Growth Hacking

Lean Marketing for Startups

How to get free traffic to your website

Put content up on Slideshare

Answer questions on Quora

Answer questions on Quora

Edit Wikipedia

Cheat your way onto the Hacker News homepage

Cheat your way onto the Hacker News homepage

Start a Meetup

Post on Craiglist

Teach on Skillshare and at General Assembly

Get on email newsletters

(submit here and here)

Go to events

Update your email signature

Dave McClures Marketing Channels

But none of that really

matters...

PS: I love you. Get your free

e-mail at ???

In 1996 co-workers Sabeer Bhatia and

Jack Smith planned to start JavaSoft

They were afraid

their boss might
read their emails

They were afraid

their boss might
read their emails
So they built a webbased email system

...and so

was born

They raised
$300,000 from
investors

But Hotmails launch was

unimpressive
July August

Their growth strategy was to buy

billboards and radio ads

But investor Timothy Draper

had a better idea

Put PS: I love you. Get your

free e-mail at Hotmail at the
bottom of each e-mail.

Within hours, Hotmails growth

took the shape of a classic
hockey stick curve
July

September

They started averaging 3,000

new users a day

July

September

Within 6 months, they were up

to 1 million users

July

September

November

Five weeks later, they hit the 2

million user mark

July

September

November

January

In one case, Bhatia sent an

email to a friend in India

In one case, Bhatia sent an

email to a friend in India

within 3 weeks Hotmail

had 300,000 users there

When they sold to Microsoft 1.5 years

after launch, Hotmail had 12 million users

July

September

November

January

March

May

July

September

November

When they sold to Microsoft 1.5 years

after launch, Hotmail had 12 million users
(There were only 70 million
internet users at the time)

July

September

November

January

March

May

July

September

November

This story is not an anomaly

Why did these

companies succeed
when everyone else
failed?

E
TH

BS

I run the worlds first growth hacking agency based

out of New York City and have helped launch
dozens of different products. I've also spoken at
various industry events including at Bloomberg,
Internet Week,and Social Media Week and have
been featured in Forbes, BusinessWeek,Mashable
and The Next Web.

ONT L
A

Mattan Griffel
Founder & CEO, The Front Labs
Partner, Grow/Hack

FR

What were going to cover today

What Is Growth Hacking?
The Science of Growth Hacking
Notable Growth Hacks

This is adapted from posts by Dave McClure,

Andrew Chen, Noah Kagan and others, as well as
from my own experience

Most startups find themselves facing the

same problem

They build a product that no one ends up using

Say your startup has

an idea

You assemble a team

and start building

Six months later, you have a

product you're happy releasing

When that day finally comes,

you launch and

When that day finally comes,

you launch and
nothing happens.

You get a writeup on TechCrunch

and several thousand users

You get a writeup on TechCrunch

and several thousand users
(But most of them stop using it after a few days)

Nothing like the tremendous

viral growth you were
anticipating

July

September

November

January

March

May

July

September

November

What do you do?

Youre in the trough of sorrow, my friend

Wearing Off
TechCrunch

of Novelty

of Initiation

Wiggles of

The Promised

False Hope

Land!

Trough of
Sorrow

Releases of

Crash of

Improvement

Ineptitude

Continuing to ship new features

is the worst thing you can do

It compounds what the real problem

was in the first place, which is that
you don't know what's wrong

Enter the growth hacker

What the fuck is

Growth
Hacking

Growth hacking is a set of

tactics and best practices for
dealing with the problem of
user growth

Viral growth

Viral growth

Landing page optimization

SEO

Product management

Analytics

Email marketing
PR

Onboarding
UX

Behavioral economics

Traffic

Most companies only

track three things

Users

Revenue

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5

Get
traffic

Get
users

Profit

Those metrics
arent very helpful

Those metrics
arent very helpful
(The magic is what happens in between)

The key is to map out the user

lifecycle for your product

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM
Blogs

Partnerships
Contests

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM
Blogs

Partnerships
Contests

ACQUISITION

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM
Blogs

Partnerships
Contests

ACQUISITION

Acquisition = getting people

to come to your site

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM
Blogs

Partnerships
Contests

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM
Blogs

Partnerships
Contests

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION

Activation = getting people to sign up for

anything that could lead to a repeat visit

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM
Blogs

Partnerships
Contests

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM
Blogs

Partnerships
Contests

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION

Retention = getting users

to become active

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM
Blogs

Partnerships
Contests

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
REVENUE

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM
Blogs

Partnerships
Contests

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
REVENUE

Revenue = monetizing active users

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM
Blogs

Partnerships
Contests

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
REFERRAL
RETENTION
REVENUE

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM
Blogs

Partnerships
Contests

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
REFERRAL
RETENTION
REVENUE

Referral = getting active

users to refer others

The lean marketing funnel

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
REFERRAL
RETENTION
REVENUE

(It kind of looks like a teacup)

