Growth Hacking

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1. Growth Hacking
Lean Marketing for Startups

2. How to get free traffic to your website

3. Put content up on Slideshare

4. Answer questions on Quora

5. Answer questions on Quora

6. Edit Wikipedia

7. Cheat your way onto the Hacker News homepage

8. Cheat your way onto the Hacker News homepage

9. Start a Meetup

10. Post on Craiglist

11. Teach on Skillshare and at General Assembly

12. Get on email newsletters
(submit here and here)

13. Go to events

14. Update your email signature

15. Dave McClure’s Marketing Channels

16. But none of that really
matters...

17. PS: I love you. Get your free
e-mail at ???
”
“

18. In 1996 co-workers Sabeer Bhatia and
Jack Smith planned to start JavaSoft

19. They were afraid
their boss might
read their emails

20. They were afraid
their boss might
read their emails
So they built a web-
based email system

21. ...and so was born

22. They raised
$300,000 from
investors

23. But Hotmail’s launch was
unimpressive
JulyAugust

24. Their growth strategy was to buy
billboards and radio ads

25. But investor Timothy Draper
had a better idea

26. Put ‘PS: I love you. Get your
free e-mail at Hotmail’ at the
bottom of each e-mail.
”
“

27. July September
Within hours, Hotmail’s growth
took the shape of a classic
hockey stick curve

28. July September
They started averaging 3,000
new users a day

29. July September November
Within 6 months, they were up
to 1 million users

30. July September November January
Five weeks later, they hit the 2
million user mark

31. In one case, Bhatia sent an
email to a friend in India

32. In one case, Bhatia sent an
email to a friend in India
within 3 weeks Hotmail
had 300,000 users there

33. July September November January March May July September November
When they sold to Microsoft 1.5 years
after launch, Hotmail had 12 million users

34. July September November January March May July September November
When they sold to Microsoft 1.5 years
after launch, Hotmail had 12 million users
(There were only 70 million
internet users at the time)

35. This story is not an anomaly

41. Why did these
companies succeed
when everyone else
failed?

42. Mattan Griffel
Founder & CEO, The Front Labs
Partner, Grow/Hack
T
H
E
F
R
ONT

L
A
B
S
I run the world’s first growth hacking agency based
out of New York City and have helped launch
dozens of different products. I've also spoken at
various industry events – including at Bloomberg,
Internet Week, and Social Media Week – and have
been featured in Forbes, BusinessWeek, Mashable
and The Next Web.

43. What we’re going to cover today
What Is Growth Hacking?
The Science of Growth Hacking
Notable Growth Hacks

44. This is adapted from posts by Dave McClure,
Andrew Chen, Noah Kagan and others, as well as
from my own experience

45. Most startups find themselves facing thesame problem

46. They build a product that no one ends up using

47. Say your startup has
an idea

48. You assemble a team
and start building

49. Six months later, you have a
product you're happy releasing

50. When that day finally comes,
you launch and…

51. When that day finally comes,
you launch and…
nothing happens.

52. You get a writeup on TechCrunch
and several thousand users

53. You get a writeup on TechCrunch
and several thousand users
(But most of them stop using it after a few days)

54. July September November January March May July September November
Nothing like the tremendous
viral growth you were
anticipating

55. What do you do?

56. You’re in the trough of sorrow, my friend
TechCrunch
of Initiation Wearing Off
of Novelty
Trough of
Sorrow
Releases of
Improvement
Crash of
Ineptitude
Wiggles of
False Hope
The Promised
Land!

57. Continuing to ship new features
is the worst thing you can do

58. It compounds what the real problem
was in the first place, which is that
you don't know what's wrong

59. Enter the growth hacker

60. What the fuck is
Growth
Hacking
?

61. Growth hacking is a set of
tactics and best practices for
dealing with the problem of
user growth

63. Viral growth

64. Viral growth
Landing page optimization
SEO
Product management
Email marketing
Analytics
Behavioral economics PR
Onboarding
UX

65. Most companies only
track three things
Traffic
Revenue
Users

67. Phase 1Phase 2Phase 3Phase 4Phase 5
Get
traffic
?
Get
users
?
Profit

68. Those metrics
aren’t very helpful

69. Those metrics
aren’t very helpful
(The magic is what happens in between)

70. The key is to map out the user
lifecycle for your product

71. SEO
PR
SEM
Viral
Blogs
Email
Contests
Partnerships

72. ACQUISITION
SEO
PR
SEM
Viral
Blogs
Email
Contests
Partnerships

73. ACQUISITION
Acquisition = getting people
to come to your site
SEO
PR
SEM
Viral
Blogs
Email
Contests
Partnerships

74. ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
SEO
PR
SEM
Viral
Blogs
Email
Contests
Partnerships

75. ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
Activation = getting people to sign up for
anything that could lead to a repeat visit
SEO
PR
SEM
Viral
Blogs
Email
Contests
Partnerships

76. ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
SEO
PR
SEM
Viral
Blogs
Email
Contests
Partnerships

77. ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
Retention = getting users
to become active
SEO
PR
SEM
Viral
Blogs
Email
Contests
Partnerships

78. ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
REVENUE
SEO
PR
SEM
Viral
Blogs
Email
Contests
Partnerships

79. ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
REVENUERevenue = monetizing active users
SEO
PR
SEM
Viral
Blogs
Email
Contests
Partnerships

80. ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
REFERRAL
REVENUE
SEO
PR
SEM
Viral
Blogs
Email
Contests
Partnerships

81. ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
REFERRAL
REVENUE
Referral = getting active
users to refer others
SEO
PR
SEM
Viral
Blogs
Email
Contests
Partnerships

82. ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
REFERRAL
REVENUE
The lean marketing funnel

83. (It kind of looks like a teacup)

84. Let’s see it
in action

85. You hear about Quora after
your friend posts a question
from Quora to Twitter
Acquisition

86. After reading the page
you decide to create an
account
Acquisition
Activation

87. ...a few days go by
Acquisition
Activation

88. You get a weekly digest
email with questions and
links back to the site
Acquisition
Activation
Retention

89. Once you’re back, Quora
encourages you to read
related questions
Acquisition
Activation
Retention

90. And share interesting
questions through
Twitter and Facebook
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Referral

91. Quora doesn’t
currently make money
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Referral
Revenue

92. Each step of the LMF
corresponds to a user state

93. The growth hacker’s job is to figure out how
to move users from one state to the next
Creates an account Visits again later
???

