SaaS products have become essential for individuals as well as companies. However, with competitors in the market attempting to solve similar problems, it can be difficult for your product to stand out and grow. In this blog, we’ll explore how community-led growth can accelerate product-led growth for SaaS products. Furthermore, it can serve as a catalyst for driving product metrics.
Product-led growth (PLG) is a go-to-market strategy where the company leverages the product itself to drive user adoption. PLG relies on creating the best in-class experience for the user to solve a single problem, thus aiming to generate paying customers or recurring users. The core principle of PLG is that the product should sell itself in the shortest time possible!
Community-led growth (CLG) is a different GTM strategy that relies on the community to drive product growth. Community-led growth enables the product’s users to become its best advocates by creating a sense of belonging. The community becomes a key stakeholder to drive all the key product metrics.
Leveraging PLG and CLG together
Community-led growth can act as a catalyst to accelerate product-led growth, and both of these can go hand in hand!
Imagine that you have a SaaS product with potential users trying it out for the first time. With PLG, you activate the users by creating an onboarding experience to make the user realise the product’s value in the least amount of time. Once activated, the user engages with the product using in-app notifications and other engagement tools. This increases adoption of the product!
Now, how is the community relevant here? CLG can supercharge the user’s journey through each and every step of the PLG loop!
The community can play a crucial role in driving the metric at each stage of the PLG loop. For example, community events are a great way to acquire potential users and activate them. Sharing community generated content is another engagement strategy that products employ. Similarly, at each and every stage of the loop, the community can assist in driving the product metrics.
Additionally, prioritising community growth can enhance the feedback loop between the users and the product. This drives the creation of an experience that can engage the user throughout the PLG loop.
Two major metrics that the community can have a huge impact on are engagement and referrals. When you empower the community to become key stakeholders, user-user and user-product engagement naturally increase. Moreover, you start to identify a cohort of superusers who adore the product and can be the voice of your product in the community, thus bringing in more referrals.
Overall, a combination of PLG and CLG creates an ecosystem around the product. The community drives the product’s growth, and the product helps the community achieve its goals. If I were to phrase it another way, I would say that building a symbiotic relationship between the product and the community is crucial for the product’s success.