What is 'growth hacking' and why do you need it? Find out. I promised you a love story, so click through to see if it all works out in the end. Check out the blog post at http://bit.ly/IWW9iH

1. Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story
build it and they won’t come
03 Dec 2013
with love, Evans M.
evans@weareasilia.com
www.weareasilia.com

2. Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story

3. Growth hacking defined.
★ A process. A mindset.
★ Lean marketing for startups.
★ A marriage of engineering and marketing.
★ What they didn’t tell you about their viral growth.
★ Building a self-perpetuating marketing machine.
★ Coming up with ingenious tech-based avenues for
product growth.
★ Developing repeatable, scalable methods for growth,
driven by product and inspired by data.
Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story

4. Growth hacking visualized.
Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story

5. Remember the marriage definition?
More about this graphic
Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story

6. Some words in this world.
More about this graphic
★ Viral growth is actually engineered. Who knew?
Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story

7. Some pains. Growth challenges.
★ Nailing the distribution:
•
•
New channel creation.
Channel saturation.
•
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Today, a stronger distribution strategy can beat a superior product.
“If anyone tells you products sell themselves, they probably want
you to fail” – Phil Libin, co-founder and CEO of Evernote.
★ The “best product” fallacy:
★ Product-growth fit:
•
•
•
After product-market fit, this is the most daunting challenge for
startups.
Many think marketing will be the easy part.
Challenging to find the right method (from 100s) to acquire a
customer and monetize.
More on this
Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story

8. Growth hacking to the rescue...
Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story

9. The process: press hack to proceed.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Define actionable goals.
Setup analytics to track your goals.
Leverage your existing strengths.
Experiment.
Refine your experiment.
Repeat steps 1 - 5.
Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story

10. Start with the Pirates: AARRR!!!
Really cool pirate crew and anime – One Piece. Just saying... Interested?
Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story

11. and their startup metrics...
Dave McClure’s Framework:
★ Acquisition:
visitors get to your site from various channels.
★ Activation:
visitors enjoy first time visit; ‘happy’ user experience.
★ Retention:
users come back, visit site multiple times.
★ Referral:
users like site enough to refer others.
★ Revenue:
users conduct some monetization behaviour.
AARRR!!!
more on startup metrics for pirates
Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story

12. How to predict the future...
Surest way is to create (part of) it
Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story

13. ...using growth hacking only?
★ Use THE funnel:
•
•
Funnels help direct things which are hard to control, like liquids.
Direct people to take pre-defined actions on your website.
•
•
•
Getting visitors.
Activating members.
Retaining users.
•
•
•
Use analytics.
Conduct experiments and learn from them.
Take action.
•
•
•
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Overall funnel conversion rate.
Create testable, scalable, repeatable methods for growth.
★ Monitor each stage of your funnel:
★ Optimize the conversion rate at different stages:
★ Keep an eye on the big picture:
Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story

14. They didn’t use traditional marketing...
★ These brands use(d) growth hacking to grow their
brands and increase profits.
Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story

15. and some specific examples...
Attracted many early on by allowing its
users to cross-post their listings to craigslist,
which was already popular. Back then
craigslist had no public API.
Attracted many through clear calls to action,
simplicity, refer-a-friend program,
dropquests and more incentives to connect
on social media.
Attracted many and lost many till they came
up with their much talked about on-boarding
process that makes new users get to the
AHA moment faster. Increased retention and
acquisition.
Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story

16. Mr. Miyagi say...
Learn how to use chopsticks and how to catch flies
Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story

17. 7 take-outs.
1. Learn how to catch flies attention, convert and retain.
2. Build it and they won’t come – make them come +
stay.
3. Virality is not the norm – it’s engineered into products.
4. Product and distribution are both important – good
product + bad distribution = bad result.
5. Monitor and optimize your funnel. Listen to your
website visitors + users and respond.
6. Leaky buckets don’t need more water – retention
trumps acquisition.
7. Growth hacking is a mindset that’s about creativity
and creating scalable and repeatable methods for
growth driven by product and inspired by data.
Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story

18. Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story

19. The love story...and some math
Visitor meets website = Blind date.
Good first impression = More dates.
Visitor finds website interesting = Status change to ‘in a relationship’.
Visitor turns member – subscribes, signs up or makes a purchase. Newly
in love with your site (honeymoon).
Tells friends about it = Referrals.
Your website’s worth proven repeatedly and value still stands = Repeat
visits, activations and referrals.
Member goes from being ‘in a relationship’ to ‘married’ = Member turned
user.
Site keeps long time users happy = Happily married.
Growth hacking methods get as many blind dates and turn as many of
those blind dates into happy marriages. And happily ever afters. With
creativity and science.
Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story

20. Create a happily ever after...
Growth hacking 101 explained as a love story