Growth Hacking: how to acquire users when you have zero marketing budget

how to acquire users when you have zero marketing budget

Dotun Olowoporoku

Growth Hacking Masterclass

thestarta.com

About me • First business as an undergrad

• BSc, MSc and PhD – environmental science

• Post-doctoral Research Fellowship

• Founded meals.co.uk in 2012

• Raised $1m seed investment

• Managed team across 3 cities

• Pivot business model to B2B hyperlocallogistics platform

• Venture Partner at Potential.VC – early stage investment syndicate

• Now working on Starta

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What we’ll cover

• The Basics of Growth Hacking• Growth Hacking is a mindset• Growth is a process not an event• 17 Growth Hacking tactics

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“There is a big shift in communication and the way people want to engage and do business with brands and businesses.

The speed of change will continue."

exponential times calls for exponential thinking

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1. Commoditised Services

2. Democratised Channels

3. Blurred line product and business development

What is changing

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What growth looks like

What growth looks like – AirBnB’s Growth

“Growth hacking is a marketing technique developed by technology startups which use

creativity, analytical thinking, and social metrics to sell products and gain exposure.."

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Growth Hacker Needed

Sean Ellisfounder and CEO of Qualaroo.

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• Zero brand equity• Traditional marketing

leads to high burn rate• Higher risk of reaching

inflection point with traditional marketing

Why you should consider growth hacking

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How Hotmail grew to 12million usersPS: I love you. Get your free email at Hotmail

“Forget press releases or advertisements. Let’s figure out something that’s never been done before and is specifically

designed to leverage the strengths of our product."

Growth hacking is a mindset, not a toolkit

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“Growth Hacker is someone whose true north is growth”

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“Growth Hacker understands technology very deeply”

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“Growth Hacker constantly seeks scalable, repeatable ways to grow the business”

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1.Know your customers

2.Know their language

3.Know what they want

4.Know where they reside

5.Know how to reach them

5 Golden Rules of Growth Hacking

“Growth Hacking is a system, not a bag of tricks"

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Define specific actionable growth metrics

Growth Hacking Checklist 1 – Growth Metrics

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• Bad example: increase customer base• Good example: get 10,000 new email

subscribers

• Too broad: increase daily active users• Specific: increase social media engagement by

2x

Growth Hacking Checklist 1 – Growth Metrics

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Without measuring, goals are empty

Growth Hacking Checklist 2 – Analytics

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Growth Hacking Checklist 2 – Analytics

• Grow business • Increase weekly active users

• Increase retention (repeat business)

• Increase percentage of users booking at least 4x

Set goals in hierarchies

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Growth Hacking Checklist 2 – Analytics

• Do you currently track user metrics at all?• Do you track users by cohorts or just in

aggregate?• Do you track metrics around the acquisition

channels• Do you track the devices where users are

coming from?• Do you track the referring URL’s where

users are coming from?• Do you track actions which facilitates

retention and increased usage?

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Growth Hacking Checklist 3 – Growth Lever

leverage existing strength

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I

shall move the world.”

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Growth Hacking Checklist 4 – experiment

Analysis keeps you honest -numbers don’t lie

“a defined goal should be attacked from multiple angles”

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Growth Hacking Checklist 5 – Optimise

If all you know is that your business made more money in Q4 than in Q3, then you know nothing. Why was Q4 better?

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Growth Hacking Checklist 6 – Rinse and Repeat

success is more a byproduct of tenacity, and

less a child of luck.

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Neil Patel’s 3 Levels of Customer Funnel

1. get visitors: finding ways for people to see your product!

2. activate members: helping people take predefined actions in your product

3. retain users: helping people become habitual users of your product

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Customer Funnel Level 1: getting visitors

• having a blind date - acquisition, referral

• act of getting anyone to visit your website or know your product for the first time.

• 3 ways to get someone to visit your website or app. • Pull them in• Push them in, • Use the product to bring them in.

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Customer Funnel Level 2: activating members

• being in a relationship - activation, revenue• joining an email list• creating an account• making a purchase.

• Not just visitors, now members

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Customer Funnel Level 3: retaining users

• getting married – retention

• the holy grail of growth hacking.

• hard to turn a visitor into a member, but even harder to turn a member into a user.

“It’s the 213th tactic that will probably work, not the 7th"

“scratch that, let’s talk about the tactics anyway"

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1. Be Social

• Be active and awesome on social media

• Follow your target audience

• Engage with them

“70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated.”

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2. Use bare bone homepage

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3. Optimise your website speed• 1-second delay in page load

time yields:– 11% fewer page views– 16% decrease in customer

satisfaction– 7% loss in conversions

developers.google.com/speed/

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4. Use specific landing pages for key features

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5. Blog, blog, blog your way to leadership• Become a thought leader by blogging and

guest blogging– Listicles– Pictures– Research data– Insight – Unique knowledge

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6. Everyone loves infographics, use them

infographics simultaneously display expertise and aesthetic taste, and spread easily on social media

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7. Share on high traffic forumsbecome the go-to guy expert on Nairaland, Radar etc

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8. A/B test headlines and (CTA) call to actions

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9. Preach to your audience through newsletter

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10. Build mission-focused community around your product

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11. Pull audience congregating elsewhere

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12. Enable user journey to incentivisesharing

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13. Leverage on curiosity, competitiveness to create social contest

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14. Prime the pump by seeding the supply

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15. Create faux scarcity and exclusivity / FOMO

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16. Retarget people who have visited the site already

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17. Get affiliates to sell your product

“How we are driving growth at Starta"

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