144 pages on Growth Hacking, Growth Channels, Acquisition, Conversion, Retention and steps to Organic Growth for Startups.

1. GROWTH HACKING AND
GROWTH CHANNELS FOR
STARTUPS
Murat Aktihanoglu
ERA
http://eranyc.com
murat@eranyc.com
January, 2018

2. Background
EE Undergrad
Computer Science Graduate Degree
Silicon Valley -> New York -> Tokyo
-> New York

3. ERA
Accelerator Program: 2 four-month sessions a year, 10-15 companies per
session, 165 companies since 2011
$100,000 initial investment with potential follow-on investments
Free collaborative 15,000sf office space (includes other ERA alumni
companies)
Largest Mentor Network in NYC: 400+ mentors (investors, domain experts,
successful entrepreneurs and industry executives)
Most hands-on program with full-time Managing Directors, Staff, 12 Venture
Partners and Lead Mentors with continuing post-Program support
Free legal services, software, webhosting, accounting, banking
Demo Days in New York and San Francisco with 1,000+ investors
Strongest post-program support and active alumni network of 150
companies
3

4. Today
1. Introduction
2. Goal-Driven Growth
3. Terminology
4. Overview of getting visitors, activating and retaining them
5. Methodology
6. A note on growth hacking and analytics
7. How to get visitors
8. How to turn visitors into customers
9. How to retain customers
10. Unlocking Organic Growth

5. How is your startup doing?

6. How is your startup doing?
Typical answers:
Great
Good
Pretty good
Very good
We are about to release a beta in 2 weeks
We are looking for investors, do you know any?

7. How is your startup doing?
Some other answers:
Monthly Active Users is growing 20% month over month
Engagement is up 30% week over week
Revenue is up 15% month over month
Our LTV is now 1.8x our CAC, 15% improvement over the last 2 months
We are looking for investors, do you know any? J

8. How is your startup doing?
Which set of answers is better?

9. How is your startup doing?
If you don’t have a goal and you are not measuring what is going on, how do
you know if things are going well or not?
You can’t grow if you do not focus on the right things to work on.

10. Goal-Driven Growth
1) Determine a single main Key Performance Indicator that shows if the
company as a whole is successful and trending positively.
Examples: Revenue, MAU, Engagement, Time spent on site, etc.
(There can also be secondary KPI’s depending on the company and
product)
2) Set Weekly/Monthly Goals for this KPI.
Examples: MAU 30 days: 1,000 , 60 days: 10,000, 90 days: 25,000
3) Every hour you spend, every decision you make as a company (every
employee) is for reaching that goal.
4) At every checkpoint, there is a deep analysis to understand failure
points and learning and implement new methods/changes to overcome the
failure points for the next cycle.

11. Goal-Driven
Growth
1. Set the
next KPI
goal
2. Direct all
efforts for
the goal
3. Measure
4. Analyze /
Learn
5.Implement
new
learnings
0. Pick a
KPI

12. 0. Pick a KPI
Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
A number that helps you get a quick grasp of how things are going within
your company.
A KPI is a number that matters for obvious reasons, and by simply looking at
you can get a sense of company trends.
Two tests for the right KPI:
1) When things go wrong, the KPI value should change in a noticeable
way.
2) When things go right, the KPI value should quickly improve.

13. 0. Pick a KPI
Picking the right KPI: Start with Outcomes. Nothing matters more than the end
result.
1) Identify the Success Factors
2) Develop corresponding KPI
KPI Example: Social Network:
1) Stickiness
2) # of logins/month,# actions/month
Medium.com (Ev Williams) picked Total Time Reading instead of Monthly
Unique Visitors.
Bad KPI’s for Ecommerce: # of visits, # of Page Views, Time On Site
Great read on this: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/single-startup-metric/

14. 1. Set goals for the KPI
Leadership picks goals for the KPI for every week or month.
For example: 10,000 Monthly Active Users for the first month
25,000 for the second month
50,000 for the third month…
Presents to the whole company to get full buy-in from the team.
The goals should be agreed upon by EVERYONE in the company.
Goals should be ambitious but not crazy/insane (There is a fine line)
One question: IF WE REACH THIS GOAL IN 30 DAYS, DOES IT MEAN WE
ARE DOING REALLY WELL?

15. 2. Run for the Goal
90% of this presentation is about methods/channels to achieve KPI goals.
Pick traction channels for your goal
Come up with expected outcomes (to measure against later, don’t fly blind)
Implement methods for that channel
Evaluate results
Learn
Optimize
Tweak
Try again

16. 3. Measure/Track
* Have an automated email send out KPI data every day, week, and month.
* Have a dashboard that has KPI data displayed in such a way that you can
see trends based on past performance. It’s helpful to see if a KPI is going up
or down in general.
* Allow everyone in your company to access KPI data. This will inform
people about which metrics matter to the company, thereby influencing their
decisions.

17. 4. Analyze / Learn
The key part of Goal-Driven Growth.
If you do not learn from what just happened, you can never fix it.
Dig deep to learn from the failure points and how they can be fixed.

18. 5. Implement Learnings
The key part of Goal-Driven Growth.
Tweak the product, change positioning, attempt to get to Product Market Fit.
Change channels, or optimize the channel further, by using the learnings.
Changing the KPI:
And then before moving on to the next stage, analyze if you should change
your main KPI.
Sometimes, maybe twice or 3 times in the life of your startup, you will need to
change your KPI depending on the stage, environment, learnings, pivot, etc.

19. Benefits of Goal-Driven Growth
Being able to answer these questions:
Where are you headed? (When do you know you are successful?)
Are you behind? (Need course-correction?)
Which areas do you need help with the most? (Mentoring)
Do your employees know where you are headed? (Can they answer
these questions?)
Are your employees making the right decisions for the company?
(Every little decision in a startup counts)

20. How to grow your startup –
conversions
As a startup, your primary goal is to get interest from a large
segment of potential customers, convert them into customers
and retain them.
Visitors
Customers
Retained
Customers
Retained
Customers

21. Conversions through carefully
designed funnels
A product is a combination of different funnels bringing the user from
one state to another.
For example: Uber’s consumer experience has two funnels:
1) Onboarding: Registering a user and collecting their payment
information.
2) Booking: Booking transportation from opening the application to
rating a driver’s performance.
1) You have to develop these funnels before development starts
2) then measure them constantly
3) and optimize them constantly
Before product managers and their teams write a single line of code,
define the conversion funnels and every possible state for user to be
in. And, they set initial expectations for the conversion rate through
each step.
http://tomtunguz.com/how-many-funnels-in-your-product

22. The Growth Hacker Funnel
http://www.totango.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/2012-SaaS-Conversions-Benchmark2.pdf

23. The Growth Hacker Funnel
http://www.totango.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/2012-SaaS-Conversions-Benchmark2.pdf

24. The Growth Hacker Funnel
http://www.totango.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/2012-SaaS-Conversions-Benchmark2.pdf

25. The Growth Hacker Funnel
http://www.totango.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/2012-SaaS-Conversions-Benchmark2.pdf

26. Many
different
names,
same
thing.

27. Overview: Channels for getting visitors
1. Search Engine
Optimization
2. Search Engine Marketing
3. Social Ads
4. Native Ads
5. Email Marketing
6. Display Ads
7. App Stores
8. Viral Marketing
9. Targeting Blogs
10. Engineering as Marketing
11. Affiliate Programs
12. Sales
13. Crowdfunding Marketing
14. Content Marketing
15. Business Development
16. Offline Ads
17. Browser Extensions
18. Social Platforms
19. Public Relations
20. Unconventional PR
21. Trade Shows
22. Offline Events
23. Speaking Engagements
24. Community Building
25. Social Media Influencers
26. Flyers
27. Branding

