Product-led growth

Drive acquisition and expansion through product experience where users discover value before sales conversations and upgrade based on usage.

Product-led growth

Product-led growth

definition

Introduction

Why it matters

How to apply it

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Growth orchestration

Get a grip on what's actually working and what needs course correction. Use data and experiments to make decisions instead of opinions. See how changes in one part of the system affect everything else. Random tactics don't compound, coordinated ones do.

Explore playbooks

Tool selection

Tool selection

Select tools across your growth stack using clear evaluation criteria. Avoid common pitfalls, ensure integrations work, and build a system that scales with your business.

Customer research

Customer research

Uncover specific pain points, validate assumptions, and reveal what actually drives buying decisions. Run research that produces actionable insights, not just interesting quotes.

Quarterly strategy

Quarterly strategy

Run quarterly business reviews that assess current state, set ambitious but realistic goals, build actionable roadmaps, and define key results that keep everyone aligned.

Monthly review

Monthly review

Analyse monthly performance data across all four growth engines. Identify what is working, what is not, and make tactical adjustments using a structured decision framework.

Related books

Hacking growth

Sean Ellis

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Hacking growth

A practical framework for experiments and insights. Build loops, run tests and adopt a cadence that ships learning every week.

Startup growth engines

Sean Ellis

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Startup growth engines

A tour of growth case studies. Identify engines, spot patterns and design experiments that fit your context.

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Wiki

Data warehouse

Store raw data from all business systems in one place to run analyses and build reports that combine information across marketing, sales, and product.

UTMs

Track campaign performance precisely by appending parameters to URLs that identify traffic sources, mediums, and campaigns in your analytics.

Drip campaign

Send a series of scheduled emails that educate prospects over time to stay top-of-mind without overwhelming them with aggressive sales pitches.

Growth lever

Focus resources on high-impact business mechanisms where small improvements generate disproportionate results across the entire customer journey.

Partner-led growth

Scale through partner relationships where other companies distribute your product to their customers in exchange for commissions or reciprocal value.

Workflow automation

Connect triggers to actions across systems so repetitive tasks happen automatically and teams can focus on work that requires judgement instead of admin.

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)

Set ambitious goals and measurable outcomes that cascade through your organisation, creating alignment and accountability for strategic priorities.

North Star Metric

Choose one metric that best predicts long-term success to align your entire team on what matters and avoid conflicting priorities that dilute focus.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

Select metrics that reveal whether you're achieving strategic goals to track progress and identify problems before they become expensive to fix.

Growth engine

Build self-reinforcing systems across demand generation, funnel conversion, sales pipeline, and customer value that create continuous momentum.

Deal stage

Define pipeline progression steps to standardise how reps advance opportunities and give managers visibility into where deals stall or convert unexpectedly.

API

Enable tools to exchange data programmatically so you can build custom integrations and automate processes that vendor-built integrations don't support.

Value proposition

Articulate the specific outcome customers get from your solution to communicate why they should choose you over doing nothing or using alternatives.

Conversion tracking

Measure which marketing activities drive desired outcomes to allocate budget toward channels that actually generate revenue instead of vanity metrics.

Product-led growth

Drive acquisition and expansion through product experience where users discover value before sales conversations and upgrade based on usage.

Deep Work

Block extended time for cognitively demanding tasks requiring sustained focus, maximising valuable output whilst minimising shallow distractions.

Constraint

Identify and leverage limitations as forcing functions that drive creative problem-solving and strategic focus.

Multi-touch attribution

Distribute conversion credit across multiple touchpoints to recognise that customer journeys involve many interactions and channels working together.

Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)

Document your repeatable processes in clear, step-by-step instructions that ensure consistency, enable delegation, and capture institutional knowledge.

Integration

Connect tools so data flows automatically between systems to eliminate manual entry, keep records current, and enable sophisticated workflows across platforms.