A quick intro to growth hacking together with a case study of a swiss fashion startup - Selfnation. We'll show some lessons from what.digital's work with startup and Selfnation's marketing campaigns. This session was delivered as part of the series of workshops for Swiss Startups - organised by Venturelab.

1. Growth Hacking Workshop - Selfnation Case Study
Luke Szkudlarek, Digital Strategy Lead at what.digital
Valerio Stallone, Head of Marketing at Selfnation
1st Dec 2015
Confidential

2. Confidential
Agenda
2
- Quick intro to growth hacking
- Selfnation - challenges
- Selfnation marketing performance
- Marketing tips
- Growth hacking tips
- Enhanced, hypothetical 2016 Plan

3. Confidential
Luke Szkudlarek - what.digital
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- 10+ years of experience in digital marketing
- Delivery of web development, SEO and digital marketing
strategies for international brands, including HSBC, Barclays,
Chopard and recently Victorinox
- Experience in digital strategy, web development and digital
marketing for property agents in the UK
- Hands-on approach to digital
- More about Luke on LinkedIn - linkd.in/LukeSzLuke Szkudlarek
Digital Strategy Lead
at what.digital

4. Confidential
Valerio Stallone - Selfnation
4
- Sourced and planned the introduction over 200 products at
Geschenkidee.ch
- Managed over CHF 1 Mio. Facebook Ads Budget at DeinDeal
(2011!)
- Managed over CHF 5 Mio. AdWords budgets for different clients
while working at Webrepublic
- Born digital and responsible for every relevant “p” at Selfnation
- More on: ch.linkedin.com/in/ValerioStalloneValerio Stallone
Head of Marketing
at Selfnation

5. Confidential
The Challenge
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- Limited resources of a startup & lean approach to
marketing
- Management time equally valuable as media budgets
- Data-driven planning requires time and it’s dull, but
can rapid growth hacking be part of the digital
marketing strategy?

6. Confidential
Growth hacking is...
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7. Confidential
Growth hacking - problem definition
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Fast Company[1]
defined the marketing problems
facing many startups as:
1. don't have budget allocated for "marketing", and
2. don't have a traditional marketing background.[1]

8. Confidential
Growth hacking - what can we learn
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1. focus on innovation, scalability, and user
connectivity
2. build the product's potential growth, including user
acquisition, on-boarding, monetization, retention,
and virality, into the product itself
3. relentless focus on growth as the only metric that
truly matters

9. Confidential
Growth hacking - where do you start?!
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“Growth” is the easier half to understand: as Sean Ellis
says, a “growth hacker’s true compass is north.”

10. Confidential
My 2 cent worth
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- Access to fundamental digital marketing knowledge -
someone with deep understanding of channel
- Typical problems with campaign management, agencies
& marketers
- Old approach, new technology - SEO Examples
- Putting on a lot of hats - engineers & marketers working
together

11. Confidential
Discussion: Are you a growth hacker or marketeer?
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- Can you influence the product design?
- How quickly can you adapt and release new
features?
- How close is your marketing integrated in customer
acquisition and onboarding?
- Is your marketing budget part of product
development cost?

12. Confidential
Selfnation in 2016
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- Technology: Develop easier ways to take measures
- Continue lowering delivery times by improvements in production
efficiency
- Establish the brand in Switzerland: Grow our reputation by
increasing brand presence in the market via new products & new
marketing activities.
- Define strategy for the German market: How to deal with different
price sensitivity?

13. Confidential
Selfnation - Marketing Campaigns
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- AdWords & Facebook easy to set-up in retail. Work with somebody,
who knows how to use them. Essential asset to start in B2C
nowadays!
- Make things you can track as long as possible. If you cannot track
them, find out how to track them.
- Don't underestimate the importance of native speaking people for
multi-language campaigns.

