The Missing Piece in Your Product-Led Growth Strategy? Unified Data.

Inbound

April 7, 2025

The Missing Piece in Your Product-Led Growth Strategy? Unified Data.

What if your best growth strategy isn't a new channel or campaign, but simply connecting the dots you already have? In a special INBOUND 2024 session moderated by HubSpot's Karen Ng, Francois Ajenstat (CPO, Amplitude) and Andy Pitre (EVP of Product, HubSpot) shared their thoughts on one of the most pressing challenges for growth-focused companies: how to unify customer data across marketing, sales, and product to drive sustainable revenue growth.

They offered practical insights on leveraging unified data and product-led growth strategies that any business can implement—regardless of size or industry. Get the scoop on why it matters for your growth strategy, plus pick up some quick wins on how to implement these takeaways immediately.

DATA SILOS ARE KILLING YOUR GROWTH

The modern customer journey generates signals from everywhere—your website, marketing campaigns, social channels, product usage, and support interactions. Yet most companies still operate with these data streams trapped in separate silos.

"The more you know about your customers, the faster you can grow," noted Ajenstat. But that knowledge remains incomplete when teams can't access the full picture.

What makes this particularly damaging is what Ajenstat calls "a missed opportunity"—data without action. When marketing can't see product usage signals, when sales lacks visibility into which features drive value, or when product teams build features without understanding customer acquisition challenges, everyone operates with incomplete information.

"Unifying that data is the missing link that makes all of this possible," Ajenstat emphasized.

Quick Win: Identify where your customer data currently lives. Map the gaps between what marketing knows, what sales sees, and what product teams track. These blind spots are likely costing you conversions.

YOUR PRODUCT SHOULD BE YOUR BEST SALESPERSON

Product-led growth isn't just another industry buzzword—it's a real shift in how today's customers want to discover, explore, and adopt solutions.

"What if your product was your best sales person? Wouldn't that be pretty amazing?" Ajenstat asked the audience.

"PLG is not just a marketing channel. It's not a product innovation thing. It's a whole new way of thinking about the role that product can play within your customer journey."

This shift reflects changing buyer preferences. As Pitre pointed out, "How many people would rather just try a product themselves rather than get a demo of the product? I think most hands are going up."

But contrary to some fears, this approach doesn't eliminate the need for sales teams. Now, reps aren't starting cold. They're stepping into conversations with prospects who've already experienced value firsthand. That means fewer friction points and way more meaningful conversations.

Quick Win: Identify parts of your sales process that could be replaced with self-service product experiences. Could prospects test a feature, access content, or solve a problem themselves before talking to sales?

PQLs: THE GOLD STANDARD OF LEAD QUALITY

The evolution of lead qualification has reached a new pinnacle with product qualified leads (PQLs)—prospects who have already experienced value from your product.

"If I told you I could give you a lead that converts eight times better than another lead, would you want it?" Ajenstat asked. "PQLs convert eight times better than an MQL. That's a hot lead."

The key is identifying the specific "value moments" within your product that indicate a user is likely to convert. Take Facebook who discovered that users with at least seven friends became lifetime users. Online learning platform Udemy found that users interested in learning three different skills were more likely to purchase subscriptions.

These insights completely transform how companies approach both product development and sales motions. For Udemy, this meant creating bundle offers of three classes. For Amplitude, it meant optimizing for users who save their first chart.

And it's not just for SaaS. "I think you should think of your website as the product," Pitre pointed out. The same logic applies. What are people doing on your site that signals they're getting value? Those behaviors can be just as telling as in-product actions.

Quick Win: Pinpoint what actions indicate a prospect is finding real value from your offering. Start tracking these behaviors and prioritize outreach to those who reach these milestones.

MEASURE, EXPERIMENT, ITERATE

If there was one theme Ajenstat and Pitre kept coming back to, it was: don't wait to get perfect, just get moving. "You can't improve what you don't measure," Ajenstat reminded the audience.

Rather than waiting for perfect data infrastructure, both speakers encouraged a bias toward action.

"Don't boil the ocean. Just get started," Ajenstat advised. "Start by just connecting the data that you have and making it available to the people who know the business." Pitre added, "Move fast and iterate. Don't obsess. Don't get paralyzed by data. It's all about progress, not perfection."

They also emphasized looking for retention patterns in your data. "You're looking for moments where retention starts to flatten out.... Where are you going to have the customers forever?" Pitre explained.

Quick Win: Choose one key customer action to measure, create a baseline, then run three small experiments to improve it within the next 30 days.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR 2025

As we look ahead, companies that successfully unify data streams will create more personalized customer journeys, identify qualified prospects more efficiently, and ultimately grow faster than competitors still operating with siloed information.

Watch the full conversation on The Power of Unified Data here.

Want to experience more insights like these firsthand? Mark your calendar for INBOUND 2025 and join the conversation about the future of customer-centric growth.