Brand Is the Growth Lever Everyone Keeps Skipping
TL;DR
- Classic PLG loops assumed humans controlled discovery. AI has changed that: buyers now arrive pre-informed, with a shortlist already formed.
- Figma used Profound to find that designers searched for them by name, while PMs, founders, and developers asked broad problem-level questions Figma's content wasn't answering.
- Brand-led growth is how companies scale regardless of go-to-market model, because brand is the signal AI systems use to decide who's worth citing.
Figma used Profound to research how different personas were prompting AI about their product space before launching Figma Make. What they found changed how they thought about growth. Reema Batta, VP of Growth Marketing - PLG & Sales Assist at Figma, walked through the whole story at Zero Click SF, and it's worth understanding in full.
Classic PLG runs on a simple loop: make the product easy to find, get users to value fast, delight them enough that they pull others in. It worked because humans controlled every step of discovery. They found the product, got hooked, and became the growth engine.
The thing is, discovery largely no longer starts with a keyword or a referral. It starts with a question asked to an AI. By the time a user arrives at your product, AI has already done the research, compressed the consideration journey, and formed an opinion about which solution is worth trying. A human is still making the final call, but they're arriving pre-informed in ways the classic PLG model never had to account for.
What Figma found when they looked upstream
The Profound research surfaced a clean split. Designers searched for Figma by name (they already knew the product). But PMs, developers, founders, and marketers weren't searching for Figma at all. They were asking broad, problem-level questions: the kind Figma Make was built to answer, but that Figma's existing content wasn't speaking to.
This technical insight was useful. But what Figma did with it is the part worth studying.
They didn't just restructure their content architecture. They launched a global brand campaign, partnered with leading model providers, invested in earned media and creators, and ran hands-on events worldwide. The discovery work told them where to show up. The brand work made them worth choosing when they got there.
That distinction matters more than most growth teams realize.
Brand-led growth isn't a campaign strategy. It's infrastructure.
Here's how I think about it at Edgar Allan. Brand-led growth is how companies scale, regardless of whether they are product-led or sales-led. If you are PLG, brand is what earns you the citation before the user ever tries the product. If you are sales-led, brand is the reputation that precedes your team into every conversation.
Brand is the accumulated signal AI systems, buyers, and markets use to decide whether you're worth their attention. A campaign is a song. Brand is the whole record.
What Reema’s talk made clear is that the brands winning in AI search aren't just the ones with the best content architecture. They're the ones whose reputation is consistent and credible enough that AI systems default to citing them. That’s not a technical problem, it’s a brand problem, and no amount of prompt research or cosine similarity scoring solves it on its own.
This is the same pattern we see across EA's client work. AEO content strategy can tell you where the gaps are. Brand strategy is what fills them in a way that compounds. Every citation builds authority. Every consistent mention trains the model toward you. The companies that understand brand and performance as a single system, rather than separate disciplines, build an advantage that gets harder to close over time.
That's what we're building toward at Edgar Allan. Zero Click SF made me more confident than ever that it's the right direction.
Part of a series covering Zero Click SF. Thank you to the Profound team for putting together one of the best single-day conferences on AI search I’ve attended.
What is product-led growth, and why is AI disrupting it?
Product-led growth is a go-to-market model where the product itself drives acquisition, retention, and expansion — users discover it, get value quickly, and refer others. AI disrupts the discovery leg of that loop. When buyers start their research in ChatGPT or Perplexity rather than a search engine, the product no longer surfaces through traditional channels first. An AI system surfaces it, and that system's opinion is shaped by brand signals, not product experience. If your brand isn't clear and credible in the sources AI reads, you may not make the initial shortlist at all.
How did Figma use Profound to inform their go-to-market approach?
Figma used Profound to research how different buyer personas were prompting AI about the problem space Figma Make was built to address. What they found was a significant gap: designers already knew and searched for Figma by name, but PMs, developers, founders, and marketers were asking broad, problem-level questions that Figma's existing content wasn't answering. That research informed both their content strategy and the broader brand investment they made around the Figma Make launch, including a global campaign, model provider partnerships, and in-person events.
What does "brand-led growth" mean in practice for a B2B company?
It means treating brand consistency and clarity as a growth input, not a communications output. Practically: your positioning says the same thing everywhere — your site, your content, your executives' public voices, your third-party mentions. Your category ownership is explicit enough that AI systems can place you accurately. Your content demonstrates expertise rather than just awareness. For a B2B company, this often means auditing what AI currently says about you in category-level prompts and identifying where the story breaks down. That gap between your intended positioning and what AI repeats is where brand-led growth work begins.
If we already have SEO and content programs, do we need a separate brand strategy effort?
Usually, yes, because SEO and content programs are typically built around what people search for, not how AI systems evaluate credibility. The Webflow AEO playbook addresses the structural side. But structural optimization without clear positioning produces technically findable content that AI can't confidently attribute to a category leader. Brand strategy is what gives the technical work a story to optimize toward.
How does Edgar Allan connect brand strategy to AEO performance?