28. Overview: How to Turn Visitors into
Customers
1) Landing Pages
2) Copywriting
3) Calls to Action
4) Onboarding
5) Progress, Awards, Leaderboards
6) Pricing Strategies
7) Hello Bar
8) Easy signup – API integrations
9) Interaction Popups

29. Overview: How to Retain
Customers and Get Referrals
1) Staged Traffic
2) Speed to the “Aha Moment”
3) Using Email
4) Alerts and notifications
5) Exit Interviews
6) The Red Carpet
7) Increase Value
8) Good UI
9) Community Building

30. Terminology
Bookings is the value of a contract between the company and the customer.
It reflects a contractual obligation on the part of the customer to pay the
company.
Revenue is recognized when the service is actually provided or ratably over
the life of the subscription agreement. How and when revenue is recognized
is governed by GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles).
Letters of intent and verbal agreements are neither revenue nor
bookings.
Net burn [revenues (including all incoming cash you have a high probability
of receiving) – gross burn] is the true measure of amount of cash your
company is burning every month.
Gross burn on the other hand only looks at your monthly expenses + any
other cash outlays.

31. Terminology
Annual Run Rate
Current month’s revenue x 12
ARR: Annual Recurring Revenue
Monthly Revenue Growth
( (Current month’s revenue - Last month’s revenue) / Last month’s
revenue )x100
Good target to raise Series A: 15-20%
Runway
Cash in the bank/Net Burn Rate
Just after a raise: 12 to 18 months

32. Terminology
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Blended CAC: Total acquisition cost/total acquired customers through all channels
Paid CAC: Total acquisition cost/new customers acquired through paid channels
CAC should be recovered from the customer in less than 12 months
https://medium.com/
venture-capital-growth-
hacking/understanding-
customer-acquisition-
costs-74aec7538b4d#.
7714olyja

33. Terminology
Lifetime Value of a Customer
Net profit off the customer over the life of the relationship
LTV should be at least > 3 x CAC
Salesforce, ConstantContact – 5 x CAC
Churn Rate
(Number of customers that quit/Total number of customers) x 100
Acceptable: 5-7% annually (or 0.42 – 0.58% monthly churn)
Viral coefficient ( K-Value )
Average number of invitations sent per customer * Conversion rate of these
invitations
>0.5 – 1.0 for viral growth

34. Terminology
Cohorts
A cohort is a portion of your users based on when they signed up for your
product.
Segments
Like cohorts but grouping users depending on other factors.
Needs-based and Profitability-based segmentation are typical examples.
Small Business, Mid-Market, and Enterprise are Needs-based segments
used by many SaaS startups.
Segments should be measurable, addressable, stable and consistent.

35. Terminology
Multivariate Testing (A/B testing)
When you make product changes that are only seen by some of your users
to see which version of your products performs better.
Sample size matters. 100-200 data points do not matter. Use this tool to
get insights on what your sample size should be:
http://www.experimentcalculator.com/
Note: Bandit testing is a continuous form of A/B testing that always send
people toward the best performing options.

36. Terminology
Net Promoter Score: %Promoters - %Detractors
Every company’s customers can be divided into three categories:
Promoters, Passives, and Detractors.
Question: How likely is it that you would recommend [company] to a friend
or colleague?
Promoters (score 9-10) are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and
refer others, fueling growth.
Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are
vulnerable to competitive offerings.
Detractors (score 0-6) are unhappy customers who can damage your
brand and impede growth through negative word-of-mouth.
Tools: Qualaroo or Promoter.io

37. Terminology
Product-Market Fit
If at least 40% of your existing users would be very disappointed if your
product disappeared, then you have Product-Market Fit.
Without Product-Market Fit, nothing matters, don’t try to get traction.
Means, you are solving enough of a pain.
If you do not have PMF, focus mainly on Product, not exclusively on
Growth.
You need users to test for PMF. So put some effort into getting an adequate
user base for testing for PMF.

38. Terminology
ARPU: Average Revenue Per User
Total revenue divided by the number of users for a specific time period

39. Process: How to get visitors
http://tomtunguz.com/building-a-customer-acquisition-machine/
Initially focus on
customers who will
convert in 30 days.
Focus on those
channels that
target these
customers and
master them.

40. Process: How to get visitors
1. Evaluate every potential traction channel
How probable, expected cost of user acquisition, expected volume,
timeframe for testing the channel
2. Pick 3 channels that are the most promising ( ICE Score or BullsEye
Framework – see next slides)
3. Test
Not trying to get a lot of traction, just testing to see if this channel might
work
4. Focus on one channel
“At any stage in a startup’s lifecycle, one traction channel dominates in
terms of customer acquisition.”
5. When the channel is saturated, go back to 1 with the learnings to pick
another channel

41. Picking a Channel
The ICE Score (Sean Ellis)
I: What will the impact be if this works?
C: How confident am I that this will work?
E: How much time/money/effort is required?

42. Picking a Channel
Bullseye Framework:
Brainstorm: Naturally, you’ll have biases towards certain traction channels.
To avoid missed opportunities, they suggest thinking of at least one idea for
each of the traction channels
Rank: This step has you thinking critically about your mountain of ideas. The
goal is to categorize ideas as either high potential, possibilities, or long-shots.
Prioritize: Now you want to re-think your categories once again, carefully
selecting your top three high potential channels.
Test: With your three ‘high potentials’, you can now devise cheap tests to
gauge feasibility. The goal here is to find which one of these channels is
worth your undivided attention.
Focus: Armed with your test results, start directing resources towards your
most promising channel. You’ll want to squeeze every bit of growth out of this
channel by continually optimizing results through experimentation.

43. Case study:
Picked the “Targeting blogs, PR, Search Engine Marketing” channels for
testing
Ran cheap tests.
Sponsored a small newsletter, reached out to financial celebrities, placed
some Google ads
Focused on “Targeting blogs”
Sponsored mid-level bloggers in the financial niche and guest posted
Acquired first 40,000 customers
When this channel maxed out, they focused on “Public Relations”
Reached 1 Million users within 6 months of launching

44. Optimizing a Channel
Focusing on a traction channel means becoming an expert on it by continually
testing new tactics to get the most traction possible.
Research how past and present companies in your space and adjacent spaces
succeeded or failed at getting traction. The easiest way to do this is to go talk
to startup founders who previously failed at what you’re trying to do.
Compile your brainstorming ideas for each traction channel in a spreadsheet
with educated guesses that you can confirm through testing.
Each channel will eventually flatten (The Law of Diminishing Click-Throughs)
Constantly keep testing new channels
Making A/B testing a habit (even if you just run 1 test a week) will improve
your efficiency in a traction channel by 2–3x.
Tools: Optimizely, Visual Website Optimizer, and Unbounce.

45. Product Dev & Traction at the same
time
Spend 50% of your time on product and 50% on traction
1. Better product because you can incorporate knowledge from your traction
efforts.
Dropbox: During product development, SEM $230/user while LTV
was $99.
Focused on Viral Marketing with a built-in referral program.
2. You get to experiment and test different traction channels before you launch
anything.
Marketo (IPO’ed in 2013): SEO was in place even before
product development and a blog. Focused on “Content
Marketing” and got 14,000 interested buyers before product
was ready.

