growth hacking magic? going beyond the hype to take your business to the next level [inbound 2014]
TRANSCRIPT
Growth Hacking Magic?
Sean Ellis September 17, 2014
CEO of Qualaroo, GrowthHackers.com
Twitter @seanellis
Going Beyond the Hype to Take Your Business to the Next Level
About Me
• Founder/CEO of Qualaroo & GrowthHackers.com
• Previously VP Marketing for customer zero to NASDAQ IPO filing at LogMeIn and Uproar.com
• Then interim marketing exec roles at Dropbox, Lookout and Eventbrite
Extreme Competition for Attention
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US Online Ad Spend per User
3.5x
@seanellis
Rapidly Evolving Channels
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WOM Email
MySpace
Craigslist
iOSAndroid
James Currier@seanellis
No – Rigorous Process of Experimentation
1. Ideas
2.Prioritize
3.Test4.Analyze
5.Optimize
@seanellis
The Dropbox Growth Story
• Freemium reduced allowable CPA
• Natural advantages to grow with collaboration and sharing
• Catalyze sharing with double sided referral program
• Optimize conversions on sharing loops
• 300 million users with no traditional marketing
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Desperation Drove Startups to Innovate
• Aggressive targets, tight resources
• Traditional approach not realistic
• Had to think rethink growth…
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The Growth Hacking Playbook
• Experiment with all available growth levers
• Understand what’s driving growth, test to improve it
• Heavy focus on product and optimization
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B2B or B2C?
• Growth hacking isn’t just for consumer-focused companies.
• B2B often requires integration with sales process.
@seanellis
Some Areas of Exploration
• Platform integrations
• Engineered user-get-user
• Free tools
Examples
25+ M users
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Success Data: Airbnb’s Pro Photos
• Airbnb discovered that listings with high-quality photos received 2-3x bookings
• Airbnb invested in professional photography
• Booking activity explodes as desire increases
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Experimentation is Key to Success
• Generate many ideas for experiments
• Prioritize by impact, confidence & effort
• Balance high impact & high probability tests
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Double Down on Success
• Challenge is not finding many channels that work, but rather finding one.
• Often your best growth opportunity is to double down what’s already working.
Growth Team Often Needed
• Multi-disciplinary
• Cross functional
• Evangelize experimentationculture
“Growth team” complements existing marketing team
@seanellis
Some Helpful Tools• Analytics — Identify drop-off points and under-
performing pages (e.g. Google Analytics, KISSMetrics)
• Qualitative Insights — Uncover the why behind the numbers (e.g. Qualaroo, SurveyMonkey)
• A/B Test — Find better performing combinations to drive conversion rate (e.g. Hubspot, Optimizely)
@seanellis
Key Takeaways
• Emerging marketing challenges require all to rethink growth
• Growth hacking is based experimentation, not silver bullets
• Add process/team to maximize number of experiments
• Get inspiration from data, VOC and what’s working for others
@seanellis