GROWTH HACKING Morgan Brown

ABOUT ME

•  12+ years of user acquisition, social and product marketing for startups.

•  Grown companies from 0 – 100k+ users in months 3 times.

•  Get geeked out about viral growth and product-oriented hacks.

•  2nd time here at OCPM – hoping to earn a 3rd.

WHAT IS GROWTH HACKING?

•  A methodology that leverages strategies aimed at unlocking growth at scale.

•  Growth by being smarter, not spending more, than the other guy.

•  The practice of finding exponential upside to marketing investment.

WHAT IS A GROWTH HACKER?

•  Hybrid skill set of marketing, product & engineering.

•  Ability to optimize for user acquisition at scale.

•  Ability to drive exponential growth from efforts.

WHY GROWTH HACKING?

•  Traditional marketing and growth channels are expensive and hyper-competitive.

•  Companies that are resource constrained can’t compete effectively in crowded spaces.

•  It’s about creating an unfair advantage by leveraging asymmetries in the market.

TENENTS OF GROWTH HACKING •  OBSESS OVER DATA

–  Know your customer exceptionally well. –  Measure everything.

•  CREATIVITY

–  Think different. –  Push the limits.

•  CURIOSITY –  Learn early, learn often. –  Poke around.

•  DIRTY HANDS –  Get in at the code & product level. –  Make, launch and break stuff.

CATEGORIES OF GROWTH HACKS

•  Platform integrations

•  Viral Growth

•  Analytics

•  Grab bag

PLATFORM INTEGRATION

Leveraging Super Networks

AIRBNB & CRAIGSLIST

•  Insight: –  Craigslist is where people were looking for rooms to rent, short

& long term. –  They could cross-post to Craigslist and tap a huge traffic

source.

•  Hack: –  Even without an API the AirBnB team figured out a way to

hack the Craigslist submission process.

•  Result: –  AirBnB drove more bookings (making customers happy) &

created new users at the same time.

AIRBNB & CRAIGSLIST

1.

2.

AIRBNB & CRAIGSLIST

3.

4. Source: http://www.quora.com/Airbnb/How-does-Airbnb-automatically-post-on-Craigslist

BRANCH OUT & FACEBOOK

•  Insight: –  People maintained a professional network on Facebook that was

often more engaged than on LinkedIn. –  They could leverage the size of Facebook and its Open Graph

permissions to drive growth.

•  Hack: –  One click invite send and account creation with Facebook

Connect. –  Which friend would you rather work with mechanic.

•  Result: –  Doubled size in a month. Went from 1MM to 10MM users in 3

months. Raised $24MM. –  BranchOut mostly irrelevant now. Why?

BRANCH OUT DOUBLES IN 1 MONTH

http://www.quora.com/How-did-BranchOut-double-within-a-month

YOUTUBE & MYSPACE

•  Insight: –  MySpace was where fans connected with musicians, but bands

couldn’t post video. –  If YouTube could make it easy to share video on MySpace

they’d instantly scale.

•  Hack: –  One click, Flash-based embeddable widget for video. Bands

and fans could finally watch and share music videos. –  Which friend would you rather work with mechanic.

•  Result: –  By 2006 YouTube’s reach grew past MySpace. The rest is

history.

TAKEAWAYS

•  Integrations should make both products better

•  Study (and ask about) user behavior to determine promising integrations

•  Test and discover valuable use cases

•  Measure conversions and revenue

VIRAL GROWTH Leveraging Friend Networks

DROPBOX •  Insight:

–  Traditional marketing wasn’t working. Were spending $300+ to acquire customers for a $99 service.

–  Activating customers was the key to paying accounts. –  Their asset had a very low marginal cost to give away.

•  Hack: –  Giving away free space in exchange for word of mouth referrals. –  Giving away free space in exchange for activation.