46. Different stages, different channels
Focus on marketing activities that result in a measurable, significant impact
on your company for the given stage.
DuckDuckGo initially focused on SEO, later the volume
of this channel became insignificant.
Initially, do things that do not scale.
After your growth curve flattens, what worked before usually will not get
you to the next level.

47. A Note on Growth Hacking
Growth Hacking is the science of achieving incredible growth with non-
traditional strategies.
“A Growth Hacker is a person whose true north is growth” Sean Ellis – 2010

48. Growth Hacking Example:
Enabled people posting on AirBNB to also post to Craigslist through a hack.
Eventually Craigslist blocked the hack but they got big traction through this.
• A traditional marketer couldn’t have thought or executed this
• AirBNB used their product as the primary means of distributing their product
• AirBNB realized their userbase was somewhere else originally and used that
distribution platform to get to them

49. Other Growth Hacking Examples:
#1 Paypal’s friend referral bounty
Paying $10 cash to each new customer and $10 to the customer who
referred them
#2 Hotmail’s Tagline
“Get your free email at Hotmail.”
#3 Mailbox wait list
In six weeks, Mailbox had a million users signed up on their waitlist.
#4 Twitter’s suggested followers on-boarding
#5 Pinterest auto-follow on sign-up
#6 Instagram cross-posting to Facebook and Twitter

50. Growth Hackers
Try to get all users that sign up for your service to the Must-Have-
Experience (MHX)
Growth hackers should be creative and curious
What would happen if we made our entire product invite only, and not
just for the beta period?
What would happen if we made our users do something every week to
keep their account from being deactivated forever?
What if we let our customer’s pick their own price, including free?
Growth hackers are obsessive about growth
It’s probably the 213th tactic that will work, not the 7th

51. The Growth Hacking Process
1) Define actionable goals
Focus on a narrow, actionable goal
If you can assign specific tasks to a goal, it’s narrow enough
Example:
Increase DAU->
Increase Retention->
Increase content creation:
Tasks:
Educate members about content creation by email,
Add ‘what’s new’ on homepage for highlighting
content creation
Send notifications when there is a new comment
2) Implement analytics to track your goals
Without analytics, goals are empty
Track every relevant metric for your goal
3) Leverage your existing strengths
Prioritize your steps depending on your strengths and leverages

52. The Growth Hacking Process
4) Execute the experiment
Before you run the experiment, write down your best guess on what will happen
Hypothesis keep you honest. And forces you to find real causes of results.
5) Optimize the experiment
Tweak, repeat, optimize the experiments. Don’t move on.
Have a control group when you can.
Utilize A/B testing
Only give up when you feel much more resources to get better results or
your hypothesis and supposed leverages were off-base.
6) Repeat
http://growthdevil.com/20-great-sites-growth-hacking

53. A Note on Analytics:
http://klinger.io/post/72440546722/a-primer-on-startup-metrics-which-analytics-tool

54. A Note on Analytics:
GA is great for everything external.
Especially traffic analysis and referral optimization work perfect in GA.
But GA doesn’t think in users and events. It thinks in visits and sessions.
MixPanel and KissMetrics think in users and events.
Mixpanel is awesome for product-internal exploration and good for product-
internal reporting.
KISSMetrics on the other hand feels like it has one foot in the product-external world.
It’s revenue tab makes it very easy to see what sources brought customers of what kind of life
time value.
Other tools: Custora, RJMetrics (Ecommerce) Totanga (Saas), Flurry/Yahoo (Mobile),
Countly (Open Source)
Note: Google Analytics is now Universal Analytics which works across web and mobile.
Use Segment.com as a wrapper for your API calls so you can switch to any tool you want
in the future.

55. Comparison of Mobile Analytics Platforms:
http://www.degdigital.com/blog/Help-For-Choosing-Your-Mobile-Application-Analytics-Platform

56. Channels for getting visitors
1. Search Engine
Optimization
2. Search Engine Marketing
3. Social Ads
4. Native Ads
5. Email Marketing
6. Display Ads
7. App Stores
8. Viral Marketing
9. Targeting Blogs
10. Engineering as Marketing
11. Affiliate Programs
12. Sales
13. Crowdfunding Marketing
14. Content Marketing
15. Business Development
16. Offline Ads
17. Browser Extensions
18. Social Platforms
19. Public Relations
20. Unconventional PR
21. Trade Shows
22. Offline Events
23. Speaking Engagements
24. Community Building
25. Social Media Influencers
26. Flyers
27. Branding

57. 1. Search Engine Optimization
(SEO)
Improving your ranking in search engines in order to get more people to your
site.
Fat-head strategy: Trying to rank for search terms that directly describe your
company.
Long-tail strategy: trying to rank for more specific terms with lower
search volumes.
Only about ten percent of clicks occur beyond the first ten links (first page).
Your ability to rank on the first page should be a deciding factor in
deciding whether to pursue a particular SEO strategy at all.

58. 1. Search Engine Optimization
(SEO)
Fat-head SEO Tactics:
To pick keywords with search volume: Google AdWords Keyword Planner
and check competitors’ websites
Test conversion on these keywords using Google AdWords
Check Google Trends
Open Site Explorer: to determine the number of links competitors have for a
given term.
One you have the keywords:
1. Place them include that phrase in your page titles and main site
2. Get links to your site from other sites that link through these terms

59. 1. Search Engine Optimization
(SEO)
Long-tail SEO Tactics:
Use Google Keyword Planner
Google Analytics and Clicky to find search terms people are using to get to
your site right now
Check competitors’ landing pages, keywords etc. (Search site:domain.com)
Long-tail SEO boils down to producing a lot of quality content for long-tail
keywords to link to.
Either pay content-creators or use Automation
Get people to link to it – PR / Quality Content / Widgets
Never ever buy links or try to trick search engines (you will be penalized heavily)

60. 2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Demand Harvesting
Placing advertisements for keyword searches on search engines like Google
AdWords
Pay-Per-Click: You only pay when a user clicks on an ad
Click-Through Rate (CTR) – the percentage of ad impressions that result in
clicks to your site.
Cost per Click (CPC) – the amount it costs to buy a click on an
advertisement.
Cost per Acquisition (CPA) – CPA is a measure of how much it costs you to
acquire a
customer, not just a click.
Google AdWords
Microsoft AdCenter (Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo)

61. 2. SEM Conversion Rates

62. 2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
1. Find high-potential keywords: Google’s Keyword Planner, KeywordSpy,
SEMrush, SpyFu
2. Group them into ad groups
3. Test different ad copy and landing pages within each ad group
4. As data flows in, you remove underperforming ads and landing pages and
make tweaks to better performing ads and landing pages to keep improving
results.
Also, early on, run tests with place-holder landing pages, to test product direction.

63. 2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
A campaign is a collection of ads designed to achieve one high-level goal, like
selling jewelry.
You first create different ad groups. For example, if you’re an ecommerce store,
you might create an ad group for each product type (e.g. diamonds rings, gold
bracelets, etc.).
You then select keywords you want your ad groups to appear for (e.g. “Diamond
engagement rings” for diamond rings).
Then create your first ad using catchy, memorable copy with a call-to-action.
Use the Google Analytics URL Builder tool to create unique URLs (web
addresses) that point to your landing pages. These URLs will enable you to
track which ads are converting, not just the ones that are receiving the
most clicks.
Someone just starting out in this channel should begin testing just four
ads.