Lets see it
in action

Acquisition

You hear about Quora after

your friend posts a question
from Quora to Twitter

After reading the page

you decide to create an
account
Acquisition
Activation

Acquisition
Activation

...a few days go by

You get a weekly digest

email with questions and
links back to the site
Acquisition
Activation
Retention

Once youre back, Quora

encourages you to read
related questions
Acquisition
Activation
Retention

And share interesting

questions through
Twitter and Facebook
Acquisition
Activation
Retention

Referral

Quora doesnt
currently make money
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Revenue

Referral

Each step of the LMF

corresponds to a user state

The growth hackers job is to figure out how

to move users from one state to the next

???
Creates an account

Visits again later

You need to measure conversions at each step

1744

10%

Acquisition

174
Activation

30%

30%

52

17

Retention

Revenue

Dave McClures example conversion metrics

Mixpanel and KISSmetrics are great for analytics

At first your numbers will be really shitty

1744

1%

Acquisition

18%

0%

17

Activation

Retention

Revenue

At first your numbers will be really shitty

1744
Focus here

1%

Acquisition

18%

0%

17

Activation

Retention

Revenue

At first your numbers will be really shitty

1744

10%

Acquisition

174
Activation

10%

0%

17

Retention

Revenue

Dont focus on
acquisition if your
activation rate is 1%

Growth hackers have developed

tactics for optimizing the funnel

Measure the quality of traffic sources

Design landing pages to convert better

Tweak onboarding to improve activation and retention

Get people to come back using email

Social integration to get people to share

Identify companies that focus on

optimizing and try to learn from them

Not every growth hack will

work for your company

How do you run a proper

experiment?

Divide users into a control and a test group

Divide users into a control and a test group

Control

Test

Control

Test

Run your change on the test group and measure

the difference between the two groups

This is often called an A/B test

Growth hackers
experiment a lot

Highrise wanted to
test out different
homepages to see if
they could increase
account signups

So they created a
long-form sales
letter page

Homepage
traffic

And ran an A/B test

Original Design

Long-form Design

Can you guess the

results?

Original Design

Long-form Design

The long-form
design saw a 37.5%
increase in account
signups
Original Design

Long-form Design

37.5%

Then they created a

personal testimonial
page

And ran another A/B

test
Person Design
Long-form Design

It performed even
better than the longform page

Person Design
Long-form Design

37.5%

102.5%

But the person

design was shorter
and had much less
information

Person Design
Long-form Design

37.5%

102.5%

So they added more

information to the
bottom

And ran another A/B

test
Person Design

Long Form
Person Design

It turned out that

adding more
information made it
perform worse than
the original design!

Person Design

102.5%
Long Form
Person Design

22.7%

But thats not where

testing ends...

Unbounce is an amazing tool for easily

creating and testing landing pages

Use promo code mattanfree3

for 3 months free

Testing applies to
product features too

Vanity and A/Bingo are testing

frameworks for Ruby on Rails

Measure the lifetime effect of a change

1744

10%

174

30%

30%

52

17

Acquisition

Activation

Retention

Revenue

Version A

1744 (100%)

174 (10%)

52 (30%)

17 (30%)

Version B

1670 (100%)

100 (6%)

60 (60%)

18 (30%)

From Dave McClures Startup Metrics for Pirates

Most tests results

are not as conclusive
as the ones by Highrise

Growth hackers often need to

perform 15-20 tests per week
to find 1-2 improvements

Getting users to the

AHA
MOMENT

Whats the one core activity

of your product?

Whats the one core activity

of your product?
How can you get people
there as fast as possible?

Keep refining and iterating until you get to

the problem definition that resonates with
the most people, most easily, and most
emotionally powerful.
- Josh Elman, ex-Product Lead at Twitter

Our AHA moment at Twitter was Once a

user follows 30 people, they're more or
less active forever.
- Josh Elman, ex-Product Lead at Twitter

Notable Growth Hacks

Acquisition:
Mint has a landing
page or blog post
for nearly every
personal financerelated topic

Acquisition:
OKCupids OKTrends
Blog created viral
stories by trading
up the chain

Acquisition:
BrandYourself kept
their Mashable article
trending for 2 days
by promoting it on
StumbleUpon

Activation:
Groupon has two
different pages for
Google vs. Direct
traffic

(Footers are good for SEO but

reduce conversions)

Activation:
Path texts the app to
your phone

Activation:
OKCupid has a tour
guide that interacts
with you during the
signup process

Activation:
Dropbox sends an
email when a user
signs up but never
installs the software

Retention:
Eventbrite sends
emails if youve been
inactive for too long

Retention:
Path has your friends
do it instead!

Retention:
Path has your friends
do it instead!

(Can have a 10x higher

conversion rate)

Referral:
Facebook integration
makes it really easy
to get people to
share

Referral:
Dropbox,
LivingSocial, and
Appsumo know
incentivization
works well too

Referral:
Quora forces people
to sign up before they
can read answers

Growth Hacking
Resources

Watch Dave McClures

Startup Metrics for
Pirates

Quora has boards on Growth

Hacks and Growth Hacking

Andrew Chen has

posted a list of notable
growth hackers:

Check out our

posts at
growhack.com

If youre around NYC

check out my new meetup

Thank you.

Get more growth hacking case studies

at growhack.com/case-studies

Mattan Griffel
mattan@growhack.com
@mattangriffel