Check out this class that I taught recently at 1776 in DC on Customer Acquisition. The focus was on customer segmentation and portraits / personas. I also covered some common concepts from The Lean Startup, Steve Blank's Customer Development, and BJ Fogg's Behavior Model. This is a great deck for someone learning to growth hack or otherwise learn the basics of web and mobile product user acquisition

1. Customers 101
Understanding Customer Segmentation and Portraits

2. About Me
Speek Co-Founder & President
Harvard & MIT
Exited First Startup in 2006
Georgetown Professor
Forbes Columnist
@DannyBoice

3. About Speek
$6 Million In Venture Capital
2 Years Old
Hundreds Of Thousands Of Users
Millions Of Calls
Exponential Growth @SpeekApp
www.Speek.com

4. How To Do Startups Good

5. A (Successful) Startup
Requires 3 Things
Product
Users
Money

6. Product

7. “Most startups fail because they
build something nobody wants.”
You should build a product that
people want.

8. Get It Right And You See This

9. Users

10. Build a product that lots of people
want.
Find cheap ways to market it to
those people.

11. Get It Right And You See This

12. Money

13. Build a product that lots of people
want.
Find cheap ways to market it to
those people.
Get people to pay you more $$
than its costs you to build /
maintain.

14. Get It Right And You See This

15. What is Customer Segmentation?

16. Customer Segmentation
Customer Segmentation is the subdivision of a market into
discrete customer groups that share similar characteristics.
Customer Segmentation can be a powerful means to
identify unmet customer needs.

17. In English…
Figure out what your best customers look like.
Group them based on characteristics.
Sell to them.

18. Example
Consulting (19%)
Media (13%)
Marketing Firms (11%)
Our top 5 Customers By Industry:
Not For Profit (10%)
Healthcare (9%)

19. Portraits / Personas

20. Portraits / Personas
Portraits / personas are fictional characters created to
represent the different user types that might use a site,
brand, or product in a similar way.
Marketers may use personas together with market
segmentation, where the qualitative personas are
constructed to be representative of specific segments.

21. In English…
Give your best customer a name.
Get to know them very well.
Sell to them.

22. Example
Director of IT Jen
Jen describes herself as “A jack of all trades but master of none.” Jen does a
variety of tasks, including managing servers, networks, communications,
software, personal computers, and the overall IT for the company. She is a
problem solver, when people have a problem they come to her for a solution.
Her daily tasks revolve around ensuring that all of the teams have what they
need and managing the IT budget and cuts costs where he can.

23. Director of IT Steven
Title: Director of IT
!
Time in Job: About 6 years
!
Works directly with: Manages company IT Infrastructure for employees, answers
to executives/owners.
!
Daily tasks and responsibilities
!
• Managing IT infrastructure (communication, servers, networks, laptops,
• Managing company software for all the departments.
• In charge of the IT budget

24. Director of IT Steven
Frustrations, pressures, and concerns
!
• Keeping the remote working environment efficient
• Staying on top of newest software solutions to help the work environment
!
Level of tech savviness: Very tech savvy
!
Needs (topics, gaps in knowledge)
!
• Newest and best software solutions for his business
• How to run an efficient remote working environment
• Best collaboration tools and software for remote working environments
!
Role in buying process: Influencer, Tester, Decision Maker (what she says
usually goes)

25. Director of IT Steven
Where Speek can help?
!
• Online education about small business software: collaboration software,
• Online education about how to create effective remote working environments,
• “Managing the IT budget” information. Budgeting best practices, and good
computers) organizational software, communication software, file sharing, etc.
• Remote working environment best practices.
• Methods to cut costs.

26. Segments and
Personas
Pre-Product

27. Pitch Method (QuickMVP)

28. Customer Dev (GOOB)

29. Segments and
Personas
w/ a Product

30. Identify Best Users

31. Analyze Best Users

32. Define Personas

33. Buying Cycle

34. Acquisition Channels

35. Questions?