94. You need to measure conversions at each step
Acquisition Activation Retention Revenue
1752
174
1744
10% 30% 30%

95. Dave McClure’s example conversion metrics

96. Mixpanel and KISSmetrics are great for analytics

98. At first your numbers will be really shitty
Acquisition Activation Retention Revenue
0317
1744
1% 18% 0%

99. Acquisition Activation Retention Revenue
0317
1744
At first your numbers will be really shitty
Focus here
1% 18% 0%

100. At first your numbers will be really shitty
Acquisition Activation Retention Revenue
017
174
1744
10% 10% 0%

101. Don’t focus on
acquisition if your
activation rate is 1%

102. Growth hackers have developed
tactics for optimizing the funnel

103. Measure the quality of traffic sources

104. Design landing pages to convert better

105. Tweak onboarding to improve activation and retention

106. Get people to come back using email

107. Social integration to get people to share

108. Identify companies that focus on
optimizing and try to learn from them

110. Not every growth hack will
work for your company

111. How do you run a proper
experiment?

112. Divide users into a control and a test group

113. Divide users into a control and a test group
Control Test

114. Run your change on the test group and measure
the difference between the two groups
Control Test

115. This is often called an A/B test

116. Growth hackers
experiment a lot

117. Highrise wanted to
test out different
homepages to see if
they could increase
account signups

118. So they created a
“long-form sales
letter” page

119. And ran an A/B test
Original Design Long-form Design
Homepage
traffic

120. Can you guess the
results?
Original Design Long-form Design

121. The long-form
design saw a 37.5%
increase in account
signups
37.5%
Original Design Long-form Design

122. Then they created a
personal testimonial
page

123. Long-form Design
And ran another A/B
test
Person Design

124. It performed even
better than the long-
form page
Person Design
102.5%
37.5%
Long-form Design

125. But the person
design was shorter
and had much less
information
Person Design
102.5%
37.5%
Long-form Design

126. So they added more
information to the
bottom

127. And ran another A/B
test
Person Design
Long Form
Person Design

128. It turned out that
adding more
information made it
perform worse than
the original design!
Person Design
102.5%
Long Form
Person Design
22.7%

129. But that’s not where
testing ends...

130. Unbounce is an amazing tool for easily
creating and testing landing pages
Use promo code mattanfree3
for 3 months free

131. Testing applies to
product features too

132. Vanity and A/Bingo are testing
frameworks for Ruby on Rails

133. Measure the lifetime effect of a change
Acquisition Activation Retention Revenue
1752
174
1744
10% 30% 30%
Version A 1744 (100%) 174 (10%) 52 (30%) 17 (30%)
Version B 1670 (100%) 100 (6%) 60 (60%) 18 (30%)

135. From Dave McClure’s Startup Metrics for Pirates

136. Most tests results
are not as conclusive
as the ones by Highrise

137. Growth hackers often need to
perform 15-20 tests per week
to find 1-2 improvements

138. Getting users to the
AHA
MOMENT

139. What’s the one core activity
of your product?

140. What’s the one core activity
of your product?
How can you get people
there as fast as possible?

142. Keep refining and iterating until you get to
the problem definition that resonates with
the most people, most easily, and most
emotionally powerful.
- Josh Elman, ex-Product Lead at Twitter

147. Our AHA moment at Twitter was ‘Once a
user follows 30 people, they're more or
less active forever.’
- Josh Elman, ex-Product Lead at Twitter

152. Notable Growth Hacks

153. Mint has a landing
page or blog post
for nearly every
personal finance-
related topic
Acquisition:

154. OKCupid’s OKTrends
Blog created viral
stories by “trading
up the chain”Acquisition:

155. BrandYourself kept
their Mashable article
trending for 2 days
by promoting it on
StumbleUpon
Acquisition:

156. Groupon has two
different pages for
Google vs. Direct
trafficActivation:
(Footers are good for SEO but
reduce conversions)

157. Path texts the app to
your phone
Activation:

158. OKCupid has a “tour
guide” that interacts
with you during the
signup processActivation:

159. Dropbox sends an
email when a user
signs up but never
installs the softwareActivation:

160. Eventbrite sends
emails if you’ve been
inactive for too long
Retention:

161. Path has your friends
do it instead!
Retention:

162. Path has your friends
do it instead!
Retention:
(Can have a 10x higher
conversion rate)

163. Facebook integration
makes it really easy
to get people to
shareReferral:

164. Dropbox,
LivingSocial, and
Appsumo know
incentivization
works well too
Referral:

165. Quora forces people
to sign up before they
can read answers
Referral:

166. Growth Hacking
Resources

167. Watch Dave McClure’s
Startup Metrics for
Pirates

168. Quora has boards on Growth
Hacks and Growth Hacking

169. Andrew Chen has
posted a list of notable
growth hackers:

170. Check out our
posts at
growhack.com

171. If you’re around NYC
check out my new meetup

172. Thank you.
Mattan Griffel
[email protected]
@mattangriffel
Get more growth hacking case studies
at growhack.com/case-studies