busting the myth of growth hacking magic
DESCRIPTION
These are Sean Ellis's slides from Hubspot's 2014 Inbound Conference. The slides explain that growth hacking is not about silver bullets, but rather a rigorous process of generating ideas for experiments, prioritizing experiments, testing and analyzing them. The slides highlight key areas of exploration for generating your growth hacking ideas.TRANSCRIPT
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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
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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
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@seanellis
Extreme Competition for Attention
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012$0
$20
$40
$60
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$140
$160
US Online Ad Spend per User
3.5x
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Rapidly Evolving Channels
@seanellis
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 20130
20
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WOM Email
MySpace
Craigslist
iOS
Android
James Currier
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Yet Some Huge Startup Successes
Little or no traditional marketing…
@seanellis
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@seanellis
GROWTH HACKING MAGIC?
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No – Rigorous Process of Experimentation
@seanellis
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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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@seanellis
Desperation Drove Startups to Innovate
• Aggressive targets, tight resources
• Traditional approach not realistic
• Had to rethink growth…
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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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@seanellis
B2B or B2C?
• Growth hacking isn’t just for consumer-focused companies.
• B2B often requires integration with sales process.
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@seanellis
HubSpot’s Growth Hack – Free Tools
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@seanellis
Yammer – Engineered User-Get-User
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@seanellis
LinkedIn - Engineered User-Get-User
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PUTTING GROWTH HACKING TO WORK FOR YOUR BUSINESS
@seanellis
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Finding Your Own Growth Hacks
@seanellis
• Areas of exploration
• Process, team and tools
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Some Areas of Exploration
• Platform integrations
• Engineered user-get-user
• Free tools
Examples
25+ M users
@seanellis
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Areas of Exploration (Cont)
• Powered by
• Reverse engineer success
Examples
@seanellis
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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
@seanellis
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@seanellis
Other Growth Studies for Inspiration
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@seanellis
Experimentation is Key to Success
• Generate many ideas for experiments
• Prioritize by impact, confidence & effort
• Balance high impact & high probability tests
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GOAL: INCREASED UNITS OF GRATIFICATION
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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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@seanellis
Growth Team Often Needed
• Multi-disciplinary
• Cross functional
• Evangelize experimentation culture
“Growth team” complements existing marketing team
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@seanellis
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)
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Relentless Execution of Growth Process
@seanellis
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@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
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Questions?
THANK YOU.
Sean EllisCEO of Qualaroo
& GrowthHackers.com
Twitter: @seanellis