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I had developed a reputation in Silicon Valley as someone who could figure out how to help companies take off, particularly those facing fierce competition and limited budgets such as Dropbox was.
I worked with the engineers to utilize technology for what was, to them, an unconventional purpose: to craft novel methods for finding, reaching, and learning from customers in order to hone our targeting, grow our customer base, and get more value from our marketing dollars.
“add this game to your site” link, which made it easy for other website owners to make the game available on their sites, too.
Once again, the solution had been found in just weeks, using a recipe that included healthy doses of out-of-the-box thinking, crosscompany collaboration and problem solving, real-time market testing and experimentation (conducted at little or no cost), and a commitment to being nimble and responsive in acting on the results. These are the very ingredients that I later codified into the growth hacking methodology
companies’ growing ability to collect, store, and analyze vast amounts of user data, and to track it in real time, was now enabling even small start-ups to experiment with new features, new messaging or branding, or other new marketing efforts—at an increasingly low cost, much higher speed, and greater level of precision. The result was the emergence of a rigorous approach to fueling rapid market growth through high-speed, cross-functional experimentation, for which I soon coined the term growth hacking.
the product’s must-have score. The survey asked the simple question “How would you feel if you could no longer use Dropbox?” Users could respond “Very disappointed,” “Somewhat disappointed,” “Not disappointed,” or “N/A no longer using the product” (I wrote the question this way because I found that asking people if they were satisfied with a product didn’t deliver meaningful insights; disappointment was a much better gauge of product loyalty than satisfaction).
enabling our users to grow the product for us.”
breaking down the traditional business silos and assembling cross-functional, collaborative teams that bring together staff with expertise in analytics, engineering, product management, and marketing, growth hacking allows companies to efficiently marry powerful data analysis and technical know-how with marketing savvy, to quickly devise more promising ways to fuel growth.
elements of the method are: the creation of a cross-functional team, or a set of teams that break down the traditional silos of marketing and product development and combine talents; the use of qualitative research and quantitative data analysis to gain deep insights into user behavior and preferences; and the rapid generation and testing of ideas, and the use of rigorous metrics to evaluate—and then act on—those results.
“shrinking half-life of established business models.”
At early stage start-ups, avoiding these silos from the start is advised, but as a start-up grows, more traditional marketing groups can be established alongside a dedicated growth team. And at larger, established firms, teams can complement the existing product, marketing, engineering, and business intelligence groups, collaborating with them and helping to open up more effective communication across them.
Teams can range from dedicated units built from the ground up, to groups made up of existing staff from different parts of the organization, to ad hoc groups that form as needed. Many evolve in size, scope, and responsibility over time to meet the specific needs of the company at any given moment.
cross-functional growth team
you need data scientists who can really appreciate consumer insights and understand business problems,”
THE RISING COSTS AND DUBIOUS RETURNS OF TRADITIONAL MARKETING The techniques of traditional marketing—both print and television advertising, and the newer online versions that have become essential parts of the traditional marketing toolkit—are in crisis, as markets are becoming more and more fragmented and ephemeral, while advertising is becoming both more expensive and less viewed.
A recent McKinsey study of publicly traded software companies showed absolutely no correlation between marketing investment and growth rates. Zero.
Growth hacking empowers companies to achieve breakout growth without pouring money into outdated and horribly expensive marketing campaigns of questionable business value. Devising features that get consumers to love a product or service and spread the word to their friends, and creative hacks to reach customers in new, measurable ways, is taking the place of cash-guzzling marketing and ad plans, and the upside is enormous.
in truth, most growth is due to an accumulation of small wins. Like compounding interest in a savings account, these gains stack on top of one another to create liftoff.
growth hacking is a team effort, that the greatest successes come from combining programming know-how with expertise in data analytics and strong marketing experience, and very few individuals are proficient in all of these skills.