64. 2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Quality Score: a measure of how well customers are responding to your ads.
A high quality score can get you better ad placements and better ad pricing.
Click-through rate has the biggest influence on quality score by a wide margin.
Average CTR for an AdWords campaign is around 2.0% and Google assigns a
low quality score to ads with CTRs below 1.5%.

65. 2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Content Network
When you set up a campaign, you can choose to advertise on the Google search
network (traditional paid SEM), the Google content network (ads on non-Google
sites), or both.
Initially stick with only search.
Retargeting
Consider luring people back to your site by retargeting through Google AdWords,
or
other sites like AdRoll or Perfect Audience.
Conversion Optimizer
To optimize a long-running campaign you’ve been running for a while, the
Conversion Optimizer is a great way to adjust your ads to perform better.

66. 2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Negative Keywords
You can use negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing for certain
keywords.
Scripting
One more advanced tactic is using programming scripts to automatically manage
your ads.

67. 3. Social Ads
Demand Generation and audience building: indirect response
Facebook: >1.4B users, very granular targeting
Twitter: >250M users, sponsored tweets and cards
SnapChat: 150M Daily active users
LinkedIn: >250M users, targeting by job title, company, industry
Instagram: > 400M users, appears on the stream
StumbleUpon: >25M users, users land on an ad-page
Tumblr: >100M users, also sponsored posts that can be reblogged
Reddit: >2B monthly page views, sponsored links on top or sponsored ads on is
Youtube: >1B monthly unique visitors, pre-roll, sponsored videos, banner ads
Others: BuzzFeed, Scribd, SlideShare, Pinterest

68. 3. Social Ads - Facebook
Facebook Ads: For reaching more people, targeting a specific audience,
brand awareness, generating sales
Targeting options: Location, Demographics, Interests, Behaviors,
Connections, Custom and Lookalike Audiences
Facebook Ads for Mobile Apps: Get people to install your app and promote
engagement and conversions with your existing customers.
Boosted Posts: You can boost a post so more people will see it when they
visit Facebook.
Facebook Offers: Posts about a special discount or promotion that people
can claim and bring into your store.
Facebook Platform: Add the Like and Share buttons to your website to help
your customers share your story. Add Facebook Login to let new customers
easily sign up for your website and app.
Topic Data: Anonymized access to what’s trending on Facebook.
You can see when people are talking more about a topic. Sentiment,
location, volume of mentions and words often mentioned alongside a brand
can be pulled, too.

69. 3. Social Ads - Twitter
Promoted Accounts:
Promoted Accounts allows you to promote a Twitter account as one to follow.
Promoted Tweets:
Promoted Tweets allows you to highlight a particular status update to get
more exposure for it.
Promoted Trends:
Promoted Trends are topics and hashtags that are moved to the top of the
Trending Topics list.

70. 3. Social Ads - Snapchat
Video Ads: Snap Ads always begin with an up to 10-second vertical, full
screen video ad that appears in the context of other Snaps.
You can also give Snapchatters the choice to swipe up and see more, just
like they do elsewhere on Snapchat.
Swiping up reveals extended content like a long form video, article, app
install ad, or mobile website.
Sponsored Geofilters: When Snapchatters in the location(s) of your choice
take a Snap, they’ll be able to see your Geofilter and use it to explain where,
when, and why they took the Snap.
Sponsored Lenses: To activate Lenses, Snapchatters simply press and
hold on their faces. Some Lenses include prompts like “raise your eyebrows”
to trigger an animation, adding a fun twist to the experience.

71. 3. Social Ads - Instagram
Photo Ads:
Images displayed with the “Sponsored” tag on the stream
Video Ads:
30-second long landscape-mode videos displayed with the “Sponsored” tag
on the stream
Carousel Ads:
People can swipe to see additional images and a call to action button takes
them to a website to learn more.

72. 4. Native Ads
Native ad platforms make your content look like any other piece of (native)
content on the target site.
TripleLift (ERA), Outbrain, Sharethrough distribute your content to
hundreds of partner sites like Forbes, Vice, Gothamist, etc.
Since these sites have large audiences, using a native ad platform to target
them can drive lots of engagement in just a short period of time.

73. 4. Native Ads on Mobile
Traditional banners don’t work on mobile – 80% users find it unacceptable.
85% of mobile users are visually engaged with native ads presented in the stream
of the content.
Native Mobile Ads deliver 6X higher conversions for brands vs. traditional banner
ads.
Consumers pay attention to in-feed native ads more than banners.
Tips:
1) Use products in real environments vs. products pictured alone
2) Use real life people in natural environments vs models in posed, studio env.
3) Keep the headline under 150 characters and caption under 300 characters.
http://www.slideshare.net/TripleLift/2015-state-of-native-advertising

74. 5. Email Marketing
Email is still the most effective way to universally reach people who have
expressed interest in your product or site.
Email Marketing for Finding Customers
Do not buy low-quality email lists (spam), build your own list organically
Lifecycle Emails Phase 1: Email Marketing for Activating Customers:
Use targeted emails to reach specific customers who haven’t activated.
Determine the steps absolutely necessary to get value from your product.
Then, create lifecycle emails to make sure users complete those steps.
Tools: Vero and Customer.io

75. 5. Email Marketing
Lifecycle Emails Phase 2: Email Marketing for Retaining Customers
Reminder emails, summary of activity, important news, new features
that can benefit the user
Lifecycle Emails Phase 3: Email Marketing for Revenue
Upselling customers: Coming up with the right offers, targeting and timing
requires experimentation. Explain premium features, sell a higher plan, etc.
Email retargeting: Abandoned shopping cart user gets email a day later
with a special offer to complete the purchase
Lifecyle Emails Phase 4: Email Marketing for Referrals
Due to the personal nature of email, it is excellent for generating
customer referrals

76. 5. Email Marketing
Deliverability is a key factor in email. Use an email marketing tool like
DirectIQ, Mandrill(Transactional Emails), Customer.io, SendGrid, SailThru,
MailChimp or Contant Contact.
Effective email campaigns A/B test every aspect: subjects, formats, images,
timing and more: Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, Active Campaign
Do not send email from a “Noreply” email address to improve engagement.
Great email copy is a must. Resource: CopyHackers.com

77. 6. Display Ads
Demand Generation: Banner ads
Largest Ad Networks: Google Display network (4B daily page views,
700M monthly visitors), Advertising.com(AOL/Verizon), TribalFusion,
ValueClick and AdBlade.
Niche Ad Networks: The Deck (for creative), BuySell Ads (self-service to
buy ads from publishers)
Direct Ads: Go directly to site owners and ask to place an ad on their site
To pick the right demographics and sites for your ads:
MixRank and Adbeat: Shows you ads your competitors are running and on
which sites
Alexa and Quantcast: Shows the demographics of these sites

78. 6. Display Ads: Viewability
56.1% of all display ad impressions never appear on a screen
Vertical Ads are more viewable
Ads that were 160×600 pixels and 120×600 pixels were viewable around
53% of the time, for example, whereas 300×250 ads were viewable just
41% of the time, on average.
Target sites with more engaging and captivating content to achieve higher
viewability rates.
Most “viewable” ads were not placed at the top of publisher pages, but at the
bottom of the visible part of a webpage immediately after it loaded.
http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2014/12/03/5-viewability-findings-from-google/

