For founders and investors interested in Product-Led Growth, OpenView's reports on PLG Benchmarks are essential reading—after all, OpenView coined the phrase!

What is PLG? Product-led Growth is an end-user-focused growth model that relies on the product itself as the primary driver of customer acquisition, retention, and expansion.

The ultimate aim of PLG companies is to use the product to drive discovery as well as help drive top-of-the-funnel traffic and signups. Broad strategies used by PLG-focused companies:

Exposure Virality: Every time a user interacts/ uses the product, the company’s brand is exposed to the broader public. E.g.: Zoom, Calendly

Collaborative Virality: Tools that encourage peer participation in a workspace or an assignment. E.g.: Slack, Dropbox

Side-Car Products: Standalone products that introduce the brand to ICPs by solving a tangential need, typically for free. E.g.: HubSpot’s website grader

Note: Almost all companies focus on creating search-friendly content (SEO) that drives discoverability, this is more pronounced in PLG-based companies

The Product Benchmarks report 2022 provides relevant benchmarks for SAAS companies across their life cycle. Some numbers which stood out for me:

• Freemium-based products attract 13% of their traffic through the product vs 4% from free trial
• Median rate of conversion from visit to sign-up is in the range of 3-5% = PLG businesses must find a great fit in low-cost, scalable channels
•  Median free to paid to conversion rate is 5% for freemium, 17% for a free trial

Today’s most successful companies are adopting PLG, leading others to try to mimic their approach. Respondents at product-led companies, especially those with a freemium model, are over 2x more likely to be growing quickly (100%+ year-over-year revenue growth) than sales-led models.

The Open View report and interactive calculator to see how your startup’s user journey compares to businesses at a similar size and scale in the comments below

Which are some of the upcoming Indian companies in your view using PLG in a big way?

 PS: True to form, OpenView’s report allows its readers to easily tweet insights from the report to encourage more virality – PLG in action indeed 😊