The real story in the Airbnb case is that they ran a host of experiments to find growth, most of which failed,
a 2012 Econsultancy report revealed that for every $92 spent on acquiring more Web traffic, only $1 was spent on converting those visitors into actual paying customers.26 Customer disengagement and flight, known as bounces for website visitors,
marketing group crafted a launch plan, which, as usual, included a range of traditional marketing activities, with an emphasis on social media, public relations, and paid customer acquisition campaigns.
dedicated product marketing manager (PMM) to help stoke acquisitions. These marketing specialists are often described as being the “voice of the customer” inside the company, working to gain insights into customers’ needs and desires, often conducting interviews, surveys, or focus groups, and helping to craft the messaging in order to make the marketing efforts more alluring and ensure they are conveying the value of the product most effectively. At some companies, these specialists might also be tasked with contributing to the product development, for example, by conducting competitive
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she requested that she be allowed to work with the product team on driving growth throughout the rest of the funnel, including user retention and monetization strategies, rather than being restricted to just efforts at the very top of the funnel.
This kind of collaboration between marketing and product teams is woefully uncommon.
Annabell was officially moved from marketing to the mobile team, reporting to Pramod, and eventually her title was changed to Senior Product Manager for Growth.
As highlighted by a McKinsey report, one of the most damaging effects of departmental silos is that they slow innovation that drives growth.
those with the expertise to conduct data analysis,
The growth lead sets the course for experimentation as well as the tempo of experiments to be run, and monitors whether or not the team is meeting their goals.
All growth leads require a basic set of skills: fluency in data analysis; expertise or fluency in product management (meaning the process of developing and launching a product); and an understanding of how to design and run experiments.
A strong growth lead keeps enthusiasm going, while providing air cover for the team to be experimental and fail without undue scrutiny and pressure from management to deliver more wins.
product managers’ experience with customer surveying and interviewing, as well as with product development, allows them to make vital contributions to the idea generation and experimentation process.
DATA ANALYSTS Understanding how to collect, organize, and then perform sophisticated analysis on customer data to gain insights that lead to ideas for experiments,
The process is a continuous cycle comprising four key steps: (1) data analysis and insight gathering; (2) idea generation; (3) experiment prioritization; and (4) running the experiments, and then circles back to the analyze step to review results and decide the next steps.
Team meetings, which should generally be held once a week, provide a rigorous forum for managing the team’s testing activity, reviewing results, and determining which hacks to try next.
the data analyst will work on selecting the sets of users with whom a change will be tested;
the marketing member will take charge of implementing any experiments with promotional channels,
It is imperative that a high-level executive is given responsibility for the team, in order to assure that the team has the authority to cross the bounds of the established departmental responsibilities.
Growth cannot be a side project.
Without clear and forceful commitment from leadership, growth teams will find themselves battling bureaucracy, turf...
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Engineers tend to be most interested in working on the most technically challenging jobs, whether or not the solutions they come up with will have a meaningful impact on growth.
Marketers can become focused on vanity metrics such as the number of website visitors or leads and lose sight of the need to drive up the performance indicators in other parts of the funnel (such as user retention).
Once people see the power of the data-driven approach to experimentation—and the growth ideas that come out of it—enthusiasm for the process tends to be infectious.
It’s just as important that the growth team machine not be put into drive too early. Because all the rapid experimentation in the world won’t ignite lasting growth if the product isn’t loved by the people who use it.
One of the cardinal rules of growth hacking is that you must not move into the high-tempo growth experimentation push until you know your product is must-have, why it’s must-have, and to whom it is a must-have: in other words, what is its core value, to which customers, and why.
The opportunity costs of pushing for growth too soon are twofold. First, you’re spending precious money and time on the wrong efforts (i.e., on promoting a product that no one wants); and second, rather than turning early customers into fans, you’re making them disillusioned, even angry, critics. Remember that viral word of mouth can work two ways; it can supercharge growth or it can stop it in its tracks.
A pernicious misconception about growth hacking is that it is primarily about building virality into products. That is indeed one of the key tactics, but like other growth efforts, it must only be deployed after the product has been determined a must-have.
probing into user behavior in order to discover the core value of their product or service,
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