Growth Hacking: Marketing that Moves the Bottom Line. My talk on growth hacking for B2C and B2B companies from Search Engine Journal's 3 Takeaways Summit in Santa Monica.

3. • 15 year startup growth veteran
• Wrote Startup Growth Engines with Sean Ellis
• My hobby is studying fast growing companies

4. 3TAKEAWAYS
1. Growth hacking complements marketing – not
a replacement
2. Use data to find leverage points and double
down on those
3. Rapid, continuous experimentation key to
growth – no silver bullets

5. “Most startups don’t fail at
building a product. They fail at
acquiring customers.”
Growth is Everything
– Gabriel Weinberg

6. • McKinsey & Co. studied 3,000 software
companies with different growth rates
• High-growth companies deliver 5x greater
returns than medium growth companies
• Supergrowers (CAGR > 60% at $100m mark)
were 8x more likely to reach $1B
• Increase in growth rates drive 2x the market
capitalization as margin reduction in
companies < $4B
• No correlation between cost & growth rates
Growth is Everything

7. What is growth hacking?
A cool-sounding euphemism for
making the doer feel good about
using the same old sleazy
marketing tricks.
– David Heinemeier Hansen, 37 Signals!

8. What is growth hacking?
A … focus on understanding your users and
how they discover and adopt your products,
[so] you can build features that help you
acquire and retain more users, rather than
just spending marketing dollars.
– Josh Elman, Greylock. Frmr.
Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn!

9. $0
$20
$40
$60
$80
$100
$120
$140
$160
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
3.5x
US Online Ad
Spend per User
Extreme Competition for Attention

10. Extreme Competition for Attention
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
WOM
Email
MySpace
Facebook
Craigslist
Twitter
iOS
Android
James Currier

11. Yet some huge successes…
Little or no traditional marketing…

13. Use a Growth Hacking Playbook
• Experiment with all available growth levers
• Understand what’s driving growth, test to
improve it
• Heavy focus on product and optimization

14. The Dropbox Growth Story
• Freemium reduced allowable CPA
• Natural advantages to grow with
collaboration and sharing
• Catalyze sharing with double sided
referral program
• Optimize conversions on sharing loops
• 300 million users with no traditional
marketing

15. B2C or B2B
• Growth hacking isn’t just for consumer-
focused companies.
• B2B often requires integration with sales
process.

16. HUBSPOT – FREE TOOLS

18. Finding Your Own Growth Levers
• Areas of exploration
• Process, team and tools

19. SOME AREAS OF EXPLORATION
• Platform Integrations
• User-Get-User
• Free Tools

20. SOME AREAS OF EXPLORATION
• Powered By
• Reverse Engineer Success

21. Hotel Tonight’s 3G Epiphany
• Discover the why can lead to
breakthroughs in growth
• HotelTonight found poor data
connections drove conversion rates
UP.
• WHY?

22. Success Data: AirBnB’s Pro Photos
• Discovered that listings with
high-quality photos received
2-3x bookings
• Invests in professional
photography
• Booking activity explodes as
desire increases

23. Discover Your Magic Number

25. Twitter’s Follow 30 People
"Once a user follows 30 people, they're more or less active forever.”
– Josh Elman, Greylock

26. Experimentation Is Key To Success
• Generate many ideas for experiments
• Prioritize by impact, confidence & ease
• Balance high impact & high probability tests

28. Growth Team Often Needed
• Multi-disciplinary
• Cross functional
• Evangelize experimentation culture
“Growth team” complements existing marketing team

29. HELPFUL TOOLS
• Analytics — Identify drop-off points and under-performing pages
(e.g. Google Analytics, KISSMetrics)
• Qualitative Insights — Uncover the why behind the numbers (e.g.
Qualaroo, SurveyMonkey)
• A/B Test — Find better performing combinations to drive conversion
rate (e.g. Optimizely, Unbounce)

30. Relentless Execution of Growth Processes
1. Ideas
2.Prioritize
3.Test4.Analyze
5.Optimize

31. 3TAKEAWAYS
1. Growth hacking complements marketing – not
a replacement
2. Use data to find leverage points and double
down on those
3. Rapid, continuous experimentation key to
growth – no silver bullets

32. Morgan Brown
@morganb
GrowthHackers.com