Plg stock: It seems like every company is adopting a product-led growth(PLG) strategy these days. When PLG is executed correctly, the product sells itself. Instead of having hundreds of sales teams, companies can focus time and money on improving the product.

A customer learns about PLG products through word of mouth, not through boring sales calls. Someone will tell the customer to try out the product. The customer will try it out cause he won’t lose anything as it is free.

So what exactly is product-led growth? PLG is the process of growing a company with the product and customer at the center. Instead of focusing on sales, companies focus on making the product optimum for the customer.

Customers get the product they want and deserve. This happens because of constant feedback from customers and subsequent implementation from the company.

This has made PLG more favorable than sales-led growth. B2C companies can grow at a much faster pace with PLG.

Key traits of PLG companies

Companies that go the PLG route have certain qualities and features in common. They are — 

Freemium approach

Companies want new users to try out the product before they have to pay. That’s why these companies offer free trials or have a free version of their product. This means the customer can pay for what they want and need.

Easy sign-up

These companies want to make it frictionless for the user to sign up. Companies integrate Oauth login with google, GitHub, and Twitter for the user to easily sign up for the product.

Virality

PLG companies grow at a swift pace because of word-to-mouth. The news travels fast and compounds as every customer acts as a marketer.

User Satisfaction

PLG companies focus on the user first. Most of the focus is on improving the customers’ experience. The customer gets a solution to his problem.

Companies that have used PLG to their advantage

PLG allows companies to scale much faster. Here are a few companies that have used PLG to grow faster than their competitors.

Figma

You’ve probably heard of Figma. It’s the tool that almost every designer uses. Before Figma, designers would pay considerable amounts to use Adobe XD and photoshop. Figma has made everything affordable. Anyone can start using Figma without making any payments.

Figma uses the Freemium model. You get all the essential features for free. You only need to upgrade to the paid version if you want more projects or collaborators.

You can use Figma on any device through the browser. You can also use a dedicated app for Mac or Windows. The learning curve is also great. There is lots of free material on Youtube to start learning.

You can use Figma for designing many things such as wireframes, screen layouts, social media banners, etc.

Figma used PLG to make its competitors obsolete.

Canva

Many people in the design community dislike Canva. They think that designs created using Canva are inferior. But the truth of the matter is that Canva has empowered many people to start their businesses on a budget.

Canva is a free graphic design platform used to create almost anything from Instagram posts to business cards. You can also use it to edit photos.

The best part of Canva is the templates. You have thousands of well-crafted templates to choose from. If you want to make a pdf more professional, look no further. I’ve used Canva to make my college projects look ten times better.

Canva is extremely easy to use. You don’t even need any demo. Everything is straightforward. You get tons of basic features for free.

I don’t know if you know this, but Canva has a forty billion valuation. Canva is an example of how PLG can accelerate success.

DevRev

DevRev is the startup to look out for. This is a company that lives and breathes PLG. DevRev is a DevCRM, a system that brings customer feedback straight to the developer.

It is the perfect CRM for companies that follow PLG principles. Companies can directly communicate with their customers on one platform. If a user has a problem with the app, he can raise a question. This question can then be answered by the developer.

Developers can then raise tickets or issues if users raise relevant problems.

Products can integrate DevRev using the PluG SDK.

DevRev also has integrations with Github and Jira.

DevRev provides a God-eye view of all of a company’s features and APIs. At one glance, you can see what APIs power which features.

Dropbox

You’ve definitely heard of Dropbox. Almost everyone uses it to store pictures on the cloud. Dropbox is a file hosting service that lets you store documents on the cloud.

You can sign up for Dropbox for free. You get free storage out of the box. This includes 2GB of online storage. You can access this storage from any of your devices.

Sharing files is one of the best features. It is effortless to control permissions when you share a link.

Dropbox also has collaboration tools where teams can share notes and edit in real-time.

Slack

Slack is the ultimate tool for collaboration within a company. The platform provides messaging and file sharing. Companies can create different Slack channels for different groups. You can have different groups for marketing, development, QA, etc.

You can connect your Github repository to Slack. This way, you get updates about issues, pull requests, commits, etc.

The best part is Slack is free. If you want to be able to see very old messages, you have to pay. But everything else is completely free.

You can access Slack from your browser or get a dedicated app.

You can set individual notification preferences for each channel. If you’re part of the development team, you can set notifications there as a priority.

Calendly

Calendly is an app for scheduling meetings and events. Setting up meetings used to be troublesome before; You had to look at your calendar and send your available times over.

With Calendly, all you have to do is send a link. The person with the link can then see available dates and set up a meeting. This lets invitees get the best suitable time with no possibility of clashing.

The free version allows unlimited events. But it is limited to one kind of event. For more customization options, you can upgrade your plan.