Sean ellis

Growth Hacking Success

Setting and Achieving High Impact Growth Objectives

Dec 8, 2016

Overview

•  How objectives help to drive sustainable growth

•  How to pick the right high leverage objectives

•  How to achieve objectives with a proven process

Problem with No Clear Growth Objectives

1.  Team out of sync

2.  Wasted effort

3.  Growth stalls

Why Right Objectives Matter?

•  Keeps team focused on leverage

•  Celebrate victories, avoid burnout

•  Makes growth sustainable

Impact of Right Objective at LogMeIn

•  Problem

–  “Activation” friction with new users

–  Couldn’t scale beyond $10K/month

•  Objective: Improve new user activation

•  Result: Fixed activation, then same channels profitably scaled 100X.

Today $2.5B Mkt Cap

Keys to Achieving High Impact Objectives

1.  Pick the right objectives

2.  Communicate specifics

3.  Focus resources (team and dollars)

4.  Use proven growth hacking process

1. Finding Right High Impact Objectives

•  Supports broader mission and goals

•  Most leverage in growth model

•  Solves problems

Example Growth Model (LinkedIn)

Objective Examples

Strong Objective: Increase signup activation rate

Less Effective Objective: Increase sales

•  Specific (narrow scope)

•  Success is clear

•  Normalize by channel

•  Too broad

2. Share Specifics with Team

•  Context why important

•  Baseline and target

•  Timeframe to achieve (2 – 6 weeks)

3. Focus Team/Resources

•  Limit short-term objectives (max one per person)

•  Assign objective owner

–  Passionate about objective

–  Committed to achieving it

–  No direct financial incentive

Rally Team Around Objective

Product

External Channels

Promise

1st Experience

Ongoing Experience

Acquisition

Activation Revenue Retention Referral

Marketing PR

Support Success

biz dev

Growth Team

GH Example: Achieving Objective

•  Set aggressive 30 day activation objective.

•  VP engineering expressed doubts, “negotiated” 45 days for objective.

•  VP created new onboarding prototype same day.

•  Exceeded objective in only 20 days with this idea.

4. Proven Process for Achieving Objectives

Analyze the Situation

•  Quantitative analysis

•  Qualitative feedback

•  Combine for insights

Qualitative Example from LogMeIn

•  10% signup (90%+ drop off at download step)

•  Several A/B tests failed to fix it

•  Asked: Why didn’t you download?

•  Next test, 300% improvement

Idea Generation for Objective

•  Creative problem solving

•  Weekly brainstorming session for the objective

•  Encourage anytime idea input from anyone

Formalize ideas in Experiment Doc

•  Include hypothesis, research, target lever

ICE Score 1 - 10

I - Impact

C - Confidence

E - Ease

Prioritize in Weekly Growth Meeting

•  Nominate ideas in advance

•  “Pitch” team on next tests

•  Decide based on resources and expectations

Only Use ICE to Nominate

Filter to objective Sort by ICE score

Test to Impact Objective

Improve Overall Testing Throughput

Twitter boosts testing tempo 20X GH boosts testing tempo 10X

Analyze Tests and Report Progress

•  Share how specific tests impact goal progress

•  Keep goal top of mind for team

Test Analysis Leads to New Ideas

Repeat to Achieve Objectives

Key Takeaways

•  Objective setting critical for sustainable growth

•  Focus on high leverage objectives

•  Communicate objectives widely

•  Follow growth process to achieve objectives

Look for Our Book in April