A new product-led growth playbook

I'm seeing a new playbook emerge in product-led growth. I think it's the future of how people will buy saas software. It's all about leading with product value - not gating it.

The old playbook was pretty straightforward:

SaaS company makes valuable offer (typically free plan or free trial)
User visits website
Signs up for offer
Receives value from the offer
Upgrades to paid plan

The main product value is gated behind a signup form in that playbook. Which means 97.5% of website visitors don't experience it. A huge missed opportunity.

I'm seeing innovative companies flip the script. They're not gating product value. They're LEADING with value.

Their playbook looks like this:

SaaS company makes valuable offer
Embeds a interactive version of product offer on their site
Site visitors play with it - and get value
After some meaningful interaction - company suggests user try the offer

The new playbook leads with value. It engages a much larger percentage of your website visitors. That means, way more people experience the value of your product. That's good for visitors. Good for your brand. And good for your conversion rates.

I'm seeing example after example of companies doing this with lots of success.

It's worth noting this playbook is really effective for the SMB space. So before someone makes a snarky comment about it not working for enterprise sales - I get it.

We're at the very early stages of this playbook shift. But I suspect we'll see this on most saas websites over the next few years.