11 PLG tactics that you don’t need an A/B test to implement

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Welcome back to another edition of TheProductLed!

Today’s newsletter is all about PLG tactics that actually work.

If you're a new Head of Growth looking for quick wins, this is your six-month PLG playbook. Work hard to implement these with your new team because the first part of the job is just operationalizing growth. Don’t sweat the tactics.

Estimated time: 15 minutes

Table of Contents

🚀 Acquisition - Get more users in
1. Match homepage CTA to navigation
2. Add third-party Auth to sign up
3. Add share buttons to all network effect features
4. Build invite new teammate flows

⚡ Activation: Get users to value fast
5. Add an onboarding survey
6. Tailor onboarding differently for users vs. buyers

 🔄 Engagement: Keep users coming back
7. Make your core behavior available within 1-click of log in

💰 Conversion: Turn free users into paying customers
8. Add monetization awareness gates
9. Add a visible upgrade button in app

 🌱 Expansion: Grow your customers
10. Add pricing plan UI to your product

🚪Churn: Keep & win back customers
11. Add a downgrade or cancellation flow

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Why these tactics work

These tactics are foundational growth levers that set you up for true product-led growth. Every PLG company that scales implements these tactics because they work.

Each one of the tactics I am laying out improves your growth model across acquisition, retention, monetization, and expansion.

Once these tactics are in place, you can refine, optimize, and tailor them to your core and power users.

But first, just get them shipped!

Acquisition: Getting more people into your product

You must treat your homepage like a product. It is one of the first moments and last moments a user interacts with your brand. Optimize the new user conversion rate first before you scale and pay for a ton of traffic. Signup conversion rate optimization is the retention of demand gen—no point in paying for clicks if no one is staying on your website.

Here’s how you’ll want to do that.

1. Match your homepage CTA with the navigation CTA button

Your homepage and navigation CTAs shouldn’t tell different stories. They should drive toward the same key action. Whether it’s “Start for free,” “Get Started,” or “Book a Demo,” the goal is to create a seamless, low-friction path into your product. If the homepage says one thing and the navigation says another, you’re forcing users to make an unnecessary decision, which could increase the chances they bounce.

Once you have congruency, then you can play with your CTAs and your homepage to determine how well your content is driving toward that next action.

Goals: Increase sign-up rates and reduce drop-offs.

Why it works:

• Reduces cognitive load: Users shouldn’t need to think twice about what action to take.

• Reinforces intent: Clear sign-posting will reduce drop-off. “Get started” and “Start free trial” are very different, especially if I need to submit a card to continue with the product. This is your chance to set expectations for what users are committing to and the journey ahead.

2. Add third-party Auth options to sign up

Adding 3rd party auth social options to your signup flow increases your signup rate by 20-40%. Do it.

This is the next step in your funnel.

Instead of making users create a new account from scratch, let them sign up with Google, LinkedIn, or Microsoft, or even go passwordless with WebAuthn. Whatever makes the most sense for your users. This speeds up sign-ups and makes logging in later easier.

This convenience might not correlate with downstream engagement or retention, but it is user-friendly and makes getting in AND returning easier.

Goal: Increase sign-ups and successful account creation.

Why it works:

• Reduces friction: Minimizing the steps to account creation lets you welcome in lower-intent users that you can work to win over with your great product. Also improves login retention. Fewer forgotten passwords = fewer drop-offs in the future.

• Improves customer trust: OAuth is often perceived as more secure and efficient.

• Futureproofing authentication: WebAuthn can help you align with passwordless trends that we’re only going to see become even more popular.

3. Add share buttons to all your network effect features

Building network effects within a team in B2B SaaS is the most important growth challenge to solve. Without user virality, you will continue to struggle with Product-led Sales and self-serve NDR (net dollar retention). The most powerful way to improve virality is to lead with a product-led approach.

Every shared link (think Miro board, Notion doc, Amplitude chart) brings in a new user through virality. The most powerful growth loop. People naturally want to share their work. Building this in will let you leverage existing behaviors to fuel your growth.