79. 7. App Stores

80. 7. App Stores
Channels to get into the App Store Top 100 lists:
* Buy ads from places like AdMob
* Buy installs from companies like Tapjoy
* Cross-promote your apps (through cross-promotion networks or other apps
you own)
* Buy your way to the top of the charts through services like FreeAppADay
* App Store Optimization – 63% of apps are discovered through app store
searches. Title and keywords copy can be controlled (mobiledevhq.com ), #
downloads and reviews cannot. Most App Names are 4-5 words (24-35
characters). Most icons are blue and red.
* Drive good reviews and ratings – prompt users at a good time for reviews/
ratings (iRate) or do “integrated rating requests” within your content.
* Incentivized Installs – other apps and services offer users the chance to install
your app as some sort of reward. Large number of install at low cost but very low-
quality users with very low retention. FreeMyApps.com
* Grassroots Marketing – Product Hunt, Reddit, Hacker News
* Be a Featured App J - Pitch to Apple at appstorepromotion@apple.com or
appstoremarketing@apple.com
* Use Branch.io to increase app store conversions through deep-linking
https://medium.com/swlh/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking-apps-60f1af871bff#.hk0gkvkyk

81. 7. App Stores
Once you are in an App Store Top 100 List:
1. More people see it
2. It gets more organic downloads
3. Which makes it go a bit higher up in the charts
4. More people like it and start telling their friends to get it too
5. It goes up higher in the charts

82. 8. Viral Marketing
The Viral Coefficient (K) = invites per user * conversion percentage
Number of additional users you can get for each user you bring in.
Any viral coefficient over 0.5 helps your efforts to grow considerably.
Viral cycle time: A measure of how long it takes a user to go through your viral
loop.
Shortening your viral cycle time drastically increases the rate at which you go
viral, and is one of the first things you should focus on improving if using this
channel.
Design the viral loop, minimize steps, seed with new users
Optimize invitations
Optimize conversion pages

83. 9. Targeting Blogs
One of the most effective ways to get your first wave of customers.
But difficult to scale in phase II and III due to the limited number of relevant
high-traffic blogs.
Finding Blogs to Target:
Search Engines, YouTube, Delicious, Twitter, Social Mention, Talk to
People
Offer Early/VIP Access in return for being promoted on the blog
Sponsor Blogs
Content partnerships with larger sites
Utilize Link-Sharing Communities: Reddit, Hacker News, Product Hunt,
Inbound.org

84. 10. Engineering as Marketing
Building tools and resources that reach more people.
These tools are marketing assets with ongoing returns, rather than ads
that result in a one-time boost.
HubSpot: One key to their success is a free marketing review tool they
created called Marketing Grader to create quality leads.
Moz: Their free SEO tools Followerwonk and Open Site Explorer drive lots
of leads
Annual promotion products, microsites, widgets

85. 11. Affiliate Programs
An affiliate program is an arrangement where you pay people or companies
for performing certain actions (like making a sale or getting a qualified lead).
Retail Affiliate Programs: Generate more than $2B/year. Amazon (own
program, 4-8.5% of each sale), Ebay, Target, WalMart.
Platforms: Commission Junction (CJ), Pepperjam, and Linkshare used
by Wal-Mart, Apple, Starbucks, The North Face, Home Depot, Verizon, Best
Buy, etc.
Coupon/Deal sites (RetailMeNot, CouponCabin, BradsDeals, Slickdeals),
Loyalty programs(Upromise and Ebates offer cash back on purchases),
Aggregators( Nextag, PriceGrabber), Email lists, Vertical sites.
Lead Generation A $26 billion dollar industry. Insurance companies, law
firms and mortgage brokers all pay hefty commissions to get customer leads.
Affiliate.com, Clickbooth, Neverblue and Adknowledge

86. 11. Affiliate Programs
Your ability to use affiliate programs effectively depends how much you
are willing to pay out to acquire a customer.
Top affiliate networks:
Commission Junction,
ClickBank,
Affiliate.com,
Pepperjam,
ShareASale,
Adknowledge,
Linkshare,
MobAff,
Neverblue,
Clickbooth,
WhaleShark Media (RetailMeNot and Deals2Buy.com)

87. 12. Sales
Sales is the process of generating leads, qualifying them, and converting
them into paying customers for products that require interpersonal
interaction (often enterprise and expensive products).
Scaling this channel requires you to design and implement a Repeatable
Sales Model.

88. 12. Sales – SPIN Model (Situation,
Problem, Implication, Need-payoff)
Neil Rackham’s approach from his book SPIN Selling:
Situation questions. These questions help you learn about a prospect’s
buying situation. Typical questions may include ‘How many employees do
you have?’ and ‘How is your organization structured?’ Only ask one or two of
these per conversation.
Problem questions. These are questions that clarify the buyer’s pain points.
Are you happy with your current solution? What problems do you face with
it? Use sparingly.
Implication questions. These questions are meant to make a prospect
aware of the implications that stem from the problem they’re facing. Does this
problem hurt your productivity? What customer or employee turnover are you
experiencing because of this problem?
Need-payoff questions. These questions focus attention on your solution
and get buyers to think about the benefits of addressing the problem.

89. 12. Sales – Cold Calling – PNAME
method
Process – How does the company buy solutions like yours?
Need – How badly does this company need a solution like the one you’re
offering?
Authority – What individuals have the authority to make the purchase
happen?
Money – Do they have the funds to buy what you’re selling? How much does
not solving the problem cost them?
Estimated Timing – What are the budget and decision timelines for a
purchase?
After a successful first call, send a follow-up email documenting what you
talked about including the problems your prospect faces and the next steps.
Also close the email with a direct question such as “will you agree to
this closing timeline?”

90. 12. Sales – Designing a Sales
Funnel
Generating Leads: Drive leads into the top of the funnel using other channels.
Qualifying Leads: Determine how ready a prospect is to buy, and if they’re a
prospect in which you should invest additional resources.
Unqualified leads not yet ready for sales should be put into lead nurturing
campaigns.
Closing Leads Create a purchase timeline and convert prospects to paying
customers by laying out exactly what you are going to do for the customer,
setting up the timetable for it, and getting them to commit (with a “yes or no”) to
whether or not they will buy.
Design your sales funnel strategy from the Customer’s Point of View with
their needs and timeline.
Remove obstacles: No IT installs (SaaS), Free trials, Demo videos, Channel
partners, Reference customers, email campaigns, webinars, personal demos,
low intro price

91. 13. Crowdfunding Marketing
Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, etc.
1) You have to hit 30% of your goal in the first 2 days
2) Good video
3) Good copy
4) Gather good leads (email list) before the campaign. Do this through ads, or
publications on the web that target your user segment.

92. 14. Content Marketing
Moz, Unbounce or OkCupid: their blogs were their largest source of
customer acquisition during an extended period of growth.

93. 14. Content Marketing
Create strong content
Write about the problems facing your target customers.
Mini-courses, ebooks, and infographics
Infographics are shared about twenty times more often than a typical blog
post
Growing your blog’s audience
It may take a long time
Engage in online forums
Guest posting
Content Marketing positively impacts: SEO, PR, email marketing, targeting
blogs, community building, offline events, existing platforms and
business development.

