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 McClure’s 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 web-

based email system
...and so was born
 They raised
$300,000 from
investors
 But Hotmail’s 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, Hotmail’s 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?
 ONT L
FR
Mattan Griffel

A
E
TH

BS
Founder & CEO, The Front Labs
Partner, Grow/Hack

I run the world’s 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.
What we’re 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?
 You’re 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

Product management

SEO
Analytics
Onboarding

Email marketing
UX

PR Behavioral economics
 Traffic

Most companies only

Users
track three things
Revenue
Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5

Get
traffic ? Get
users ? Profit
Those metrics
aren’t very helpful
Those metrics
aren’t very helpful
(The magic is what happens in between)
The key is to map out the user
lifecycle for your product
 Viral
SEO Partnerships
SEM
PR
Blogs Contests
Email
 Viral
SEO Partnerships
SEM
PR
Blogs Contests
Email

ACQUISITION
 Viral
SEO Partnerships
SEM
PR
Blogs Contests
Email

ACQUISITION

Acquisition = getting people

to come to your site
 Viral
SEO Partnerships
SEM
PR
Blogs Contests
Email

ACQUISITION

ACTIVATION
 Viral
SEO Partnerships
SEM
PR
Blogs Contests
Email

ACQUISITION

ACTIVATION

Activation = getting people to sign up for

anything that could lead to a repeat visit
 Viral
SEO Partnerships
SEM
PR
Blogs Contests
Email

ACQUISITION

ACTIVATION

RETENTION
 Viral
SEO Partnerships
SEM
PR
Blogs Contests
Email

ACQUISITION

ACTIVATION

RETENTION

Retention = getting users

to become active
 Viral
SEO Partnerships
SEM
PR
Blogs Contests
Email

ACQUISITION

ACTIVATION

RETENTION

REVENUE
 Viral
SEO Partnerships
SEM
PR
Blogs Contests
Email

ACQUISITION

ACTIVATION

RETENTION

REVENUE

Revenue = monetizing active users

 Viral
SEO Partnerships
SEM
PR
Blogs Contests
Email

ACQUISITION

ACTIVATION
REFERRAL
RETENTION

REVENUE
 Viral
SEO Partnerships
SEM
PR
Blogs Contests
Email

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)
Let’s see it
in action
 You hear about Quora after
your friend posts a question
Acquisition 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 you’re back, Quora
encourages you to read
related questions
Acquisition

Activation

Retention
 And share interesting
questions through
Twitter and Facebook
Acquisition

Activation
Referral
Retention
 Quora doesn’t
currently make money
Acquisition

Activation
Referral
Retention

Revenue
 Each step of the LMF
corresponds to a user state
The growth hacker’s 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% 30% 30%

174
52 17
Acquisition Activation Retention Revenue
Dave McClure’s example conversion metrics
Mixpanel and KISSmetrics are great for analytics
At first your numbers will be really shitty

1744

1% 18% 0%

17 3 0
Acquisition Activation Retention Revenue
At first your numbers will be really shitty

1744
Focus here

1% 18% 0%

17 3 0
Acquisition Activation Retention Revenue
At first your numbers will be really shitty

1744

10% 10% 0%
174
17 0
Acquisition Activation Retention Revenue
Don’t 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 long-
form page
Person Design

102.5%
Long-form Design

37.5%
 But the person
design was shorter
and had much less
information Person Design

102.5%
Long-form Design

37.5%
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
Person Design
the original design!
102.5%

Long Form
Person Design
22.7%
But that’s 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% 30% 30%

174
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 McClure’s 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
What’s the one core activity
of your product?
What’s 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 finance-
related topic
Acquisition:
OKCupid’s 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 you’ve 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 McClure’s
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 you’re 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