The more users share, the more exposure your product gets.

Goal: Turn the product into the distribution channel, increase virality, and increase acquisition.

Why it works:

• Leverages existing user behavior: People naturally want to or need to share their work. Yeah, you’re hoping to boost acquisition, but you’re also providing desired functionality and more value for your users.

• Encourages new user acquisition: Many recipients become new users once they engage with shared content, especially if sign-up is required to collaborate or edit the shared material.

4. Build out invite new teammate flows

This is your most important PLG growth loop and your ticket to turning one sign-up into multiple users.

Invite new teammate flows can come in a couple of different forms. It can be triggered by:

• A step in your onboarding flow: This would prompt a new user to add their team to their account during the account creation process. This serves as a good flag for a higher-intent buyer and lets the user get your product set up for actual team use from the start. Even if they’re not adding people in this step, they now know there’s multiplayer functionality they’ll be able to unlock.

• An invite button in your product’s dashboard: This ensures users see that functionality during their first session and serves as a nice constant reminder that there’s more value to be unlocked through collaboration.

• A share or invite button on any network effect feature: As we talked about in the previous step, this flow is triggered when users go to share their work with someone.

• Within a user management section of your app: You’ve likely already got this set up if your product is team-based.

These flows include the UX of actually adding in emails to invite, as well as the email invitation people get to join.

If you missed last week’s post or need some inspo on how to tackle team member email invites, check out:

Goal: Boost product adoption, lower the cost of customer acquisition, and increase stickiness.

Why it works:

• Drives virality: Triggers organic network effect.

• Increases engagement: Team collab reduces churn. Teams that onboard together are going to have higher retention as more people are getting value from your product.

Activation: Getting more people to experience the power of your product

You got people into your product. Now you need to make them stay.

But first, you need to understand who they are and what they are there to do.

The right activation strategy can boost revenue by 40%, so it’s important to ensure onboarding is successful! Let’s talk about 2 tactics that are 100% required but not easy to deploy.

5. Add an onboarding survey

Your product likely appeals to many different personas. Each persona is different. They’ve got different goals, needs, and buying behavior.

Profiling these users as they enter your product is going to give you insight into who is coming in the door, who is finding success, who buys, who will never buy, and who drops off.

This is going to help you understand your user’s goals and how your product can serve them better.

This data is going to let you properly tackle activation so you can help the right kind of users succeed, but it’s also going to feed back into your entire growth strategy.

When building your survey, think about your ideal customer persona (ICP). What kind of signals make up those dream users? That’s the kind of data you’re going to want to ask for.

These questions are unique to your business, but it’s probably a variation of things like:

• Role: Who is this person in a company, and what kind of work do they do?

• Seniority: Are they a team member, a founder, or a manager? We can link these to how they will use the product but also if they have buying authority.

• Use case: What are they here to do? What problems that your product solves are they here to work on?

• Intent: Do they already have a product like yours? Are they first-timers? Are they looking to buy? Are they just exploring?

• Company size

• Are they setting this up for their team?

Using this response data you’ll be able to provide personalized experiences to fastrack activation.

Check out Monday.com’s onboarding flow:

Goal: Reduce time-to-value, increase retention, and identify revenue opportunities.

Why it works:

• Keeps users on track: Eliminates friction by steering users toward relevant features.

• Personalizes at scale: Ensures users see how the product meets their goals right away.

• Arms you with data: Responses trigger custom emails, product nudges, and tailored recommendations that drive engagement.

6. Tailor onboarding differently for users vs. buyers

The data you’re collecting from your onboarding survey is going to give you your first two cohorts to design for.

Buyers vs. users.

Using a combination of role and intent, whether setting up for their team, whether they’ve invited other teammates, etc., can help you determine who you’re working with so you can surface important features.

Your buyers (N+1) need to see the business impact quickly and understand why your product is worth the cost. They also need to know it has the team-based features it needs.

Your end-users (N) need to get work done. They need to see how you’re going to make their job easier.

