5 Growth Channels that helped Rupa build hundreds of millions in equity- SaaStr Workshop Wednesdays.pptx

SaaStr Workshop Wednesdays

1. 5 Growth Channels that helped Rupa build hundreds of millions in equity

2. Hi 👋 i’m Koby , I run Growth @ Oneleet Past Lives Scaled Rupa Health from ~$20M seed to being worth hundreds of millions by increasing user acquisition by ~4,000% Went through YC in 2019, raised $2M to build a CRDT as a service Built ~500,000 social media followers before I was 20 for an online ecommerce store Worked on marketing campaigns with ~$5M/mo budgets, scaling at 100% ROI

3. Loops & funnels are cool, but my brain thinks in channels .

4. All users come from channels. There is an 80/20 to channel (although in B2B overlapping channels is very powerful). Once you identify your core channels, you can optimize your product around them . I’ll give a number of examples throughout this presentation.

5. What exactly is Rupa Health? 👀

6. Channels we’ll talk about today 👇 Search Social Educational Partnerships Conferences Influencers Outbound Sales

7. Search

8. We spend a lot of money on paid search. Key Learnings PMAX got really good over last few years. Set up your brand exclusion & let it rip. It needs enough conversion data + time to learn. Doctors & patients search for the same things. The most valuable searches for us were test names + individual biomarkers.

9. It would be great if we could own that traffic for free . 👀

10. So we built the Reference Guide , “developer docs” but for doctors. Structure Landing page for every lab company Landing page for every test Landing page for every biomarker Landing page for every category of test This married pSEO content (derived from our catalog), with AI enhanced content, manually edited by doctors.

11. We also publish 150+ articles a month written by medical professionals.

12. Today search (organic + paid) is our #1 channel of growth.

13. Action Items 95% of the people listening to this probably aren’t publishing enough content. SEO is hard because you need to create “something better than what exists in the world right now” … but to do that at scale. Combine “targeted landing pages” with a “spray and pray”. Create stuff focused on what you KNOW is important, but also bring in experts to create content in bulk. Combine pSEO with AI, add in graphics, and then have humans edit.

14. Social

15. We built our social primarily for the social proof. This was very important for building trust with early partners & users.

16. What’s working organically?

17. Our “big bet” is YouTube right now.

18. Action Items “Topic” of YouTube content is REALLY important. Headlines, thumbnail, engagement all critical, but topic matters a LOT. Ditch the brand account, create followings are people. Founders, influencers, humans. If you’re still on Facebook, drop links in comments not body of the post.

19. Partnerships

20. We pay schools to teach about us. 🤷‍♀️

21. … so then we built our own school.

22. Currently offering free live clases, bootcamps, mentorships.

23. Action Items You’re probably missing key partnerships beyond “major influencers” … schools, co-marketing with integrated products, licensing organizations. Don’t be afraid to build “service businesses” on top of your tech products. These can be wildly effective & profitable acquisition strategies. Look at your product usage to determine good places to build … what are people asking for or using outside of your product? Seriously - SO MANY of the best businesses are built around, on top of, or behind services.

24. Conferences

25. We go to about ~20+ conferences a year.

26. Key Learnings from spending millions on conferences Rule #1: The most important part of a conference, is standing out -> Be visually disruptive. Rule #2: It’s not just about showing up, it’s about HOW you show up -> Show up strong or not at all. Rule #3: Deeply understand where your ROI is going to come from before you show up -> For us it was labs, not doctors. Rule #4: The most profitable perks, aren’t on the menu -> Email is king. Rule #5: Give them swag that needs to be carried, and brought home -> Teddy bears were liquid gold.

27. Action Items If you can get a dedicated email, that can often work even better than actually showing up to the event. The best “perks” usually aren’t on the media kit. Speaking opportunities, dedicated email sends, sharing contact lists, etc. It’s not just showing up, it’s about HOW you show up. Bigger ticket impressions can often be higher ROI because each impression is strong. [Bonus] I absolutely love lanyard sponsorships.

28. Influencers

29. Doctors learn from other doctors.

30. Hire or build your own influencers too

31. Attribution tracking is really hard . Ask users how they heard about you, and then make a guess in the dark. Hyman was our #1 source for a long time. 🙈 🙈

32. Action Items Likely is a HUGE 80/20 in your industry by simply going to the biggest influencer in your space. If you’re dropping major money on influencers, make sure to be building your own version as well. Attribution isn’t real, you kind of have to go old school with your gut. Ask people “how did you hear about us”, create discount codes, but know you’re only tracking 50% of the ROI at best most likely.

33. Outbound Sales

34. Hi this is Koby i’m your Rupa Lab Rep . Are you still ordering DUTCH tests ?

35. You need to pattern match in your pitch. Bad: “Hi this is koby, do you order labs?” Good: “Hi this is Koby, your Rupa Lab Rep , do you order labs?” Great: “Hi this is Koby, your Rupa Lab Rep , are you ordering DUTCH Completes ?”

36. Why did this work for us? Our audience was used to, and LIKED, their “local reps” for supplements + labs. We had already built a huge loved brand before we started cold calling. This sucked beforehand. We were able to pattern match how we spoke to our users so we didn’t come across as generic spam. We were selling into small businesses with 1-3 people, often the doctor as the “solo pract” which meant we could get decision makers to pick up. We layered this in with email, linkedin, and direct mail outbound as well.

37. Action Items Email is an important part but make sure you’re still cold calling. Separate your cold calling function from your inbound function. It’s SO hard to train and manage people to do both well. Outbounding doesn’t live in isolation, make sure you layer in marketing + blend the budget/ROI so it isn’t 100% given to outbound. Outbounding sucks. Pay this team well.

38. Closing Takeaways

39. Takeaways All users come from channel. Solving for channel is one of the biggest moments of inflection in a companies life, post “building a good product”. Start experimenting with paid to see what is effective, then double down on organic versions of what is converting for you on the paid side. Once you identify majors channels, build your product & features around those major channels.

40. Q & A