4 Ps Growth Framework

How to choose your growth lever considering your product-market-fit stage.

Choosing where to begin with growth initiatives can be challenging for marketing leaders. In an online content delivered by Holly Chen, former marketer for Google and Slack, I encountered a powerful framework called the 4P Growth Strategy Framework that provides a structured approach to growth planning.

Summary

Product Market Fit Stage	Growth Levers (4Ps)
Pre-PMF	Product: Invite, Share, Word of Mouth
Post-PMF	Public: PR, SEO Content, UGC/Communities
Scale	Paid: Ads, Sales Teams, Partnerships
Maturity	Platform: APIs/SDK, Integrations, Marketplace

Pre-Product Market Fit (PMF)

You're just starting out or validating product-market fit.

1) Growth Lever: Product - Design viral mechanisms

• Tactics:

  • Use Invite features if your product benefits from network effects (e.g., Slack grew team-by-team using invites).

  • Enable Share mechanisms for products where users gain value from sharing (e.g., Dropbox, Figma).

  • Focus on Word of Mouth when customer experience is the differentiator.

• Possible Success Metrics:

  • User activation rate

  • Referral rate

  • NPS score

• ExampleMo: Slack: Used invite system to grow team-by-team

Post-Product Market Fit

You have happy customers and clear product value.

2) Growth Lever: Public - Build the public growth machine

• Tactics:

  • Use PR for newsworthy milestones or unique stories.

  • Invest in SEO Content when users actively search for solutions in your space.

  • Develop UGC/Community where users are passionate, and knowledge-sharing is valuable (e.g., Notion's public templates marketplace).

• Possible Success Metrics:

  • Organic traffic growth

  • Community engagement

  • Content reach

• Example: Notion: Built public templates marketplace

Scale

You have strong unit economics and market presence.

3) Growth Lever: Paid - Accelerate growth with paid mechanisms

• Tactics:

  • Deploy Ads when you can predict customer lifetime value (CLTV).

  • Build Sales Teams for deal sizes justifying personal outreach.

  • Develop Partnerships for win-win distribution deals (e.g., Salesforce’s AppExchange ecosystem).

• Possible Success Metrics:

  • CAC/LTV ratio

  • Sales efficiency

  • Partnership ROI

• Example: Salesforce: AppExchange ecosystem

Maturity

You have significant market presence and developer interest.

4) Growth Lever: Platform - Dominate with platform strategies

• Tactics:

  • Build APIs/SDKs when others want to build on your infrastructure.

  • Create Integrations for users needing your product to work with other tools.

  • Launch a Marketplace to attract suppliers and buyers.

• Possible Success Metrics:

  • API adoption rate

  • Integration usage

  • Marketplace GMV

• Example: Stripe: Developer-first API platform

More Examples:

Invite/Share Tactic:

Notion (Enterprise) launched their AI feature in early 2023 with a workspace-wide free trial strategy: the number of complimentary AI responses increased with more workspace members, incentivizing existing users to invite colleagues to join their workspace to get more collective AI credits. This helped drive bottom-up enterprise adoption. [Ref: Notion's Official AI Launch Blog, February 2023]