Product-led growth (PLG)

Product-led growth is a go-to-market strategy in which the product is the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion, rather than sales or marketing outreach. Users typically start with a free trial or a free tier, experience the product's value directly, and either convert or expand usage based on that hands-on experience.

This differs from sales-led or marketing-led growth in where the analytics focus sits: PLG teams instrument in-product behavior closely, because usage data itself becomes the primary signal for who is likely to buy or expand, captured as a product-qualified lead rather than relying mainly on firmographic or intent data from marketing. Getting new users to value quickly is central to PLG, which is why time to value and activation rate are core metrics in this model, alongside ongoing feature adoption that signals expansion readiness.

PLG matters because it can lower customer acquisition cost and let the product reach users who would never talk to a salesperson, but it depends on the product being usable and valuable with minimal onboarding help. A common pitfall is applying PLG to products that genuinely require configuration or team buy-in before value appears, where a self-serve trial simply produces a high volume of users who never activate.