We start upstream, with positioning and category clarity, before touching content structure or schema. The reason is practical: an AI system's decision to cite your brand is a reputation judgment, not a ranking calculation. We use Profound to establish a baseline of how your brand currently appears in AI-generated answers, then identify where the story is inconsistent or missing. From there, brand strategy, site architecture, and content structure are developed as a connected system, so the signal AI reads is coherent from the positioning brief through to the page.
Figma used Profound to research how different personas were prompting AI about their product space before launching Figma Make. What they found changed how they thought about growth. Reema Batta, VP of Growth Marketing - PLG & Sales Assist at Figma, walked through the whole story at Zero Click SF, and it's worth understanding in full.
Classic PLG runs on a simple loop: make the product easy to find, get users to value fast, delight them enough that they pull others in. It worked because humans controlled every step of discovery. They found the product, got hooked, and became the growth engine.
The thing is, discovery largely no longer starts with a keyword or a referral. It starts with a question asked to an AI. By the time a user arrives at your product, AI has already done the research, compressed the consideration journey, and formed an opinion about which solution is worth trying. A human is still making the final call, but they're arriving pre-informed in ways the classic PLG model never had to account for.
What Figma found when they looked upstream
The Profound research surfaced a clean split. Designers searched for Figma by name (they already knew the product). But PMs, developers, founders, and marketers weren't searching for Figma at all. They were asking broad, problem-level questions: the kind Figma Make was built to answer, but that Figma's existing content wasn't speaking to.
This technical insight was useful. But what Figma did with it is the part worth studying.
They didn't just restructure their content architecture. They launched a global brand campaign, partnered with leading model providers, invested in earned media and creators, and ran hands-on events worldwide. The discovery work told them where to show up. The brand work made them worth choosing when they got there.
That distinction matters more than most growth teams realize.
Brand-led growth isn't a campaign strategy. It's infrastructure.
Here's how I think about it at Edgar Allan. Brand-led growth is how companies scale, regardless of whether they are product-led or sales-led. If you are PLG, brand is what earns you the citation before the user ever tries the product. If you are sales-led, brand is the reputation that precedes your team into every conversation.
Brand is the accumulated signal AI systems, buyers, and markets use to decide whether you're worth their attention. A campaign is a song. Brand is the whole record.
What Reema’s talk made clear is that the brands winning in AI search aren't just the ones with the best content architecture. They're the ones whose reputation is consistent and credible enough that AI systems default to citing them. That’s not a technical problem, it’s a brand problem, and no amount of prompt research or cosine similarity scoring solves it on its own.
This is the same pattern we see across EA's client work. AEO content strategy can tell you where the gaps are. Brand strategy is what fills them in a way that compounds. Every citation builds authority. Every consistent mention trains the model toward you. The companies that understand brand and performance as a single system, rather than separate disciplines, build an advantage that gets harder to close over time.
That's what we're building toward at Edgar Allan. Zero Click SF made me more confident than ever that it's the right direction.
Part of a series covering Zero Click SF. Thank you to the Profound team for putting together one of the best single-day conferences on AI search I’ve attended.
What is product-led growth, and why is AI disrupting it?
Product-led growth is a go-to-market model where the product itself drives acquisition, retention, and expansion — users discover it, get value quickly, and refer others. AI disrupts the discovery leg of that loop. When buyers start their research in ChatGPT or Perplexity rather than a search engine, the product no longer surfaces through traditional channels first. An AI system surfaces it, and that system's opinion is shaped by brand signals, not product experience. If your brand isn't clear and credible in the sources AI reads, you may not make the initial shortlist at all.
How did Figma use Profound to inform their go-to-market approach?
Figma used Profound to research how different buyer personas were prompting AI about the problem space Figma Make was built to address. What they found was a significant gap: designers already knew and searched for Figma by name, but PMs, developers, founders, and marketers were asking broad, problem-level questions that Figma's existing content wasn't answering. That research informed both their content strategy and the broader brand investment they made around the Figma Make launch, including a global campaign, model provider partnerships, and in-person events.
What does "brand-led growth" mean in practice for a B2B company?
It means treating brand consistency and clarity as a growth input, not a communications output. Practically: your positioning says the same thing everywhere — your site, your content, your executives' public voices, your third-party mentions. Your category ownership is explicit enough that AI systems can place you accurately. Your content demonstrates expertise rather than just awareness. For a B2B company, this often means auditing what AI currently says about you in category-level prompts and identifying where the story breaks down. That gap between your intended positioning and what AI repeats is where brand-led growth work begins.
If we already have SEO and content programs, do we need a separate brand strategy effort?
Usually, yes, because SEO and content programs are typically built around what people search for, not how AI systems evaluate credibility. The Webflow AEO playbook addresses the structural side. But structural optimization without clear positioning produces technically findable content that AI can't confidently attribute to a category leader. Brand strategy is what gives the technical work a story to optimize toward.
How does Edgar Allan connect brand strategy to AEO performance?
We start upstream, with positioning and category clarity, before touching content structure or schema. The reason is practical: an AI system's decision to cite your brand is a reputation judgment, not a ranking calculation. We use Profound to establish a baseline of how your brand currently appears in AI-generated answers, then identify where the story is inconsistent or missing. From there, brand strategy, site architecture, and content structure are developed as a connected system, so the signal AI reads is coherent from the positioning brief through to the page.