Product-led growth has gained a ton of traction among marketers everywhere, but it looks very different in the SaaS industry.

In this episode of AMP Up Your Digital Marketing, Glenn Gaudet speaks with Jason McClelland, CMO at Domino Data Lab. They talk about the importance of product-led growth in the SaaS industry and how to execute it successfully.

* Product-led growth is a huge trend in marketing these days, but traditionally it works best for products that are fairly straightforward, like Netflix and Spotify.

* Leveraging product-led growth for a highly technical audience can be tricky, but it can pay off immensely. Jason says it helps him generate interest amongst developers and data scientists, who typically don’t care about flashy marketing initiatives — they just want to try the product out.

* Once a user has opted into a free trial or freemium product, you have to nurture them through the process. It’s like a Ferrari, Jason explains. You can’t just throw someone into the driver’s seat and say, “Go.” 

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Product-led growth is a hot topic in the marketing industry these days.

It’s a marketing strategy that relies on the product to do the heavy-lifting through free trials and freemium models. Marketing veteran Jason McClelland is calling product-led growth “a huge movement and is the next frontier – the newest frontier.”

Sure, it’s not like this approach just landed on the scene yesterday, but it’s picked up a ton of traction in the last several years. Just take a look around and see how many free trials you’ve been offered today.

But what does product-led growth look like when you work with a highly technical product in the SaaS industry? It’s not always as straightforward as handing out a seven-day free trial.

Jason understands this firsthand. Before joining Domino Data Lab, he spent years working at Adobe and Heroku, which was acquired by Salesforce.

“Our biggest barrier-to-entry was people would come in, they’d sign up for a trial, they’d look at a blank white page and go, ‘OK, now what?’ It’s like somebody’s giving you a Ferrari, but you don’t know how to drive a stick shift,” he explains, referencing Photoshop’s free trials.

Jason joined the AMP Up Your Digital Marketing podcast to explain what product-led growth is, what it looks like in a more technical field, and shares tips on how to turn these initiatives into long-term successes.

What’s Product-Led Growth, Anyway?

Product-led growth (PLG) can be a smart way to draw people into your product — or get them hooked, so to speak. You’re letting the product speak for itself by letting interested users sign up for a free trial or freemium service.

Source: ProductLed Institute

“The product-led growth way of doing things is to try to catch people super early,” Jason said. “This is through freemium models, free trials, and content marketing… It’s really trying to help shape the conversation when people are very early in their journey.”

At Domino Data Lab, Jason markets to developers and data scientists. The only issue? “They abhor sales and marketing,” he said. “They will do anything they can to not get on the phone, not to send an email, and not to get on a webinar.”

At the end of the day, they just want to try the service out, and a free trial or freemium product allows them to do just that.