How to Get Started with PLG

Former Amplitude Head of Growth Elena Verna describes growth as “your ability to predictably, sustainably, and competitively answer the question of how you acquire, retain, and monetize customers.”

PLG is one way to do that. It’s a growth motion across each stage of the customer journey—acquisition, retention (activation and engagement), and monetization—with the product at the center:

• At the acquisition stage, the product drives new users to sign up.
• When it comes to retention, users activate and engage without any human intervention.
• At the monetization stage, users can check out without help from sales.

There are, of course, some famous examples, such as how Zoom uses PLG to drive acquisition. An account holder creates a meeting link and shares it with their guests, who get to experience the Zoom meeting and then have the chance to create their own accounts. Calendly, which employs a similar approach to acquisition, carries the strategy through to retention with a user-friendly interface and to monetization by making it easy to pay with a credit card.

But even companies synonymous with PLG rely on sales-led and marketing-led motions. In reality, most successful companies have two or three motions running simultaneously, using a blend of the three motions to drive growth.

Most companies blend product-led, marketing-led, and sales-led motions across the customer journey stages with different weights for each.