Article

Why You Should Sell to Users, Not Buyers: A Product-Led Approach to Marketing

Ashley Murphy · OpenView Free Intermediate

This is the product-led growth counter-argument to old-school enterprise sales: design and market for the user first, and let user advocacy pull the buyer along. If your product can plausibly self-serve or free-trial its way to a user base, this shows you how that user groundswell becomes the thing that closes the buyer, not the other way around.

  • Users increasingly discover and champion products themselves, then tell the buyer what to purchase
  • Your website and onboarding should speak to what users can do, not just executive-level business outcomes
  • A groundswell of engaged users is itself a sales asset when it is time to reach the actual buyer
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The question it answers

  1. Should my ideal customer be the person who pays or the person who uses the product?

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