•  Result: –  Users sent 2.8 million direct referral invites in April 2010. –  In Sept. 2008 the service had 100,000 registered users. –  In Jan 2010 (15 mos.) the service had 4,000,000. –  No traditional ad spend.

http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-dos-donts-of-referral-invite-programs

DROPBOX MAKES INVITES FUN

http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-dos-donts-of-referral-invite-programs

LIVINGSOCIAL

•  Insight: –  Building an audience can be outside of the core product

experience. –  The cost of giving away a deal is shared by the merchant, giving

away deals cheaper than giving away cash.

•  Hack: –  Building a purely viral Facebook app called Pick Your 5, and

growing virally until pivoting to daily deals. –  A new twist on refer-a-friend with the 3-and-free dynamic.

•  Result: –  10’s of millions of Facebook app installs –  70MM users as of 11/12

LIVINGSOCIAL’s PICK YOUR 5

TAKEAWAYS

•  Viral growth doesn’t exist for every product.

•  Viral growth comes from value being created for the existing and new user.

•  Viral growth doesn’t have to come from your core product.

•  So many people use refer-a-friend. A twist is required to stand out.

DATA Deep insights to drive growth.

AIRBNB

•  Insight: –  Listings with better photos get more bookings.

•  Hack: –  Hacked product and customer experience to drive professional

photos for listings. –  Saw that listings with pro photos received 2-3x more bookings.

•  Result: –  Went from 20 photographers in the field in 2011 to doing 5,000

shoots per month. –  Traffic takes off.

Source: Analytics Lessons Learned

AIRBNB CRACKS THE PHOTO CODE

Source: Analytics Lessons Learned

Photographers  

CIRCLE OF MOMS

•  Insight: –  Not all users are created equal.

•  Hack: –  Discovered that moms on Circle of Friends were far more

active than other users: –  Pivoted entire company from Circle of Friends to Circle of

Moms.

•  Result: –  Grew from 2MM monthly active users to 4.5MM –  Sold to Sugar Inc.

Source: Analytics Lessons Learned

HOW MUCH BETTER WERE MOMS? •  Their messages to one another were on average 50% longer.

•  They were 115% more likely to attach a picture to a post.

•  They were 110% more likely to engage in a threaded (i.e. deep) conversation.

•  They had friends who, once invited, were 50% more likely to become engaged users themselves.

•  They were 75% more likely to click on Facebook notifications.

•  They were 180% more likely to click on Facebook news feed items

•  They were 60% more likely to accept invitations to the app.

Source: Analytics Lessons Learned

TWITTER

•  Insight: –  It’s not how many Tweets you send. It’s how many people you

follow that determines success. –  When users follow 5-10 people they are far more likely to

remain an active user.

•  Hack: –  Drive product onboarding not around publishing or building an

audience, but following the right people.

•  Result: –  40% of Twitter’s users use Twitter without publishing. –  4x number of monthly visitors who don’t login, just read the

stream.

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/09/the-logged-out-user-continued.html

TWITTER’S TRY FIVE

Photographers  

TAKEAWAYS •  Sometimes growth doesn’t come from where you expect it.

•  Leverage data to identify unique insights and opportunities.

•  If you think you have a worthwhile idea, test it quickly and

with the least effort possible.

•  Have a game plan of what to do if the idea succeeds and how to scale it.

•  Iterate the product to solve for that use case that drives growth.

•  Engagement is the rocket fuel to give you escape velocity and long-term sustainable growth.

PHYSICAL & OTHER HACKS

Growth Hacking requires creativity.

HACK GRAB BAG

•  Embeds –  YouTube, SlideShare, Vimeo –  Keys are: remove friction, optimize for SEO

•  Powered By –  Freemium with branding, CTAs & backlinks: MailChimp, UserVoice –  Keys are: identify what you “power”, track and test CTAs

•  Free Stuff –  Viral tools that play to vanity/exclusivity: Klout, Twitter Grader –  Keys are: Identify value/desire, provide reward or currency

Source: Hiten Shah’s Growth Presentation (see notes)

WALL STREET JOURNAL

•  Insight: –  Busy business people are constantly searching for ways to

connect to the Web.

•  Hack: –  Offer free WiFi at popular spots across New York City. –  Create email capture and activation funnel as part of

connecting to the Web.