14. Confidential
2015 Performance Insights
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- Traffic & conversion sources well diversified, which is also a sign of solid optimisation and numerous experiments.
- Conversion rates from Paid Search are likely to be overstated due to the brand searches component - isolated figures
without brand keywords is essential to see the growth opportunities.
- Although Social seems to be performing well, the share of conversions is low, which presents an opportunity for growth.
- Buying new customers costs money - (see: Display channel measures and characteristics) - compare to Paid Search
acquisition
Channel % Sessions
% New
Sessions
Bounce Rate Pages / Session
Ecommerce
Conversion
Rate
% Conversions CPA
Display 22% 85% 26% 5.3 1.83% 20% high
Direct 22% 80% 21% 8.3 1.94% 21% low
Referral 12% 66% 23% 7.9 1.15% 7% low
(Other) 12% 85% 2% 11.6 0.74% 4% medium
Paid Search 11% 71% 10% 12.0 3.38% 19% medium
Organic Search 11% 47% 17% 10.6 2.46% 13% low
Email 6% 50% 14% 9.0 4.45% 13% medium
Social 4% 78% 16% 8.9 1.84% 3% high
100% 73% 18% 8.7 2.05% 100%

15. Confidential
Discussion: A few words about CPA
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- Attribution
- Return on Time
- Recommended measures

16. Confidential
Digital Marketing Foundations
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- Growth hacking is an approach not strategy
- Get the basics right to build a solid foundation for growth,
including:
- Digital analytics / tracking setup
- Correct onsite SEO
- Defined conversion points
- “Must-have” channels included, e.g. Email Marketing &
remarketing

17. Confidential
Marketing Tip - SEO Improvements (1)
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- Size matters
- Fundamental onsite SEO

18. Confidential
Marketing Tip - SEO Improvements (2)
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- Product naming
- Keyword strategy

19. Confidential
Marketing Tip - Content Ideas
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- Blog content ideas generation
- Content performance
- Editorial process & making content “travel”
- Effort vs. Reward - ?

20. Confidential
Marketing Tip - Scaling Social Channels
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- New placements on Facebook
- Improving performance
- Various ways to access FB
inventory (e.g. Criteo)
- What’s the product? Consider
Dynamic Product Ads

21. Confidential
Growth Tip - Market Validation of Products
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- Fake products - introduce products online before they
are mass produced
- Conducting A/B tests to measure demand
- Example: Selfnation offering the measuring tape as the
first touchpoint with the brand, this concept is
extended by sending textile samples to target
customer segments

22. Confidential
Growth Tip - Selfnation Product Pages
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DEMO
https://www.selfnation.ch/en/men-massjeans/copenhagen-ink-black#

23. Confidential
Growth Tip - Direct order of Tailored Products
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- Currently unable to benefit from
shopping engines
- Consider each pair as a unique
product
- Create a product feed with EVERY
product variation
- Allow customers order tailored-
products directly from the targeted
landing page
- Achieve low CPCs and capitalise long
tail searches for specific sizes

24. Confidential
2016 Recommendations and Projections
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No Description Estimated Impact
Proposed
Budget
Effort
1 SEO Housekeeping must-haves (e.g. hreflang, template issues) Increase in brand searches n/a Medium
2
Substitute blog content initiatives with product optimised content based
on defined keyword strategy
More product related visits &
conversions
n/a
Medium (similar
to blogging)
3
Replace brand paid campaigns with enhanced social visibility to target
buyers on Facebook
More conversions from Facebook 2’000 - 5’000 Low
4
Product feed creation and distribution on Criteo, Facebook & Google
properties
More low cost clicks at lower CPA 5’000 - 10’000 Medium
5
6

25. Confidential
2016 Projected Results
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Channel % Sessions Sessions
Ecommerce
Conversion Rate
Transactions
Display 13% 1.83%
Direct 22% 1.94%
Referral 12% 1.15%
(Other) 12% 0.74%
Paid Search (brand) 2% 3.5%
Paid Search (non-brand) 9% 2%
Organic Search (brand) 4% 2.5%
Organic Search (non-brand) 7% 2%
Shopping Feed 5% 3%
Email 6% 4.45%
Social 8% 1.84%
100% 2.05%
Complete with your projected results

26. Confidential
Summary
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- Study digital marketing and lay down the foundations for
long term growth
- Measure true CPA to be able to validate every experiment
- Have budget & resources to conduct experiments
- Document your experiments & lessons - don’t forget post-
implementation review

27. Confidential
Thank You
what. makes your customers tick
27
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