8 PLM examples every marketer should know

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Hey friends! 👋 

I am super excited to share a juicy deep dive on my favorite topic: PLM (product-led marketing). In today’s newsletter, I will cover:

1. 8 PLM examples across each of the main tactics

   • Communities - OpenAI’s GPT marketplace

   • Integrations - Netlify’s integration hub

   • Templates - Amplitude’s one-click template library 

   • Product Demos - Labelbox’s product tour hub 

   • Meta Experiences - Arcade’s homepage product demo

   • Product Content - Navattic’s guide to interactive demos 

   • Sidecar Product - Userled’s AI ABM landing page generator

   • Ungated Experiences - Excalidraw’s whiteboard tool 

2. Why each PLM example is worth studying and cloning

3. How each example works across the core PLM themes: SEO, Distribution, Dynamic and Regenerative

4. Key takeaways for each

Estimated time: 8 minutes

Before we discuss, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—the future of marketing is product-led.

Reminder → What is PLM? 

Product-led marketing is a marketing strategy that positions your product to do the heavy lifting. PLM bridges the gap between acquisition and activation by putting the product in front of users earlier, letting them experience its value firsthand, and fostering a more authentic and engaging user experience. You should invest in PLM if you want to:

• Keep CAC low: Letting users self-serve reduces reliance on traditional, high-cost marketing channels.

• Drive faster conversions: Give them what they want. The sooner they see value, the faster they fall in love.

• Build trust fast, from day 1: PLM doesn’t push—it empowers users to discover how your product solves their problems, creating advocates, not just customers.

• Scale naturally: It works across channels without reinventing strategies.

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Let’s get into it!

Themes: Why it works well

• Distribution: On this public-facing marketplace website, GPTs and AI’s capabilities are pulled out and packaged up as readily accessible solutions. It allows people to explore and engage with GPTs before even signing up. By the time they do, they’re 10 steps ahead, finding value, and leveraging the power of AI.

• Dynamic: Because the marketplace is decoupled from core product, it is easy to update and refresh without heavy lifting from backend engineering teams. Plus, third-party contributors build and manage their own GPTs using their resources.

Lessons to take away

• Design for virality: When building or refining your PLM tactics, consider how to increase the chance that users will want to share what they've created with the world.

• Focus on value across use cases to build and grow: Solving specific problems for niche audiences helps your product spread organically across targeted segments.

• Incentivize innovation and community engagement: Reward users for creating and sharing with things like leaderboards, discounts, or monetary rewards to keep the momentum up.

Themes: Why it works well

• Distribution: Integrations—often a "checkbox item" for decision-makers are moved up funnel and prominently highlighted on the website allowing users to explore. This gets users excited about product capabilities and verifies that Netlify integrates with all of their existing tools and systems. In this case, leveraging this tactic doesn’t just get the product in front of people sooner, it helps prospects qualify themselves. Why only show your integrations in product, when you can show them up funnel on the marketing site?

• Regenerative: The hub is a growth and retention loop. Each time a partner or community-built integration is added, it attracts new user stickiness and helps unlock new use cases. Netlify’s partnership program amplifies this cycle with co-marketing and mutual technical support, ensuring long-term growth for both parties.

Lessons to take away

• Position integrations as selling points: Allow decision-makers to tick boxes quickly and leverage your product's power and functionality upfront.

• Start with the mission-critical tech your users already rely on: Netlify’s success boils down to easily integrating with the exact tools devs have already built products in. You can expand your product’s functionality significantly without reinventing the wheel or competing with the well-established tools your users are already using.

Themes: Why it works well

• Distribution: With the demo library, early-stage prospects can dive into the product straight from the website without giving up an email or talking to anyone. Instead, they nurture users towards signing up or booking a demo and lubricate the conversation with expectation and excitement because prospects have already had a lil teaser and see value.

• Dynamic: This tactic is agile. Labelbox’s growth and marketing teams are fully in control of this asset. These demos deliver value fast and are simple to iterate on, maintain, update, and expand. We can easily expand for personas, industries, or use cases, run experiments, and optimize for different conversions all without involving product or engineering.

Lessons to take away

• Simplify the buying process and nurture prospects naturally: Demos let users explore your product at their own pace and on their terms. You can weed out bad fits and get qualified prospects so excited to take the next step with you, be it a trial or sales call.

• Start with what matters most to your users: You don’t need to give them everything, just enough to leave them wanting more. Focus on the features that consistently drive interest. Create demos highlighting these areas to quickly prove value and validate this tactic in your PLM strategy.

• Keep things simple: Design demos to be short, specific, and actionable. Show value without overwhelming users.

Themes: Why it works well

• Distribution: The product is positioned center stage on the homepage. Visitors don’t just get to see it; they get to use it! It’s not just the first experience users have with the product, it’s one of the very first experiences they have with Arcade as a brand. From the get-go, they’re able to experience the power of the product and are inspired and excited to convert through the funnel.

• Dynamic: Just to be crystal clear, even though Arcade is leveraging the product to build this demo, it’s the end-product they’re working with and a marketing/growth-owned asset, making it a breeze to rapidly test and iterate upon.

Lessons to take away

• Meta experiences aren’t for every product: But you can get creative, maybe there are small components to your product that can be leveraged in non-traditional ways to show it off.

