My first product marketing role was at a sales-led company. And there, product marketing felt a bit like sending a message in a bottle.

I’d craft positioning, build decks, train the sales team, maybe shadow a few calls — and then hope it landed. If it didn’t? I had to wait for someone to toss feedback back over the fence. And since this was before AI call summaries and Gong recordings, that feedback was usually slow and subjective.

Then I joined FreshBooks.

Suddenly, I had something I’d never had before: a giant, always-on dataset. We had millions of small business customers using the product, which meant I could actually see who converted — and why. I wasn’t guessing anymore, I was analyzing.

Instead of hoping a sales rep remembered to mention what worked in a call, I could track exactly which onboarding paths led to activation. I could see what successful customers did in their first 7 days. I could experiment, measure, iterate.

And that’s when I had the aha moment: product-led growth requires a different kind of PMM.

The idea came up again in our PMM Camp bonfire this week with Wes Bush, the author of Product-Led Growth. As Wes put it, PMMs in PLG orgs can’t just tell great stories, they have to bring them to life inside the product.

So in today’s edition, we’re going to explore those differences and what it really takes to thrive as a PLG PMM.

The Product-Led PMM

In a sales-led org, you win through influence. In a product-led org, you win through insight.

That means your muscles — and your mindset — have to be different.

You need to be embedded in the product, not orbiting around it. You need to know how to define and measure success without relying on someone else’s (ie. sales) interpretation. And you need to get really, really good at understanding the data.

PLG isn’t just a pricing model or a freemium motion. It’s a strategic commitment to letting the product speak for itself. And that fundamentally changes how product marketers operate.

Here are a few shifts we discussed with Wes 👇🏻

The feedback loop is direct

You’re not waiting for sales or CS to relay what they’re hearing. Instead, you’re watching user behavior in real time and making decisions from it. You can spot friction before the user files a ticket. You can see if your homepage copy actually converts, not just if the CEO liked it.

It’s experimental

In PLG, your launch isn’t the finish line — it’s the start of the test. You put your strongest hypothesis out to market, and then you watch, learn, and optimize. Messaging isn’t precious. It’s iterative. If you’re overly attached to clever taglines or a perfect playbook, PLG will humble you fast. After all, the data doesn’t lie.

The product tells the story

In a sales-led motion, a rep can fill in the gaps for the prospect. It’s their job to connect the dots, answer the questions, and tell the story. But in PLG, the product is the story. You’ve got one shot to show value on the homepage, or in that first 5 minutes of onboarding. There’s no follow-up call. You either earn attention or you lose it.

PMMs should own the whole journey

One of the most overlooked opportunities for PMMs in PLG orgs is everything that happens after sign-up. Your job doesn’t stop at acquisition, it extends through activation, habit formation, adoption, and expansion. You’re not just telling a story; you’re architecting an experience that accelerates time to value and deepens it over time. This is why I’ve always advocated for PMM and lifecycle marketing to sit together.

How do these shifts impact your strategy as a leader?

It means we need to stop assuming any PMM can thrive in a PLG org just because they’ve done “positioning and messaging.” Some can — and do. But many find themselves overwhelmed by the pace, the ambiguity, and the expectation that they own not just what we say, but how it performs inside the product.

I’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve had people join my team who were excellent in sales-led orgs but once they entered a PLG environment, they realized how different the job really was.

They weren’t used to being this close to product. Or needing to partner with growth teams. Or defining success metrics that weren’t handed to them. They missed the buffer that sales once provided.

That doesn’t make anyone less skilled or capable (the same can be said for the reverse — PLG PMMs won’t thrive in a sales-led environment either). It just means we need to treat PLG as its own PMM specialization. One that requires data fluency, UX empathy, and a bias for testing, not just storytelling.

The good news? If you do lean into those skills, you become indispensable.

The best PMMs I’ve seen in PLG orgs are deeply curious about the product and the data. They don’t just want to tell a great story, they want to see how that story performs in the wild.

The PLG PMM is part scientist, part artist.

CAMPER ESSENTIALS

📚 Reading List: Wes Bush recently released his third book, The Product-Led Playbook. This book covers the 9 essential components of a product-led company, and how to implement each one.

📚 Reading List: OpenView’s PLG Guide dives deep on benchmarks, metrics, and org design.

I’m headed to Boise this week for Kit’s Craft + Commerce conference. Looking for the best spot for iced coffee if you’ve got any recos 👀