.

With the integration of user-friendly communication tools like zoom and a user-friendly dashboard, everyone finds it easy to collaborate.

Such a customer-centric approach aims to minimize users’ efforts in getting something done with their product. And this is bigger than any lead magnet many other businesses use.

When people find your solution helpful to their problems, they’ll be the ones marketing your product.

In fact, customers referred by other customers have a 37% retention rate. That way, you won’t have to spend much on acquiring new customers.

Develop Better End-User Value

A product-led Growth (PLG) Strategy entirely focuses on how your product can contribute positively to each user’s life.

Companies adopting PLG tend to invest more in developing better products to meet this expectation.

As a result, your product stays atop the pyramid regardless of the trend.

This is how companies like HubSpot and Slack manage to thrive.

Grow Revenue Without Much Complex Marketing

Useful products equal more ROI and less marketing investment.

When you allow your product to do the marketing, warm buyers will convert to hot buyers in no time.

And when both your product and existing users become your brand’s voice, you stand to gain more.

This is how Dropbox grew its revenue to $10 billion in just ten years.

Conclusion

The business world continues to open up to new growth strategies, models, and trends. But what matters is finding which one works for you.

With product-led Marketing, marketers can quickly scale their ROI to a new level and build a lasting product that withstands the test of time.