By Terry Shaw
Every product-led growth (PLG) company I’ve worked with has eventually hit a revenue-growth ceiling with the motion.
They’ve nailed activation, adoption, and expansion through self-serve users, but then average contract value (ACV) stalls. Bigger customers are circling but not signing. They want procurement reviews, SLAs, and ROI validation.
This is today’s inflection point where B2B Tech CMOs earn their stripes…
…Because moving a PLG business upmarket isn’t a sales problem. It’s a marketing transformation.
As CMO of a PLG business looking to crest into the Enterprise, your job shifts from driving signups to orchestrating a hybrid go-to-market (GTM).
You’re now connecting:
- Product signals (who’s using it, how, and when)
- Brand storytelling (why the product matters)
- Sales engagement (how to translate love into contracts)
Your mission becomes focused upon how to turn usage into conviction.
The goal is no longer just to get people in the product: it’s to move whole organizations through it, all the way to executive buy-in.
PLG messaging says “start free”; Enterprise messaging says “transform how your teams work”
This is the point at which you, the CMO, need to expand into a two-layer narrative:
- For users: speed, simplicity, empowerment.
- For execs: risk reduction, scale, and ROI.
…And the all-important bridge between them? Proof of scale.
The stories shared become about how a customer’s small team’s self-serve success grew into a company-wide transformation. Real customers. Real outcomes.
To labor the point (and I apologise for referencing something that’s been flogged to death the last few years, but I’ve not seen or originated a better descriptor) I summon the bowtie framework: usage → expansion → retention → advocacy.
It perfectly encapsulates how Marketing becomes the connective tissue:
- Define product-qualified leads (PQLs) with Product.
- Align with Sales on activation signals and timing.
- Measure usage-to-pipeline conversion, not just MQLs(!!!)
In an upmarket PLG motion, marketing fuels both adoption and acceleration.
…Which takes my summary to the matter of Revenue Alignment.
The modern CMO’s superpower is data orchestration.
Unify Product, Sales, and Marketing metrics around a shared dashboard which tracks:
- PQL into Opportunity Conversion Rate
- Expansion ARR
- Net revenue retention (NRR)
- Account engagement depth
When your Marketing function considers all of these metrics, it evolves from awareness- to outcomes- orientated. It becomes the growth architect.
But let’s be clear: this evolution is requisitely Adding to, not Replacing.
As you move into the mid-market and enterprise, you must not- cannot– lose your PLG soul.
Keep what made your brand magnetic:
- Stay open and community-driven.
- Keep product access frictionless.
- Retain your human, authentic voice.
The strongest enterprise brands to have emerged from PLG beginnings (I reference Notion, Dropbox, Miro, Figma, Hubspot, Asana, Slack, to name but-a-few) balance approachability and authority.
Upmarket doesn’t mean Corporate.
It means Confident.
Let’s be clear; going upmarket isn’t abandoning PLG. It’s graduating from it.
PLG builds love. Enterprise overlay converts that love into longevity.
And you, the CMO? You’re the market architect.