Product-Led Growth Checklist: A Practical Guide

If you’ve ever wondered how some SaaS products grow almost by themselves, there’s a good chance they’re following a product-led growth (PLG) strategy. In this post, I’ll walk you through a practical product-led growth checklist you can use to prioritize experiments, measure what matters, and align your teams around product-driven user activation and retention.

Why a product-led growth checklist matters

Think of PLG as letting your product do the selling. Instead of depending solely on a big sales team or expensive advertising, you rely on the product experience to drive adoption. But that doesn’t happen by accident — it requires a clear plan. A checklist keeps you focused on the core loops that turn visitors into active users and then paying customers.

How to use this checklist

Use this list as a living document. Run weekly or bi-weekly reviews with product, marketing, and customer success to track progress. You don’t need every item perfect day one — prioritize what’s most likely to move your metrics.

Core sections of the product-led growth checklist

1. Understand the core product value

• Define the primary user job-to-be-done (JTBD). What problem does the product solve in one sentence?
• Create a one-minute demo that highlights that JTBD — record it and use it across channels.
• Map the simplest path to value: what’s the fewest steps a user needs to see the product’s core value?

2. Onboarding & activation

Activation is the moment a user first experiences meaningful value. Nail this, and adoption skyrockets.

• Design an onboarding flow focused on completing the key activation milestone.
• Use progressive disclosure: hide advanced features until users are ready.
• Measure time-to-first-value (TTFV) and reduce it iteratively.

3. Product analytics and instrumentation

Data lets you know whether changes actually work.

• Instrument events for sign-ups, key feature usage, activation, retention, and churn triggers.
• Set up funnels to measure conversion at each step of the journey.
• Track cohort retention and activation rate by acquisition source.

4. Virality and sharing mechanics

• Identify natural invite points where users benefit from bringing others (collaboration, shareables, referrals).
• Make invites frictionless: pre-populate messages, one-click invites, calendar integrations.
• Test referral rewards carefully — they should encourage long-term value, not just sign-ups.

5. Pricing and monetization

• Align pricing to value metrics (e.g., seats, projects, usage) so upgrades are intuitive.
• Offer a clear free tier or trial that showcases the core value without blocking growth.
• Run experiments on packaging, not just price — sometimes adding a premium feature works better than dropping the price.

6. Retention loops and product stickiness

Retention is the lifeblood of PLG. Work on making your product indispensable.

• Build habit-forming features: notifications, recurring value, saved states.
• Proactively address churn signals: survey churned users, automate win-back flows.
• Use product analytics to identify features correlated with long-term retention.

7. Cross-functional alignment

PLG isn’t just product’s job — it’s about alignment across teams.

• Hold regular GTM syncs: product, marketing, sales, and CS.
• Define shared KPIs (activation rate, MRR per user, NPS) so teams move in the same direction.
• Document experiments and outcomes so knowledge is accessible to everyone.

8. Experimentation and growth loops

• Run hypothesis-driven experiments with clear metrics and stop/go criteria.
• Prioritize changes with the highest impact and lowest effort first.
• Keep an experiment backlog and review learnings regularly.

Sample weekly PLG checklist (practical)

1. Review activation funnel and identify the biggest drop-off.
2. Launch one micro-experiment to reduce TTFV (e.g., inline tips, pre-filled sample data).
3. Check cohort retention for last three months and flag anomalies.
4. Confirm analytics events fired correctly for new releases.
5. Gather qualitative feedback from 3–5 users experiencing activation issues.

Tools that help

There are lots of tools for PLG — analytics, user feedback, and onboarding builders. Pick ones that integrate with your stack and don’t over-instrument. Start with product analytics, session replay, and an in-app messaging tool.

Personal tip

I once worked on a product where adding a single, in-product template increased activation by 18% in two weeks. It was low effort but solved a real friction point: users didn’t know what to do after sign-up. That taught me to prioritize real user problems over flashy features.

Wrapping up

Use this product-led growth checklist as a framework, not a rulebook. Test, learn, and iterate. If you keep focusing on time-to-first-value, retention loops, and cross-functional alignment, you’ll be surprised how often the product itself becomes your best growth channel.

If you want a one-page version of this checklist to print and share in meetings, drop a comment or message me — I’m happy to help customize it to your product.