94. 15. Business Development
Primarily focused on exchanging value through partnerships.
Standard Partnerships: Two companies work together to make one or both
of their products better by leveraging the unique capabilities of the other.
(Apple/Nike – Nike+ shoes that talk to your iPhone)
Joint Ventures: Two companies work together to create an entirely new
product offering. (Starbucks/Pepsi – Starbucks Frapuccino)
Licensing: One company has a strong brand that an upstart wants to use in
a new product or service. (Upstart ice cream manufacturer licensed
Starbucks brand)

95. 15. Business Development
Distribution Deals: One party provides a product or service to the other in return for
access to potential customers. (Kayak powered AOL’s travel search engine)
Supply Partners: These types of partnerships help you secure key inputs which are
essential for certain products. (Half.com formed several to secure books)
Good BD deals should align with your company and product strategy and are focused
on critical product and distribution milestones. These deals should help you hit your
key metrics, whether growth, revenue, or product-related.
Understanding a partner’s goals is key to creating a mutually beneficial relationship.
Low-touch BD utilizes tools like APIs, feeds, crawling technology and embed codes to
reach new distribution channels and grow your influence. These methods allow you to
standardize your value proposition and get more deals done.

96. 16. Offline Ads
TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, yellow pages, billboards and direct mail
Factors to consider:
Demographics
Cost: Remnant advertising can be cheap (Manhattan Media or Novus
Media)
Tracking: Specific URLs, coupon codes
Print Advertising
Magazines: 7,000 magazines in the US. Consumer, Trade and Local
publications
Newspapers
Direct Mail
Local Print Ads

97. 16. Offline Ads
Billboard Advertising
Every billboard has an advertising score, known as a GRP score (Gross
Ratings Points)
Lamar, Clear Channel, or CBS Outdoor
Transit Advertising
Buses, taxis, benches, and bus shelters
Blue Line Media
Radio Advertising
Priced on a Cost-per-Point basis (CPP), where each point represents
what it will cost to reach 1% of the radio station’s listeners. This also
depends on which market you’re advertising in and when your commercials
run.
Example: An ad running on a station for a week is often $500–1,500 in a
local market, and up to $4,000–8,000 in a larger market like Chicago
Satellite Radio (SiriusXM) also an option

98. 16. Offline Ads
TV Advertising:
For branding
1,300+ TV stations in the US
Costs can start at $200K for production and $350K for national airtime
Buying TV ads involves negotiation (no rate cards)
Infomercials
Long-form TV advertisements

99. 17. Browser Add-ons and Extensions
Browser extensions (in Chrome) and add-ons (in Firefox) extend Browser
functionality.
Easier way for users to engage with your service/app
Sticky
Though harder initial friction for downloading the extension.

100. 18. Social Platforms
Fill a gap (though might be too late for this)
Facebook and Twitter enabled the launching of many companies but later
shut down these third-party tools. Now it’s too late and lessons should be
learned.
YouTube provided embedded videos for MySpace
Bit.ly fulfilled the need to share shortened links on Twitter
Imgur built their image-hosting solution for Reddit.
AirBnB saw much of their early growth come through Craigslist.
In the beginning, PayPal itself purchased goods off of eBay and required that
the sellers accept their payment through PayPal.

101. 19. Public Relations
Initially:
Have something interesting (usage numbers, launch, funding event, etc.)
Shoot for coverage in smaller blogs and/or Help a Reporter Out (HARO)
Follow influencers in your industry and reach out to the blogs they often link
to
Submit your stories to Reddit, Hacker News, Product Hunt, etc., share on
social media, email it to influencers for comment, ping blogs
Much later:
Engage with a PR firm/consultant (But can be expensive and ineffective if
not the right firm for your company)
Bring it in-house to own and build messaging

102. 20. Unconventional PR
1. Publicity stunts - anything that is engineered to get media coverage.
Renaming Halfway, Oregon to Half.com, Oregon for a year
WePay placing a block of ice at PayPal conference
2. Viral Videos - Blendtec, Dollar Shave Club, Dropbox
3. Customer appreciation – small scalable actions
Gifts: Hipmunk sent luggage tags to initial customers
Contests and Giveaways: Shopify annual “Build a Business” competition,
Dropbox’s DropQuest competition, Hipmunk’s Mother’s Day Giveaway
Customer support: Zappos will do anything to make you happy, no limits

103. 21. Trade Shows
Trade shows are events for companies to show off their products in person to
industry insiders and prospects.
These events are often exclusive to industry insiders, and are designed to
foster interactions between vendors and their prospects.
Picking Trade Shows: The best way to decide whether to attend an event
is to visit as a guest and do a walkthrough the year before. Or get the
opinions of people who have attended previous events – how crowded was
it? How high was the quality of attendees? Would you go again?
To prepare, make a list of key attendees you want to meet at the trade show.
Then, schedule meetings with them before you attend the event.
Host a dinner party at a desirable venue
Have giveaways
Your marketing materials should always have a Call To Action.

104. 22. Offline Events
Sponsoring or running offline events – from small meetups to large
conferences – can be a primary way to get traction.
Twilio attracted customers by sponsoring hackathons, conferences, and
meetups.
Offline events are particularly effective for startups with long sales cycles, as
is often the case with enterprise software.
Conferences, Meetups, Parties.
CardFlight (ERA) and TripleMint (ERA) organize their own meetups

105. 23. Speaking Engagements
Great way to get traction, attention, potential customers.
You have to get the attention of event organizers to land speaking
engagements.
If you have a good idea for a talk and see an event that aligns with an area of
your expertise, simply pitch your talk to the event organizers.
Organizers consider timing, topic, and credibility when selecting a speaker.
Blogging helps build credibility.
Being a good speaker helps, practice by speaking at smaller events,
meetups.
Do a good job when you speak at a major event and you will be invited over
and over again to more events.

106. 24. Community Building
Community building involves investing in the connections among your users,
fostering those relationships and helping them bring more people into your
startup’s circle.
Build an Initial Audience
Establish Your Mission
Foster Cross-connections among users through forums, events, user
groups, etc. so that they feel more cohesive as a community and can come
up with ideas that you may not think of yourself.
Communicate with your Audience
Be Transparent
Ensure Quality
Cultivate and empower evangelists.

107. 25. Social Media Influencers
STATS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCER MARKETING FOR 2016:
1. INFLUENCER MARKETING INTEREST INCREASED MORE THAN 90X
SINCE 2013
2. EARNED MEDIA VALUE FOR INFLUENCER MARKETING WAS 1.5X
HIGHER THAN PREVIOUS YEAR
3. OVER 80% OF MARKETERS FIND INFLUENCER MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
EFFECTIVE
4. 60% OF MARKETERS WILL INCREASE INFLUENCER MARKETING
BUDGETS IN 2016
5. 62% OF 18- TO 24-YEAR-OLDS WOULD BUY A YOUTUBER-ENDORSED
PRODUCT (VS. CELEBRITY)
6. THE AVERAGE PERSON SPENDS 1 HOUR 40 MINUTES ON SOCIAL
MEDIA EACH DAY
7. 70 MILLION AMERICANS WILL USE AD BLOCKERS IN 2016, A 34%
INCREASE FROM 2015
8. NEARLY 70% OF MILLENNIALS USE AD BLOCKERS

108. 25. Social Media Influencers
1 – Determine KPI’s, Budget, Audience, Target, etc.
2 – Determine social media channels of relevant influencers
3 – Determine publishing schedule
4 – Vet Influencers
5 – Prepare campaign brief
6 – Negotiate rates and contracts
7 – Review content
8 – Publish
9 – Amplify and optimize
10 – Report and analyze
ERA Company:
http://musefind.com

109. 26. Flyers
They still work, for the right product and right audience.
Check PebblePost.com

110. 27. Branding
Be a brand, not a commodity
Product – Meaning = Commodity
Product + Meaning = Brand
Brand Building Framework (Fortune Cookie Principle)
1. The Truth – What business are you really in? How do your customers
want to feel? You are not selling cars, you are selling safety (Volvo) or
excitement (Porsche).
2. Purpose – What is the reason you exist? (Hint: it’s not to make money.)
Google satisfies curiosity for anyone with access the the web. Share your
purpose and give your brand a reason to matter.
3. Vision – What happens because you exist? How will the change your
business brings about change how your customers feel and act?
4. Values – How are you demonstrating your beliefs to the world and to your
customers? Not knowing the beliefs of the company leaves you incapable of
acting in the correct way.
5. Products and Services – Most products and services can and should
have meaning attached to them.

