by Henning Muszynski, Lukas Masuch and Benjamin Raethlein
Original live presentation during GDG Devfest Karlsruhe 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHQNGhizOTY
You have developed your application and are now facing the biggest challenge known to mankind: How to get and engage users?
This presentation will give an overview of various actionable growth hacking techniques based on our observations and experiences with mobile apps. Listen to us and go out to scale your app from zero to hero!
Topics covered: PlayStore Optimization, Social Media, Invitation and Referral Systems, Event and E-Mail Marketing, Analytics
8. Analytics Tools
Google Analytics: “Arm your team with the marketing
data & insights they need to make informed
decisions”
Crashlytics: Stay tuned about the crash behavior of
your app.
Google Play Dev Console: Get general metrics such
as number of downloads and user rating
9. Product/Market Fit
How Dropbox got 70k customers without a product
70000 users signed up for beta overnight and
strong interest by investors
10. Landing Page
Catch your audience
Outperformed competitors with $4500 video.
Todays valuation: $615 million
11. Landing Page – A/B Testing
How Highrise doubled signups with a pretty face
12. Landing Page – A/B Testing
Don’t be the John in your team
13. Landing Page – Tools
Get your Landing Page up in minutes
Launchrock: Click your landing page for free
MailChimp: Collect, manage & send your mails
LeadPages: Launchrock on steroids
20. Waiting List & Invite System
The Yin & Yang of Growth Hack
Buzz, Beta Testing & Stability
Combine with benefits for social media actions
Exclusivity & Snowball Effect
Combine & Conquer
21. Big Press Launch
Boom goes the dynamite
Press Release App. Buy PR. Get Press. Growth !?
When should I launch my startup? My answer is
almost always the same: don’t – Eric Ries (Lean Startup)
Don’t combine product release with a marketing
launch. Do a marketing launch later when you have
good indicators and a clear strategy.
24. Promote Promote Promote
HackerNews Launch - Success Story
Takeaways: If not successful -> post again, encourage
participation, time your post (morning/breakfast time in SF),
join conversation, ask for specific feedback
29. It’s a set of actions that separate customers who find value in your
product from those who don’t.
AHA Moment
The one metric to rule them all
30. AHA Moment
How long it needs to get hooked
Study about how many episodes it takes to get
you hooked on a TV show.
31. AHA Moment
Twitters point of no return
Once a user follows 30 people, they're more or less
active forever – Josh Elman (Growth Manager @ Twitter)
Figure out your AHA
moment and focus
your UX to encourage
people to reach it
32. AHA Moment
Facebooks magic number
Get a user to reach 7 friends in 10 days after signing up
– Chamath Palihapitiya (ex-Lead of Growth @ Facebook)
This number was the
single focus and
allowed the team to
drive towards a clear
objective
33. AHA Moment
Airbnb bookings depend on aesthetics
The photos were really bad. No one was booking
because you couldn't see what you were paying for.
– Joe Gebbia (Co-Founder of Airbnb)
Airbnb now offers its
hosts free professional
photography services
from thousands of
freelancers
34. Reddit was first populated with content
submitted by fake users to not look like a
ghost town.
Fake It Till You Make It
Faking demand does not only work the on stock market
36. User Activation
Facebook Photo Tagging
Facebook’s photo tagging feature turned out as an
extremely effective viral growth and retention loop
Retention: Notifying inactive users resulted in retention
rate of 75% (visual and personal stimuli)
Growth: Fueled user acquisition by notifying non-users
about photo tagging
38. Referrals – PayPal
One customer acts as sales person for bringing in
other customers – Elon Musk (Co-founder of PayPal)
Started a $10 Refer-A-Friend viral marketing
campaign in the early 2000s
7-10% daily user growth resulting in about 1 million
customers in one year
39. Referrals - Dropbox
Increased signups from 100k to 4 million users (60%)
in 15 months with about 2.8 million referral invites
43. Leverage Friends – Facebook
• Famous ambassadors
• Seeing all your friends
• Word-of-Mouth
• Television Appearance
QuizClash: Addictive social quiz makes it easy to
play with your friends
Facebook API is much more restrictive nowadays
44. Leverage Friends – Address Book
Black-hat Growth Tactic: LinkedIn had to pay $13m
for spamming mails to your contacts
When LinkedIn introduced Address Book Import their
invitations increased by 30%
Sign-up and Friend Discovery via phone numbers is a
proven concept
47. Polish your visuals: Video, Screenshots and App Icon
Research your Keywords: Put them in the title and
repeat them in the description
63% of Apps are discovered through app store
searches„“
App Store Optimization
SEO for your mobile app
60. When posting shareable images add a watermark
Investor suggested to put “PS: I love you. Get your
free email at Hotmail” under every E-Mail
• 3000 new signups every day
• 1 million users after 6 months
• 1.5 years later: 12 of 70 million
internet users were registered
Watermarking
Hotmail loves you
61. There is no right, no wrong, just growth!
Test and experiment as much as possible
Learn from the best
and apply it to your brand / product
Define your metrics
to get actionable insights
Key Takeaways
It’s all about the growth