How B2B Can Steal the Best Product-Led Growth Moves from B2C

Hey everyone, 

I hope you’re having a relaxing summer Sunday. It’s a perfect day in NYC, and the incredible energy in the air is making me feel like this is about to be a legendary summer.

If you’re in NYC this Wednesday: I’m speaking at the “Creative Innovation & Consumer Insights in the Age of AI Summit” hosted by Johannes Leonardo and Suzy.

I’ll be leading a session on “The Voice of the Consumer, Reimagined” and will go deeper on how brands can truly connect with their target audience, discover new ones, and measure ROI.

Ultimately, the loudest voice in your marketing strategy shouldn’t be yours. It should be the consumer’s. Your job is to turn their voice into growth. 

Let me know if you’re going to be there.

Increasing product-led growth is one of the most important difficult things that B2B teams are struggling to figure out.

I’ve talked to B2B founder friends recently, ranging from different businesses like a 1-year old, venture backed B2B fintech ($3M/ARR) to a 9-year-old bootstrapped manufacturer (as high as $30M net revenue/year), and they all know unlocking this is key to the next phase of growth.

In B2C, if you don’t have product led growth built into the experience, you’re dead on arrival.

High churn and relentless acquisition costs mean you need viral loops, frictionless onboarding, and user advocacy built into your product….or why are you even trying. These are the basics.

Without them, you risk getting stuck on a “CAC treadmill” where you’re dependent on paying for new users because you missed the most critical function: product-led growth.

B2C has mastered this, and B2B companies are realizing they need to finally catch up. 

No matter your B2B business model, this is a critical gap that your fellow founders and execs across the board are trying to close. That means if it's not already on your mind, it should be. 

Today, I’ll walk you through the top product led growth strategies you can build into your B2B product that are proven wins in B2C: 

Link sharing is the bread and butter of growth in B2C products, and very view B2B companies have mastered this.

Example of B2B company that does this well: DocuSign forces users to share links via email to execute documents.

Without this user behavior taking off, your product is stuck in the pre-product market fit phase (too early to call the product a failure, but definitely not yet a success).

Link sharing can be an incredibly simple PLG hack that multiplies the amount of people brought into your product experience. Here are the successful aspects of link sharing:

Link sharing is a huge unlock because most PLG signals (e.g. organic virality, word-of-mouth, internal referrals) are hard to track and it gives you a clear window into how your product spreads with a low eng lift.

Also, don’t forget you can guide the user to share the link through nudging via CTAs, tooltips, etc. 

B2C companies grow from UGC: content in communities, templates, and user resources. In B2B, you should leverage these same winning assets to boost PLG: people can learn from each other, become power users, and start building their own workflows on your platform.

This will make your product 10x stickier. Here are a few of my favorites:

A huge bonus from UGC is that these UGC loops double as a listening engine. What users build tells you what they actually want and how they’re hacking your system to get there.

I’m a huge fan of letting the compounded creativity of users influence product roadmaps. Try this out! 

If you’re a consumer company without network effects, people wonder what you’re even doing.

B2B isn’t off the hook either and founders know that the more users from a company or industry adopt their product, the stickier it gets.

But, here’s the huge blind spot builders forget: If you assign a visible status, tier, or ranking to every user or organization, you tap into industry competitiveness, which is where the fun really starts. Then, it’s about both using your product and outperforming peers.

This creates a feedback loop where companies in the same (or even competing) industries push each other to adopt faster, use more features, and stay engaged longer.

Smart B2B products build these features:

I know so many of you are still running the same boring, traditional B2B sales funnel (yes, this is how you try to sell me your tools + retain me, I hate it):

→ SDR/AE sources + closes the deal
→ Onboarding happens live over Zoom
→ You drop the customer into a Slack channel or email thread
→ You “check in” every 2, 4, or 6 weeks hoping they’re still engaged

This manual, expensive, linear, and boring flow flat out isn’t enough and leaves your customers without sufficient resources, causing friction + pushing back the “aha” moment.

Think about it: In B2C, no one needs a rep to explain how to use Instagram or Dropbox. The product pulls you in, shows value, and makes you want to invite others.

Top resources I’m seeing the best B2B companies build (copied from top B2C) to keep customers happy, guide them along the journey, and, boost product led growth:

My B2B subscribers asked for help, so this newsletter is my gift: the best hacks to grow faster and get stickier with product-led growth.

It reflects a bigger trend I’m seeing: B2B companies stealing smart moves from consumer playbooks. Why should consumer brands have all the virality + fun?

Pick one of these hacks to build this week. You can even launch a YouTube tutorial page in <45 minutes.

Bonus if you wrap it in community — obsessed, engaged customers are your strongest moat.

Stop waiting for your users to “figure it out.” Give them the tools, templates, and community they need and watch your PLG explode!

Can’t wait to chat again next Sunday. Have a fun and productive week until then!

Julia

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