If their onboarding looks identical, you leave activation, retention, and revenue on the table.

This doesn’t need to be a product experience on day 1. You can start with your email onboarding flows while you build this out.

Goal: Increase activation and retention

Why it works:

• Drives faster time to value: Users get productive, and buyers see the impact and can check off feature requirements.

• Reduces confusion: You unearth the features and guide users down pathways, slowly revealing what they need to see value.

Engagement: Get users coming back for more

You’ve got people in the door. Now, you need to keep them hooked.

Engagement is all about removing friction, building habits, and making core actions effortless so users keep coming back.

You could spend all year in engagement, but remember, we are focusing on quick wins, so to start, you’re going to:

7. Make your core behavior available within 1-click of log in

This removes friction by dropping your users directly into action to promote your high-value behaviors. This is part of habit forming. You want to make it easy for people to pick up where they left off or get started again.

For example:

• Spotify takes you back to the last song you listened to.

• Slack takes you into the last active conversation you had.

• Google Drive shows you your most recent files or lets you click to create a new doc.

• Notion takes you to your most recent doc.

• Zoom lets you start, schedule, or join a new meeting.

Figma does a great job of this, too. Straight from the dashboard you can jump into your most recent work and continue creating, OR create something new.

Goal: Form habits, increase usage, adoption and retention

Why it works:

• Removes decision paralysis: Users don’t need to think about where to go next or how to find something.

• Delivers immediate value: Drops users into the most relevant action, file, or feature, boosting adoption with high-value actions.

• Increases adoption & retention: Faster workflows mean users integrate the product into their daily routine and form strong habits.

Conversion: Upgrading users from free to paid

Engagement alone doesn’t pay the bills. These monetization tactics are going to set you up to boost free-to-paid conversions and make upgrading feel like the next logical step for users when they are ready.

To achieve this balance, you’re going to:

8. Add monetization awareness gates

Monetization awareness gates are little prompts that appear alongside your paid features, nudging users to a natural upgrade. Instead of forcing payment upfront, they let your users experience value first until they hit a limit or need more advanced features.

They tease the additional value users will be able to get and tie that value to the actions or behaviors they are taking in app. They fall in love and see what they are missing out on within context.

Some examples include:

• Seat limits/number of users

• Feature gating premium functionality

• Storage and file limits

• Usage limits that limit the number of actions users can take

• Branding and customization

• API or integrations

• Access to 1:1 support

• Time-based free trials

These gates help users feel like they are growing into your product and allow you to easily charge for that growth.

Users are less likely to churn when they hit a gate after they’ve already experienced value.

Goal: Increase free to paid, maintain engagement

Why it works:

• Tied to usage: You let people fall in love with the specific features or product before asking for money.

• Feels like an unlock, not a paywall: Users upgrade because they want more, not because they’re blocked.

9. Add an upgrade button in app

Alongside your gates, though, you’re going to want an always-there-but-never-in-your-face upgrade button.

Like many of these PLG tactics, this is about setting expectations and removing friction.

Upgrade buttons make it clear that there’s more to unlock while keeping the path to upgrade effortless. When users are ready, upgrading should be one click away, not buried in settings.

You’re going to have users who are ready to put a card down long before they’ve reached any type of usage limit, or maybe they already know they need a higher-tier plan.

Goal: Update all “free to paid” to “free to paid teams”

Why it works:

• No hunting for pricing: Users shouldn’t have to search for a way to pay you. A visible upgrade button means they can convert on their own terms without friction.

• Flags intent: Users clicking but not converting? That’s your high-intent lead list. Survey them to uncover blockers.

Expansion: Grow your customers

This ties into our monetization awareness gates, upgrade button, and, honestly, your personalized buyer experiences.

Expansion doesn’t just start once someone is on a paid plan or with high usage. It’s a seed that is planted during early experiences with your product.

So you will want to:

10. Add your pricing plans to your product

You’ve got people in your product. You don’t want to give them a reason to leave, even if it is to view your pricing page on your website.

