Lincoln Murphy presented to SFETM on growth hacking. He has a background in network-centric business models and gravitated towards growth hacking and customer success. He discussed defining growth hacking, the requirements, answering questions, and providing resources. Some key points were that growth hacking helps improve growth metrics by short-circuiting normal processes, and requires a culture of experimentation, organizational alignment, and being data-driven.

1. Presented to SFETM
By Lincoln Murphy
September 9, 2014

2.  Customer Success Evangelist at Gainsight
 Background is Network-Centric Business
Models; not Enterprise Software
 Gravitated to Growth Hacking - and
Customer Success – movements as I was
already doing this at Sixteen Ventures
Copyright© 2014 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved.

3.  Clarity on what “Growth Hacking” is
 Requirements for Growth Hacking
 Answer the questions I was given
 Provide deep-dive resources for you
Copyright© 2014 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved.

4.  Growth: A metric we want to improve
 Hacking: to short-circuit
 Small Deal Size/Self-Service Model Drove NEED
 Doesn’t mean large deal size / Enterprise Sale can’t
MASSIVELY benefit from Growth Hacking
Copyright© 2014 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved.

5.  Building Bridges and Digging Tunnels
 Where they are now  where they need to be
▪ Mindset
▪ Engagement
▪ Buy-In (Champion Uplift)
 Exploit Organic Network Effects
 Your secret weapon – more on this later
Copyright© 2014 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved.

6.  A Culture of Growth Experimentation
 Must be OK with false hypotheses (“failure”)
 Organizational Alignment
 Cross-Functional
 Ability to Execute Autonomously
 Silos are bad; they appear with company maturity
Copyright© 2014 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved.

7.  Be Data Driven
 Everything starts with your Gut (even with data avail)
 Be able to quickly iterate (Build – Measure – Learn)
 Quickly get to a point where decisions are driven
mostly by data, less by opinion & ”pretty” designs
 HIPPO/VITO/CEO can't be THE voice for very long if
you want to scale
Copyright© 2014 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved.

8.  Align Success Metrics with Reality
 Commissions on closed deals? MQL, SQL, etc.?
 Hypotheses tested? Customer dev interviews?
 Change if not appropriate
 Example: Take some BDAs and use then for testing.
Comp separately and based in viable success metric.
▪ Roll winning test variants into production processes
Copyright© 2014 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved.

9. http://sixteenventures.com/sfetm

10. Copyright© 2014 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved.

11.  Demand Generation or Demand Capture?
 Depends on market / product category maturity
 If demand exists, you need to funnel it your way
 If demand doesn’t exist – and assuming it should –
you need to Create, Accelerate & Scale that Demand
 Ideal Customer Profile + Awareness Ladder
Copyright© 2014 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved.

12.  Don’t rely on search if search volume is low
 Be at the top for your key search terms
 That means Organic & Paid SEM won’t be major channel
 Ideal Customer Profile will surface distribution opportunities
 You’ll know where you need to be to get their attention and what you
need to do to convert that attention to action
 Understand their Buying Cycle and where you can “hack” it
Copyright© 2014 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved.

13.  Who has your Ideal Customer as their primary
audience?
 Adjacent product vendors, consultants, analysts, etc.
 How can you motivate them to get you in front of
their audience? WIIFT?
 Organic Network Exploitation
 Understand how they interact with others and figure
out how to infiltrate that network
Copyright© 2014 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved.

14.  It’s less about the tools and tactics and more about knowing your
audience
 Who are you targeting?
 Who’s your Ideal Customer?
 How do they consume marketing?
 Where are they on the awareness ladder?
 What bridges / tunnels would work to move them forward rapidly
Copyright© 2014 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved.

15.  Understand the entire process (all the steps)
 Know what you’re trying to measure
 Know what you’re going to do with that data once you have it.
 Build a process to go after ideal customers to reach your goals
 Find the tools that enable / optimize that process
 Marketo, KISSmetrics, Hubspot, InfusionSoft, etc.
Copyright© 2014 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved.

16.  Educate and Elevate
 Practitioners
 Boards / Investors
 Executives
 Education – CSU
 Thought Leadership – Pulse & PulseCheck
 Distribution: Leverage partners to spread the word for you
 Webinars – Live-event Feel
Copyright© 2014 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved.

17. http://sixteenventures.com/sfetm