111. 27. Branding
6. Your People – Whom you hire, what they stand for, and how they show up
all tell a story.
7. Value you deliver – Value has very little to do with price. Yet, we keep
wondering what people will pay for instead of wondering what is valuable.
8. Name and Tagline – A great name can elevate a business and build a
story around it. Nike would not have been so successful if they stuck with
their old name: Blue Ribbon Sports.
9. Content and Copy – Your content and copy are your voice and the way
you communicate your brand’s personality. If it is not interesting and
engaging then you will fail to communicate effectively.
10. Design – Design can change how people feel and interact with your
brand. Think Apple.
11.Your Actions – Your actions are everything you do. From answering the
phone through to support. They must be aligned with your company values.
12. Customer Experience – Customer experience is everything that
happens when people encounter your brand.
13. Price and Quality – The price you charge sends a signal to the type of
people you want to attract.

112. 27. Branding
14. Perception – Influencing how your customers perceive your brand is
about changing how they feel in every interaction, not by how you manipulate
their thinking.
15. Distribution – How you get your products and services into the hands of
customers sends them a signal about your brand. It can also provide a
competitive advantage.
16. Location – Location isn’t just about where you choose to do business;
it’s about figuring out where your customers are.
17. Ubiquity or Scarcity – Do you want to appeal to the masses or create
products and services for people with a particular worldview?
18. Community – Does the brand have a purpose that brings your
customers together as a community? Could it?
19. Reputation – What does one person say to another to recommend your
brand? People trust stories and reference from other people more than your
own website.
20. Reaction and Reach – Are you giving customers opportunities to
demonstrate loyalty to your brand?

113. Activating Visitors
Activation is the act of getting “visitors” to take an action in your product
that you are
guiding them toward.
Some examples:
Get their email address
Get them to create an account
Get them to read something
Get them to comment on something
Get them to share something
Get them to buy something
Get them to watch something
Get them to interact with someone

114. How to Activate Visitors into
Customers
1) Landing Pages
2) Copywriting
3) Calls to Action
4) Onboarding
5) Progress, Awards, Leaderboards
6) Pricing Strategies
7) Hello Bar
8) Easy signup – API integrations
9) Interaction Popups

115. 1. Landing Pages
A Landing Page is different than your homepage. It’s a page that you can direct
visitors from a certain campaign/link.
Companies with 10+ Landing Pages get 55% more signups.
Should be Minimalist:
Limited Navigation
Single Call to Action
Specific Language for the Segmented Visitor
Specific for Launch Pages (Coming soon, sign up):
Copy, the headline and the subhead, is everything
Ask for sharing the launch page for early access
Effective imagery is a must
Don’t let the list grow cold
Post to ProductHunt.com, Betali.st and Erlibird.com
Tools: Unbounce for easily testing many different landing pages. Optimizely if you
already have a site.

116. 2. Copywriting
Functional vs Emotional?
As a general rule, shoot for 70% Emotional and 30% Functional
Made to Stick: SUCCESs Model. How to make ideas stick in people’s minds:
Simple — find the core of any idea
Unexpected — grab people's attention by surprising them
Concrete — make sure an idea can be grasped and remembered later
Credible — give an idea believability
Emotional — help people see the importance of an idea
Stories — empower people to use an idea through narrative
“Made to Stick: Why some ideas stick” by Chip and Dan Heath

117. 2. Copywriting
The headline should mention your unique value proposition.
The subhead should further explain your unique value proposition.
Long copywriting is good for expensive items.
Short, precise copywriting is good for less expensive items.
Different audiences will respond to different kinds of words.
Use Customer Development to inform copywriting (Research message boards,
surveys)
Social Proof (Testimonials)
http://copyhackers.com

118. 3. Calls to Action
The best way to get someone to do what you want is by giving them a clear
call to action. Tell them where to click and make the button obvious.

119. 4. Onboarding
Onboarding can take the form of visual directions placed on top the screen, or
a series of pages that lead visitors from one place to another, like a digital tour
guide for your product. An explanatory video could even be a part of your
onboarding strategy.
And get them to the Must-Have-Experience.
Facebook: Famous “7 friends in 10 days”.
Twitter: They know that an account that doesn’t follow anyone is kind of
useless, so Twitter made following others a part of the signup process.
If you want to activate visitors, making them take certain actions, then you
must carefully craft your onboarding experience.
Case studies: https://www.useronboard.com/onboarding-teardowns/

120. 5. Progress, Awards, Leaderboards
Progress: Push users to take actions by showing a progress bar
Awards: Push users to take actions by giving them (most of the time pointless
and meaningless) awards.
Leaderboards: Push users to take actions by showing them their ranking
against other users.

121. 6. Pricing Strategies
Some pricing strategies to get a user to make a purchase:
Perfect price discrimination:
Creating a pricing structure that charges based on the consumer’s
purchasing power.
Multiple Tiers
More expensive option makes you feel like you’re not wasting money.
Cheaper option makes you feel not cheap.
Suggestive Tier Naming
“Starter,” “Professional,” or “Team,” instead of vague: gold, silver and
bronze.
Free Trials or Money Back Guarantee
Discount Codes
Bundling

122. 6. Price Elasticity
Usually, lower the price of something the more
demand.
http://avc.com/2015/12/measuring-price-elasticity-and-more/
How to get your price elasticity curve:
1. offer the product or service on the web and make the
purchase as easy as possible (Stripe and/or Paypal).
2. establish the range of pricing you want to measure, start at
a number higher than you can imagine anyone paying and end
at a number that is equal to the cost to produce your product
or service (the cost of good sold)
3. set the price at the high end of the range
4. buy some search traffic to your offering (Google Adwords)
5. measure the traffic to your offer and the conversion rate
(Google Analytics)
6. lower the price
7. repeat 4 & 5
8. lower the price again
9. repeat 4 & 5
10. continue this process until you reach the low end of the
range

123. 7. Hello Bar

124. 8. Easy Signups – API Integrations

125. 9. Interaction Popups
1. Lightbox Popups
2. Exit Intent Popups
3. Welcome Mat Popups
4. Social Content Lockups – Pay for access with a tweet or share
5. Bottom Right Hand Recommendation, Survey, and Live Chats
https://klientboost.com/cro/exit-popup/

126. Retaining Users
Retention is the act of getting your members to use your product in such a way
that it becomes habitual.
Retention is the most important component of the Growth Funnel:
* If your retention is low then all of the ingenious growth hacks that you
apply to your product are basically meaningless.
* If you cannot retain your ‘activated’ users who showed extreme interest in
your product, then something is seriously wrong with the product.
* Retention can affect the bottom line more than getting new visitors.
* An increase in retention increases the lifetime value of the customer
(LTV).
* People that have been retained for long periods of time are more likely to
evangelize for your product.

