Advanced growth hacking for startups. The big unanswered questions. My slides from the DFJ CMO / growth round table

1. You are here
Getting to traction
Advanced growth hacking for
startups!
!
4 conundrums
@nilanp

2. How much should I
burn ?

3. What are your scaling
levers ?

4. How do I deal with
competition ?

5. How do I build a product
with acquisition built in ?

6. @nilanp!
Introductions…

7. Lets start…

8. How much should I
burn ?

9. The rocket internet
model

11. Strong intent
SEM!
SEO
foundation!
!
Display!
Move to LTV
model!
Broader SEM
and SEO!
TV!
Offline!
Multichannel
attribution!
!

12. Discussion points
1. Do you agree with the model ? Have
you explicitly followed it ?!
2. The big downside of the model is that it
doesn’t drive customer centricity -
which can impact repeat rates and a
path to profitability!

13. How much should I
burn ?

14. 3 models!

15. Burn transactions!

16. Burn Life Time Value
(LTV)!

17. Burn equity!

18. Discussion point
1. Which model do you employ ?!
2. How much do you burn and why ?!
3. Burning LifeTime Value is much more difficult that
it sounds, modelling LTV on sparse data is hard,
modelling cash-flow is hard. Do you model Life
Time Revenue ? or Life Time Contribution ?!
4. What are the leading indicators of LTV that you
track ?!
5. What is the right data architecture to do
progressively evolve this ?

19. What are your scaling
levers ?

20. What are your scaling
levers ?
Improve!
conversion!
rate
Improve!
margin
Grow
supply
Launch
new
markets
Launch
new
channels
Optimise
channel
performance

21. Discussion points
1. Almost always in every business I’ve been involved in the single
biggest driver of growth within a market has been supply - do you
agree (Businesses normally find a couple of scaling channels - and
optimise them (e.g. SEO and SEM) - then focus on acquiring supply to
grow within a market)? !
2. If this is the case - how do you separate this from marketing driven
growth ? How do you explicitly make this clear within the business
KPIs ?!
3. How do you prioritise a dev queue over market expansion, supply
growth, new channel testing and optimisation ?!
4. I used to say that a performance marketing powered business grew at
the rate it grew conversion rate - but these days I see conversion rate
as an optimisation and a competitive benchmark of your product - not
a scaling lever of growth - do you agree ?

22. Dealing with competition

23. Cost per
acquisition
Lifetime
Value

24. CPA
LTV

25. CPA
competition
LTV
competition

26. CPA
conversion
growth
repeat
growth
LTV

27. CPA
repeat
growth
conversion
growth
LTV
competition
competition

28. Discussion points
1. Do you agree ? That CPA and LTV are the most
competitive metrics within the business ?!
2. Do you agree that conversion rate and repeat rate
demonstrate how better your product offering is
vs the competition?!
3. What other metrics do you track to understand
how good your competitors product is ?!

29. How to build a product with
acquisition built in

30. Some examples of products
with acquisition built in

31. Products with acquisition
built in
Channel Product
SEO LinkedIn
Virality Facebook, LinkedIn
SEM booking.com
Social AirBnB

32. Recently I’ve realised that
your product and traffic are
linked in a more fundamental
way

33. There is a symbiotic
relationship between product
and traffic

34. Not only in landing pages,
but also in conversion rate
optimisation and product

35. If grow an audience from
SEM, your product will iterate
towards converting high
intent commoditised traffic

36. If grow an audience from
facebook, social validation
throughout your product will
be key

37. Traffic and product teams
cannot be siloed

38. Discussion points
1. There is a symbiotic relationship between product and
traffic!
2. If you explicitly set your self the goal of increasing
conversion rate, or revenue per customer, this will be
highly dependent on the traffic stream you have built
the business on!
3. This stretches beyond landing page optimisation to the
core product - the products that sell, and the UX you
need to develop to sell them is dependent on - hence
separating traffic from product is not a good idea !

39. Beyond the rocket
internet model

40. The future of growth

41. 2 steps

42. 1. Build a great product

43. 2. Encourage your customers to find
more customers

45. Building a viral loop

46. Building a viral loop
Customers find
customers
Conversion to
sign up
Conversion to
repeat / premium

47. The levers of viral driven business:!
!
1. Viral mechanics!
2. NPS

48. Discussion points
1. Is this ever really an option ? Or only a
route for category leaders ?!
2. How do you layer this on post launch ?
Who has done this ?!
3. What is the direction this pushes
product in - does it support the same
ends as performance marketing ?

49. Discussion points
In closing…

50. How much should I
burn ?

51. What are your scaling
levers ?

52. Dealing with competition

53. How to build a product with
acquisition built in

54. Thank you !
@nilanp