A clear, in-product pricing UI lays out exactly what’s available at each of your plan tiers. This serves as an anchor for users and clearly outlines and teases the additional value they will be able to unlock when they are ready.

This is also just B2B SaaS. You’ve got buyers who need to tick features off their lists, and you’ve got buyers who already know they are ready for a higher-tier plan when they sign up. Don’t make them jump through hoops.

Goal: Drive PQLs and self-serve pipeline

Why it works: 

• Removes friction from upgrades: Users don’t have to guess what they’re missing or talk to sales to get pricing info.

•  Encourages natural expansion: As teams grow and usage increases, the upgrade path is already visible and intuitive.

Churn: Keep & win back customers

I told you I was giving you tactics to build out the entire customer journey, so we’ve also got to talk about churn.

A good cancellation flow protects revenue, gathers insights, and keeps the relationship open.

You want leaving to be easy, but you want to be able to learn from it, so you’re going to:

11. Add a downgrade or cancellation flow

Not every user wants to ditch your product completely. Sometimes, they just need a cheaper plan, a temporary pause, or a little breathing room.

Downgrade or cancellation flows are triggered when a user requests to cancel an in-app subscription. Instead of canceling the subscription, you survey your users to gain insight into why they’re leaving, remind them of the value they were getting, and offer them another option to encourage them to stay.

That could be things like:

• Extension of their free trial to continue testing without being charged

• An option to downgrade to a cheaper or free plan

• A discount on their current plan for X amount of time

• The option to pause their subscription for X amount of time free of charge

   

Check out Canva’s flow:

The first step acts as a confirmation. Are you sure you really want to cancel? Look at all of the fun you’ve been having and all of the valuable features you’ll miss out on.

Step 2 of Canva’s flow aims to uncover why someone is leaving. Rather than leaving it open, they provide pointed reasons someone might want to cancel and hint at other options you have instead of canceling (pausing, switching to yearly, etc.).

Step 4 adds some extra friction and is a last ditch effort to try to persuade users to stick around. Why not just pause your subscription and take some time? 

What I like about this is that they’ve clearly outlined how it will work. You know, when payment starts back up, you’re given clarity around what you can and can’t do during that time, and you’re reassured that you can change your mind and come back and cancel.

If you choose to go this route, take notes because they are intentionally trying to be transparent to build trust.

Canva confirms that the sub has been canceled and asks for open-ended feedback.

You do not want to miss this opportunity to learn why someone who once saw value in your product no longer does, so be sure to ask an intentional question and for open-ended feedback (and follow up with them 1:1 if you want to learn more, you’d be surprised how willing people are to give feedback!).

Canva didn’t provide an email confirmation, but in general, it’s good to work that into your flow to keep that trust and goodwill you built up.

Goal: Prevent churn, minimize revenue loss, and create re-engagement opportunities later

Why it works:

•  Stops avoidable churn: Some users don’t want to leave. They just need a different plan. Give them one.

• Keeps the door open: Make it easy to pause or downgrade so users can come back when they’re ready. If they gotta go, let them. But don’t burn the bridge with a high-friction exit.

Wrap-Up: Build the foundation, then optimize

I share these tactics with you because I’ve had a hand in building them all. I know they work. It’s about growth philosophy and growth principles.

These tactics are more than quick wins. They’re fundamental levers that create a structured, scalable PLG growth model. Before you start optimizing, experimenting, or running A/B tests, you need these core systems in place.

• Start with structure: Your funnel needs a clear path for users to move forward in your product. This sets expectations and context.

• Reduce friction to drive action: Friction is necessary, but not when it comes to building out your foundation. Until you’ve got that in place, you don’t know how to leverage friction to your advantage.

• Remember, you’re building the foundation to learn: Establishing these tactics is going to get you the insights you need to learn how to build friction, add complexity, iterate, and expand on experiences.

Establish your levers, build your funnel, and THEN you can start experimenting.

Am I missing anything? What tactics worked best for you?

Drop a reply, share your experiences, and let’s talk tactics!

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