• Show value with hyperfocused experiences with context-driven interactions: Meta experiences give users a quick win, build confidence, and set the stage for deeper engagement.

• Progressively reveal your product with context: Don’t assume users know anything—guide them. Take them on a journey. Arcade takes users on a specific journey but still leaves room for exploration. Even small interactions, like letting users click around, make the experience feel engaging and impactful.

Themes: Why it works well

• Distribution: Product or educational content is often hard to find, on separate domains, or locked up further down the funnel in help centers only accessible to users. Navattic’s blog brings product and product content to the forefront for top-of-funnel leads, providing a valuable resource for industry and product information.

• SEO: The guide maximizes search visibility by targeting high-intent keywords like “interactive demos” and embedding actionable advice that boosts engagement metrics (longer time on page, more clicks). Its evergreen value keeps traffic flowing. Navattic’s strategic channel for acquisition is its approach to being a thought leader. By gathering data on interactive demos and publishing it, they leverage backlink power for SEO!

Lessons to take away

• SEO is a magnet: Optimize for high-intent keywords related to product content and the interests your potential customers are looking for.

• Teach, don’t push: Help your audience solve their problems with practical advice and use cases. Shareable, engaging content keeps them reading and shows how your product fits into their workflows.

• Balance product education with reach appeal: Broaden your topics to stay solution-agnostic and amplify reach while subtly positioning your product through customer and internal success stories. Thought leadership pieces are usually more evergreen, so you’ll get a longer shelf life and traffic, too.

Themes: Why it works well

• Distribution: The tool is a standalone product that serves as a gateway into UserLed’s core offering and moved up funnel for lead gen to build awareness and interest amongst super early-stage prospects that might not even be aware they have problems that UserLed can solve. It’s ungated and accessible to use straight from a landing page, only capturing email once users find value (if they want to save and use the landing page).

• Dynamic: Because it’s a separate tool, it’s much more agile and easy to iterate upon. It’s essentially embedded within a landing page giving marketing and growth teams full control.

• SEO: The tool’s landing page nails search visibility with optimized keywords like “ABM marketing”, drawing in a high-intent audience. Add rich, detailed content explaining the tool’s value, and you’ve got a resource that not only ranks but keeps users engaged, boosting organic traffic that can be nurtured and grown into core product paid customers.

Lessons to take away

• Place it early in the funnel to drive curiosity: Introduce sidecars as top-of-funnel touchpoints or teasers to introduce users to the full power of your platform. If they’re hooked on the free tool, they’ll want more.

• Make it powerful, but simplify complexities: The higher it is in the funnel, the quicker you’ll need to be able to drive value. It needs to make sense to early-stage prospects.

• Utility drives engagement: If your sidecar can give people a quick win, almost effortlessly, they’ll tell all their friends.

Themes: Why it works well

• SEO: By targeting high-intent keywords like “Growth Dashboard”, the gallery pulls in users actively searching for answers. The detailed descriptions and targeted use cases boost search rankings while connecting with an audience already primed to engage.

• Dynamic: The library is just a gateway into product. It’s a standalone asset that can be changed with minimal touch to the core product and just a bit of product/engineering muscle required to add new ones into the lineup.

Lessons to take away

• Meet users where they are: Start with templates geared towards high-intent keywords to draw in audiences actively looking for solutions.

• Showcase real-world value by real-world users: Featuring and tapping into examples from industry leaders, internal team leads, or your customers builds quick validation, trust, and inspiration.

Themes: Why it works well

• Distribution: Ungated products such as Excalidraw tend to blur the lines for PLM themes. Since the product is available to all without a form or gate of any sort, you can theoretically say the product website is the marketing website since there is nothing blocking it. The product experience is distributed as far up the funnel as possible. While this distribution principle is true for most ungated experiences, I really love this tool!

• Dynamic: Similar to interactive demos, it is a 1:1 relationship that if you change the product in any way, it’s immediately exposed to all future end users. There is no extra thought process about what should we change in the product that users won’t experience out of the product. Side note: this may not be dynamic for gated or paid features that require signup or upgrade.

Lessons to take away

• Ungated products need to be optimized for frictionless first-time user experiences: This is not just making your product free. It’s making your free product, frictionless, intuitive, and value-packed to create lasting first impressions.

• Grow into the upsell: Start with a strong free offering that solves real problems, then let deeper engagement create demand for paid features.

Wrapping up

⭐️ PLM strategies are a function of tactics multiplied by applied themes.⭐️

Each of these 8 examples works well because they tackle at least one of the core PLM themes—distribution, dynamic, SEO, and regenerative. By implementing a strong theme done right, your tactic has a higher potential of driving growth!

We can see that when done well, PLM tactics:

• Drives CAC down

• Motivate users to discover how your product solves their problems

• Deliver so much value that prospects are excited to keep moving through your funnel

• Help you and your team move faster - they’re dynamic and decouple from product so you can play, test, and iterate without needing massive resources.

• Boost traditional marketing tactics like SEO

• Generate their own momentum, fueling growth and acquisition without you paying a cent

• Make your life easier

• Bridge the gap between product-led acquisition and marketing-led acquisition

Need more PLM inspo?

I’ve got 300+ more examples! The database is open-source. If you know of great PLM examples—add them!

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