“The Product-Led Playbook” has been written by Wes Bush as a practical companion to his previous books about product-led growth. Bush’s earlier book, Product-led growth, is all about designing and building products in such a way that the product itself can drive user acquisition, expansion, and retention. Things like subscription renewals or account upgrades are all done through the product, with the user being in full control.
In The Product-Led Playbook, Bush talks about building an unshakable foundation, unlocking self-serve customers and igniting exponential expansion as the three stages of creating a ‘ProductLed System’.
1. Building an unshakable foundation
To help product-led businesses make the right strategic choices, Bush introduces the “Bullseye Strategy Framework”; five steps that underpin a high level strategy:
- Which market can you dominate as the obvious choice?
- Where will you play? (ideal customer, problem space, core product, marketing channels and target geography)
- How will you win? (defensibility of your business)
- What is your winning picture?
- What strategic choices must you make? (new capabilities to develop, existing capabilities to double down on and deprecating existing capabilities)
The next step at the foundation stage is to identify the ideal user of your product. In most B2B scenarios, buyers and users are often different people. Users interact with your product while buyers make the purchasing decision.
I like how Bush talks about the “end game” of your ideal user. What is the user capable of once they experience the value of your product? What will users see when they’re successful? Think for example about increased conversion rates or versatile sharing options.
You can then list and prioritise the top 3 outcomes that your product delivers on. Typically these involve: fix (immediate problems or pain), prevent (fear of missing out or harm) and improve (long-term gain or advantage). You can then translate these outcomes into user end game statements, which outline what it means when your user succeeds.
2. Unlock Self-Serve Customers
The goal is to convert “high touch” customers into “zero touch” customers who can self-serve. This starts with an “irresistible offer” — a combination of a compelling result, a clear advantage over market alternatives and addressing customer fears directly. You can take these components to assemble your offer page. Offer pages for SaaS companies such as Xero (see below), Dropbox and Figma are typically made up of the following sections: hero, problem, solution, risk reversal and call-to-action.
Frictionless onboarding is another core element of creating a self-service product experience, making it effortless for users to sign up, experience value and upgrade. In the book Bush shares the “Bowling Alley Framework”; a framework designed to win more customers by adding more bumpers to your product experience. The idea of adding bumpers to your product experience might sound counterintuitive, but the idea of these bumpers is to guide customers to their desired outcome.
The Bowling Alley Framework consist of three phases:
- Build your straight line — There are four steps to create the shortest distance from Point A to Point B. First, mapping out the fastest path to help users with their specific use case or problem to solve (see Canva example below). Second, adding a small number of profiling questions to personalise the user experience. Third, label each steep to figure out which steps are absolutely necessary for users to reach their desired outcomes. Fourth, define your straight line by only including essential steps to get users to their desired outcome.
- Include Product Bumpers — Product bumpers help users adopt the product within the application itself. The book lists the main product bumpers: welcome messages, product tours, progress bars, checklists, onboarding tooltips and empty states.
- Include Conversational Bumpers — Product bumpers only work if users access the product. If they don’t, you can use conversational bumpers which are designed to educate users and meet them where they are (and pull them back into your product). The book lists six main types of conversational bumpers: external messaging, knowledge base, in-app messaging, community forums, training and specialists.
The idea with the Bowling Alley Framework is that once you’ve built the straight line, you can layer in a product bumpers to make it dummy-proof for anyone to experience your product’s core value. You can use conversational bumpers to catch users where they are and assist them with their individual needs.
“Powerful pricing” is another key aspect of the Unlock Self-Serve Customers stage, with a focus on the product turning free users into high-paying customers. Here, Bush talks about using a “value metric” as the linchpin of a product-led Go To Market strategy. A value metric is the way you measure the value exchange through your product. For example:
- Number of videos uploaded as the value metric for a video platform.
- Number of users as the value metric for a communication application.
- Total revenue generated as the value metric for a payment processing platform.
Value metrics answer two key questions:
- What does our ideal customer want in a product or service?
- How much is the ideal customer willing and able to pay?
One of the easiest ways to spot a value metric, Bush explains, is to look at which items remain the same across all pricing packages but have different numerical amounts.
3. Ignite exponential expansion
“Actionable data” is a key requirement for product-led businesses’ ability to expand their customer base. Whereas in sales-led businesses you’ll talk to most users, in product-led companies the user learning will come from analysing in-product behaviours. Are your users getting to value? If not, where are they getting stuck, why?
In the book Bush recommends tracking three core metrics:
- North Star Metric: Identify one North Star Metric (depending on the scale stage — see above) and align your entire company around it.
- Go-to-Market Metrics: Gain a holistic understanding of the user journey with a scorecard that easily tracks each step of the user journey.
- Business Health Metrics: Understand how your business is really doing each week.
Once you’ve established the key metrics to track, it’s important to capture these in easily accessible scorecards and discuss teh metrics in targeted regular meetings.
Main learning point: : “The Product-Led Playbook” serves as a valuable resource for those looking to embrace product-led growth but seeking clear direction. Through its carefully structured ‘ProductLed System’, the book guides readers through three essential stages — building an unshakable foundation, unlocking self-serve customers, and igniting exponential expansion — offering practical frameworks and actionable approaches at each step.
Related links for further learning:
- https://openviewpartners.com/blog/product-led-homepage-examples/
- https://userpilot.com/blog/product-led-growth-examples/
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/wesbush_if-theres-just-one-metric-that-your-company-activity-7162060136654589952-8TzW/
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/three-true-north-metrics-your-product-business-need-itamar-gilad/
- https://productled.com/blog/value-metrics-for-product-led-growth
- https://productled.com/blog/how-to-build-a-company-scorecard
