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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 from customer zero to NASDAQ IPO filing at LogMeIn and Uproar.com

• Then interim marketing exec roles at Dropbox, Lookout and Eventbrite

@seanellis

Extreme Competition for Attention

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012$0

$20

$40

$60

$80

$100

$120

$140

$160

US Online Ad Spend per User

3.5x

Rapidly Evolving Channels

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2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 20130

20

40

60

80

100

120

WOM Email

MySpace

Facebook

Craigslist

Twitter

iOS

Android

James Currier

Yet Some Huge Startup Successes

Little or no traditional marketing…

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@seanellis

GROWTH HACKING MAGIC?

No – Rigorous Process of Experimentation

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@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 rethink growth…

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

http://www.michiganemploymentlawadvisor.com/

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B2B or B2C?

• Growth hacking isn’t just for consumer-focused companies.

• B2B often requires integration with sales process.

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HubSpot’s Growth Hack – Free Tools

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Yammer – Engineered User-Get-User

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LinkedIn - Engineered User-Get-User

PUTTING GROWTH HACKING TO WORK FOR YOUR BUSINESS

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Finding Your Own Growth Hacks

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• Areas of exploration

• Process, team and tools

Some Areas of Exploration

• Platform integrations

• Engineered user-get-user

• Free tools

Examples

25+ M users

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Areas of Exploration (Cont)

• Powered by

• Reverse engineer success

Examples

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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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Other Growth Studies for Inspiration

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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

GOAL: INCREASED UNITS OF GRATIFICATION

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 on what’s already working.

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Growth Team Often Needed

• Multi-disciplinary

• Cross functional

• Evangelize experimentation culture

“Growth team” complements existing marketing team

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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)

Relentless Execution of Growth Process

@seanellis

@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

Questions?

THANK YOU.

Sean EllisCEO of Qualaroo

& GrowthHackers.com

Twitter: @seanellis