127. Behavioral Models for retention:
Hook Model (Nir Eyal – Book: Hooked)
Trigger: Bringing a user into the cycle starts with a trigger. At first these will
be in the form of external triggers such as push notifications, but as the cycle
repeats they will convert into internal triggers that will continue to drive the
user forward. Since negative emotions are often internal triggers, one
example would be a pang of loneliness followed by the urge to jump onto
Facebook.
Action: The easier it is to do something, the more users will do it. Habit
forming products make action easy.
Variable reward: To create a habit, it’s necessary to reward the action that
was triggered. However, research shows that humans are motivated by the
anticipation of a reward. By adding variability into the reward system, you
increase anticipation. Think about the sweet sweet anticipation that you
might have a notification waiting for you on Facebook.
Investment: Finally, to solidify the habit, users need to invest themselves in
your product. On Facebook we build a network of friends, and on Instagram
we have collection of photos. These investments make it hard to leave.

128. Behavioral Models:

129. Behavioral Models for retention:
STEPPS (Jonah Berger – Book: Contagious: Why things catch on)
Social currency: People care about how they are perceived by others. Use
this to your advantage, and people won’t be able to resist talking about you.
Invite-only web apps harness this by making users feel like insiders.
Triggers: If people are frequently reminded of your product, they’ll talk about
it more. Jonah notes the example of Rebecca Black’s song “Friday” having a
huge spike in plays on — when else? — Fridays.
Emotion: Content is more likely to go viral if it is highly emotional. The type
of emotion matters too — something that evokes anger (a high arousal
emotion) is more likely to be shared than something that evokes sadness (a
low arousal emotion).
Public: The more public something is, the more likely people will talk about
it. Think about the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: the creators were able to take
something that was normally private (donating to charity) and make it very
public.
Practical value: People like to share things that are useful. Make high value
content and they’ll pass it on.
Stories: People like to tell stories. Jonah describes stories as your Trojan
Horse—build compelling narratives, and they’ll carry your idea along for the
ride.

130. How to Retain Customers and Get
Referrals
1) Staged Traffic
2) Speed to the “Aha Moment”
3) Using Email
4) Alerts and notifications
5) Exit Interviews
6) The Red Carpet
7) Increase Value
8) Good UI
9) Community Building

131. 1. Staged Traffic
Don’t wait until you have lots of visitors and activated users to test for
retention.
Stage some traffic to get visitors and users to test your retention early
on.

132. 2. Speed to the “AHA Moment”
The moment that a visitor or member actually feels the truth of your
promise, and sees the obvious benefit of your product, that’s what we call
the “aha moment”.
Do you know what the aha moment for your product is? What are the actions
which a member can take on your product which are leading indicators of
their retention rate?
If you currently ask visitors to create an account to see the benefit of your
product, is there a way to show them a sandboxed version of your product that
allows them to have an aha moment before signing up?
Is there an email you can send to a new user which outlines exactly what the
aha moment is? Can you give them a clear call to action to have that kind of
moment?

133. 3. Using Email
Let people make their own decisions about the email they want or don’t
want, and don’t preemptively decide for them, handicapping your
product in the process.
Drip Campaigns
Send users prewritten emails at preselected intervals.
Event-based Notifications
General Updates / Newsletters

134. 4. Alerts and Notifications
For Mobile Applications, in addition to email, alerts and notifications are
a very strong channel to retain users.
Don’t be spammy and make it easy to turn on and off notifications
Use “Local Push” with user’s local time
Current location is powerful
Custom push sounds to make your app recognizable
Expire pushes that are not consumed
Use Badge Counts

135. 5. Exit Interviews
When people cancel your service, or go long periods of time being
inactive, or generally show themselves to not be retained:
Learn from them by emailing them and asking them the worst thing
about your product that made them cancel or just cut to the chase and
ask them what sucks the most.

136. 6. Red Carpet – Extra good
customer service
Red Carpet is about avoiding losing users. Some ideas:
• Send 100 t-shirts to your first 100 customers
• Give a shout out to your best user in your email newsletter
• Retweet your best users
• Give your VIP users access to exclusive content
• Have a drawing for a free trip to a conference for power users

137. 7. Increase Value for Users
Increasing the value of your product always helps retention.
Add Features: If a majority of the users are pushing for a feature
Remember: Just adding more and more features does not make a
product more successful if it already doesn’t have product-market fit
Subtract Features: Remove features that aren’t used so it’s easier to
use your product

138. 8. Good UI
• Try A One Column Layout instead of multicolumns.
• Try Merging Similar Functions instead of fragmenting the UI.
• Try Distinct Clickable/Selected Styles instead of blurring them.
• Try Undos instead of prompting for confirmation.
• Try More Contrast instead of similarity.
• Try Fewer Form Fields instead of asking for too many.
• Try Exposing Options instead of hiding them.
• Try Suggesting Continuity instead of false bottoms.
• Try Keeping Focus instead of drowning with links.
• Try Fewer Borders instead of wasting attention.
• …
http://goodui.org

139. 9. Community Building
Good Customer Support – Zappos
Documentation – Friendly and accessible help for users
Social Features – Enable a community for your product through social
features
Good read: Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh (Zappos)

140. Bonus – some experience
- Make sure you set your attribution to VTA 24hs. Last click 7 days will rip off your
organics and likely incentivize partners to use dodgy banners you HAVE to click
on, that make up for bad user experience...
- Start off with search if you haven’t yet, before you move to display.
- Make sure your service/app is cross country before you work with networks (if
its city targeted you will need a DSP and it’ll cost more). [A demand-side platform
(DSP) is a system that allows buyers of digital advertising inventory to manage
multiple ad exchange and data exchange accounts through one interface]
- Shop around for impression/publisher transparency before you pick a network.
The more they are willing to give you transparency, the less likely there is fraud :-)
- Do not do incent campaigns - they only work for known brands.
- Try video campaigns on vungle or adxolony, they tend to convert better and help
you educate users, especially when you first launch, despite the added cost.

141. Last word: Unlocking Organic after
PMF to enable Scaling
http://appcues.com/blog/sean-ellis-secret-framework-for-unlocking-organic-growth/
Summary: Extract your product’s core value from its most passionate users, then
use insights from those passionate users to shape the onboarding for future users.

142. Last word: Unlocking Organic after
PMF to enable Scaling
http://appcues.com/blog/sean-ellis-secret-framework-for-unlocking-organic-growth/
1. Understand Your “Must Have” Users
2. Find Your Product’s Key Benefit
3. Discover Your Users’ Intent
4. Crowdsource Your Product Description
5. Apply Responses to Your Homepage
6. Onboard Users to Your “Must Have” Experience

143. Sources:
Feedback and tips from various ERA mentors, founders and friends:
http://eranyc.com
And these amazing resources:
Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin
Mares
Definitive Guide To Growth Hacking by Neil Patel and Bronson Taylor
David Skok’s (Matrix Partners) blog: http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/
Thomas Tunguz’s (Redpoint Ventures) blog: http://tomtunguz.com/
Ev William’s post on Measurement:
https://medium.com/@ev/a-mile-wide-an-inch-deep-48f36e48d4cb
Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday
Growth Hacking for Startups by AvanzaGrowth.co
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath
http://goodui.org/
Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
AVC Fred Wilson’s blog http://avc.com
Startup Stash http://startupstash.com/

144. Murat Aktihanoglu
murat@eranyc.com
http://eranyc.com
Blog: http://muratak.com