For years, B2B companies have operated within a predictable sales model: generate leads, nurture them with content, pass them to sales, close the deal and hand things off to customer success teams. But product-led growth (PLG) is forcing B2B organizations to radically rethink this approach.
In PLG marketing, the product isn’t just part of the solution. Instead, it’s the engine driving the entire customer journey. Users get hands-on early, often before ever speaking to sales. They explore features, test workflows and experience value directly—on their own timeline.
This shift doesn’t mean marketing is off the hook. In fact, PLG expands marketing’s role across the full funnel. It’s no longer just about attracting leads or building brand awareness. Marketing must now guide users from initial product adoption through ongoing engagement, expansion and advocacy.
“PLG isn’t just a go-to-market motion—it’s a commitment to helping customers realize value faster. Marketing’s role in that is often underestimated.”
— Scott Miraglia, President, Elevation Marketing
Unfortunately, too many B2B companies try to bolt PLG onto a traditional sales-led model without rethinking how marketing operates. They focus on launching a free trial or freemium tier, but don’t adjust the strategy to help users activate, expand or stick around. We’ve seen companies launch a free trial but forget to follow up after week one, when many users disengage.
This approach misses opportunities for growth.
In this article, we’ll unpack what PLG really looks like in a B2B environment, why marketing plays a crucial role in driving both adoption and expansion and how agencies can help build the strategy and experiences required to succeed.
Defining Product-Led Growth for B2B
Product-led growth is gaining traction because today’s B2B buyers expect more autonomy. According to Gartner, 83% of B2B buyers prefer to order or pay through digital commerce. This shift to a rep-free sales experience aligns directly with PLG’s self-service model, where the product itself drives user acquisition, activation and expansion. Instead of leading with sales conversations or marketing nurture streams, PLG lets prospects interact with the product directly, often before they commit to a purchase.
Think of it as a try-before-you-buy model, but in B2B. Prospects don’t just read about the product. They experience it.
In B2C SaaS, this approach is well established. But in B2B, PLG introduces some unique complexities. Enterprise purchases still involve multiple stakeholders. Procurement processes still exist. And expansion often requires sales involvement. But the initial motion is different: users don’t wait for a demo to get started—they onboard themselves, experience early value and then drive the conversation upstream to other decision-makers.
That bottom-up momentum changes everything.
“PLG works best when it’s not seen as a replacement for sales, but as an accelerant for sales and marketing. It creates more informed, engaged buyers before sales even enters the conversation.”
— Ryan Gould, COO & Executive VP, Client Strategy, Elevation Marketing
When done right, PLG helps B2B organizations shorten the time to value for new users while creating stickier, more engaged customer relationships. But making it work requires a change in how marketing supports the customer journey.
Marketing’s Role in Driving PLG Success
One of the biggest misconceptions about product-led growth is that marketing steps back once users engage with the product. The opposite is true. In PLG, marketing becomes even more critical because it shapes the entire experience—before, during and after a user signs up.
It starts with acquisition, but not in the traditional sense of lead generation. The goal isn’t just to collect emails or drive MQLs. It’s to attract users who are likely to succeed in the product environment. Most product onboarding emails still sound like release notes, not helpful guidance. Getting this part right means crafting messaging that focuses on solving real user problems, not just promoting product features. It requires building landing experiences that make it easy for the right prospects to get started, without extra friction.
Once a user signs up, the focus shifts to activation. This is where most companies drop the ball: most companies assume new users will naturally find value on their own. They won’t. Without proper guidance, new users often hit early friction points, fail to reach their first “aha” moment and quietly churn out. Marketing can—and should—play a hands-on role in removing those barriers.
That might involve designing onboarding emails that respond to user behavior in real time, or developing micro-content like tooltips, videos and interactive guides that nudge users toward success. It also means working closely with product and customer success teams to identify where users tend to stall during onboarding and proactively fixing it with smarter communication.
“Expansion starts the moment a user signs up. If you’re waiting for customer success or sales to handle it, you’re missing the window where marketing can accelerate product adoption.”
— Ryan Gould, COO & Executive VP, Client Strategy, Elevation Marketing
But the work doesn’t stop at acquisition. In a PLG model, marketing stays involved long after the initial signup. The real growth often occurs during expansion, when users discover new features, add seats or upgrade to more advanced tiers.
This is an area where many organizations struggle: most marketing teams are set up to drive sign-ups, not long-term product engagement. But in PLG, helping users expand means guiding them deeper into the product’s ecosystem. It requires marketing to stay involved long after the first login. It’s about making sure they continue to find value, whether that’s through feature adoption campaigns, personalized education or in-app nudges that encourage additional use cases.
Product-qualified leads (PQLs) play a key role here. These are users or accounts that hit specific usage milestones, indicating they’re ready for expansion. But identifying a PQL isn’t enough—you need the right marketing strategy to engage them at the right moment, with the right message, to convert product momentum into revenue growth.
PLG marketing also includes building programs that turn your most engaged users into advocates. Whether it’s community development, referral programs or user-generated content, advocacy is a powerful part of the PLG flywheel.
How Agencies Help Build PLG-Ready Marketing Engines
Implementing PLG isn’t just a product decision—it’s an organizational shift. For many B2B companies, marketing and product teams still operate in silos. Sales owns expansion. Marketing owns acquisition. Product owns onboarding. In a PLG world, those lines blur. Agencies can help companies navigate that change and build marketing systems that support the entire product-led journey.
Agencies bring outside perspective to messaging and positioning. In PLG, you can’t rely on a sales call to clarify value. Your website, your onboarding flows, your in-app content—they all need to communicate the product’s value clearly and quickly. Agencies help teams articulate what outcomes the product enables and why users should care, without making them wade through feature lists.
Agencies also help orchestrate full-funnel, lifecycle marketing strategies. That includes creating campaigns tied to product behavior, not just persona-based buyer journeys. It might mean building in-app messaging sequences that align with marketing efforts or developing content that teaches users how to get more out of advanced features once they’ve mastered the basics.
Perhaps most importantly, agencies can help bridge the gap between teams. In a successful PLG model, marketing, product and sales need to collaborate around shared goals. Here’s the tricky part: these teams usually have different definitions of success, and that misalignment can kill momentum. Agencies can facilitate alignment by helping define product-qualified lead criteria, building playbooks for usage-based marketing automation and making sure sales and marketing are interpreting product signals the same way.
“Agencies shouldn’t just deliver assets—they should help design experiences that move users from sign-up to expansion. That’s the new standard.”
— Susan Saltwell, VP, Account Services, Elevation Marketing
The Opportunity in PLG for B2B Marketing Teams
Product-led growth doesn’t mean growth happens on autopilot.
It requires intentional strategy, cross-functional collaboration and marketing leadership throughout the customer journey.
For B2B companies, PLG is an opportunity to rethink how marketing can contribute to growth—not just by filling the funnel, but by owning more of the customer lifecycle. From first touch to first use, from initial activation to expansion, marketing is central to driving long-term value.
“PLG isn’t about cutting sales out of the loop—it’s about creating a growth engine where marketing, product and sales work together to drive deeper engagement.”
— Rowan Harper, Sr. Director, Client Development, Elevation Marketing
If your organization is exploring PLG—or struggling to operationalize it—we can help. At Elevation Marketing, we work with B2B brands to build data-driven, full-funnel PLG strategies that drive both adoption and expansion. Let’s talk about what that could look like for your business.