•  Result: –  Every user an opportunity to build their email marketing lists.

Source: GrowHack.com

DOLLAR SHAVE CLUB

•  Insight: –  In a massive CPG category traditional advertising will never work,

you need to build a cult following. –  The big players are actually terrible at branding and marketing.

•  Hack: –  Upend the business model for razors. –  Use viral video to acquire customers at low cost and create that

cult following.

•  Result: –  DSC video viewed 5MM+ times –  30,000 subscribers in first week –  Raised $10MM to take on men’s category

ZAPPOS

•  Insight: –  With items that are hard to shop for online, superior service, not

price, will win. –  Removing friction from online shopping is more important than

price.

•  Hack: –  Reinvent what customer service means. –  Bake cost of incredible service into product, position as free.

•  Result: –  World renowned brand built on service. –  Charge a premium on every item sold. –  $800 million exit to Amazon.

TAKEAWAYS •  Growth Hacking isn’t just for consumer companies. B2B and

physical product manufacturers can hack growth.

•  Physical product hacks are harder, but not impossible. They just require creativity and insight on how to reach users.

•  Hacks that make use of digital networks eliminate overhead

costs and find scale.

•  Same rules apply: creativity, data, curiosity, dirty hands.

BECOME A GROWTH HACKER

Or at least a growth beginner.

YOU NEED A TEAM & A HYPOTHESIS

•  Create a growth team. –  Marketer –  Product person –  Engineer –  Sales

•  Create hypotheses about growth. –  What changes do you think will move the needle? –  What types of customers do you need to sustain growth? –  What types of habits and behaviors do you need to engineer? –  Map to customer decision making.

Source: Adam Nash http://blog.adamnash.com/2012/04/04/user-acquisition-viral-factor-basics/

GET DOWN IN THE DATA

•  Know your customers inside and out.

•  Go where your early adopters are.

•  Go niche first, the world second. –  Hipsters –  Moms –  Geeks

•  Look for insights and patterns that represent opportunities.

Source: Zero to a Million Users: http://www.slideshare.net/adamsmith1/from-zero-to-a-million-users-dropbox-and-xobni-lessons-learned

ID HACKING OPPORTUNITIES

•  What platforms could I integrate into that would bring instant scale? –  Don’t depend on just one. –  Don’t just think Facebook.

•  What are the core features of my product?

•  Which ones drive growth? How can I optimize those?

•  How can I build distribution into inherent actions?

ID HACKING OPPORTUNITIES

•  What is the value to the user for reaching out to non-users?

•  How does a hack align with my value proposition?

•  How does this hack improve the experience of the user?

•  How can my product help others while gaining distribution?

LEARN EARLY, LEARN OFTEN

•  Test and measure ideas on the cheap.

•  Build MVP versions, concierge versions.

•  What’s the easiest and fastest way to ship an idea?

•  Numbers are your guide to everything.

•  Iterate like your life depends on it.

GET STARTED Get Hacking.

GIDDY UP! •  Review product and marketing opportunities.

•  Build your team.

•  Read and learn.

•  Become a growth beginner.

•  Celebrate growth in your organization.

•  Make 2013 the year of growth!

THANKS.

DESIGNING FOR VIRAL GROWTH •  Get the inside scoop on designing for viral growth with this

infographic from Digital Telepathy:

•  http://www.dtelepathy.com/blog/design/design-viral-growth

GET IN TOUCH Morgan Brown morgan@digital-telepathy.com @morganb Digital Telepathy www.dtelepathy.com @dtelepathy

REFERENCES // RESOURCES •  Taking your site from One to One Million Users – Kevin Rose •  Hacking Growth at SlideShare •  Growth – Hiten Shah •  From Zero to One Million Users – DropBox and Xobni

Lessons – Adam Smith •  Growth Hacking 101 – Your First 500,000 Users – Yong Fook •  Lean Analytics – Alistair Croll & Benjamin Yoskovitz •  Andrew Chen’s Blog