Early stage PLG startups should completely ignore company level value props.

🖥️ Especially on their landing pages.

↳ (But also for acquisition in general)

💢 Individual users simply do not care about your enterprise value.

They care about solving their own problems.

There are 3 acquisition messaging levels to consider:

🟢 Role Level Messaging

This messaging meets the individual user where they are by focusing on:

→ their specific situation (context)

→ their specific challenges (problem)

→ their specific JTBD (use cases)

The goal here is to get a single user into your product to start the journey towards continuous value.

🟡 Team Level Messaging

This level is similar to role level messaging, but moves up a notch on the org chart speaking speaking to:

→ team situations

→ team challenges

→ team JTBD

🧑‍💼 often times this message will be speaking to the manager’s perspective on the team.

In some cases, you can merge the Team & Role level messaging because the challenges and use cases are shared and understood across the entire team.

Loom

is a good example of this (see image)

↳ They message mostly at the team level

🔥 For early-stage startups taking a PLG approach, I advocate for dialing in the messaging to the role level.

The more specific the message…

The higher likelihood of resonating.

🔴 Company Level Messaging

This messaging is mostly geared towards investors and C-Level executives who care about:

→ the company situation

→ the company challenges

→ the company JTBD

But for PLG, these personas don’t matter yet.

⛔️ They are NOT your users.

And they won’t have any impact on your growth until much later.

Save this messaging for the sales team or when you start adding a PLS motion.

But even then, tread softly.

💡 Company level messaging is complex and involves deploying multiple team level messages sequentially in a sales process to various stakeholders before you can actually land an enterprise message to the C-Suite.

——

The takeaway for early stage PLG startups?

🎯 Keep your acquisition messaging highly targeted to the individual user.

💀 And don’t fall into the trap of explaining your enterprise value too early.