User Acquisition Bootcamp for Startups

User acquisition (made a little less hard!)

The goal of this session:Show you some tools and ideas to optimize your user acquisition (on a tiny or non-existent budget!!)

About me: Consultant CMO and adviser for startups

Started Mansfield + Associates in 1992

Helped clients build an aggregate market value of close to $5 billion

Played a founder's role in successful startups including Brand3 (sold to American Express), PropertyBridge (sold to MoneyGram). Wallaby Financial (sold to BankRate)

Supported marketing and fund-raising programs with VCs and angels for over 100 companies

About me: Ways I help fast growth companies

Mentor

Consultant

CMO in a Box

Co-founder

User acquisition is like sex for the British:

Everyone talks about it. Nobody really knows how to do it. Everyone thinks everyone else is doing it. So everyone claims they are doing it...

Where do you start?

Gender? Age? Income? Geography? Interests? Cars? Housing? Pets? Idols? Fears? Aspirations? Religious? Clothes? Intelligence?

Conservative? Favorite colors? Role models? Entertainment?

Know your user

Go where your users go....

Forums Facebook/LinkedIn groups Meetups

Know your product (and how you hope people will engage with it)

Ready for prime time? Customer validation? Support resources?Videos, ZenDesk, FAQs etc.

Engagement strategy?Drip campaign

Partners prepped? Feedback loops?

Get the user experience right

Every step in the process, from requesting an invitation to the social signup, builds an emotional connection to the user.

http://goo.gl/G4l2v

Get the product right and focus on community

Instagram had less than a dozen employees that focused on perfecting a product that their users loved, turning millions of customers into powerful advocates.

Know your funnel

Acquisition: How do users find you?

On boarding: Do users have a great first experience?

Engagement: Do users come back?

Loyalty: True love?

Calculating user acquisition costs (CAC)

What is CAC?

The cost of your sales and marketing divided by the number

of customers acquired

Match CAC with lifetime value (LTV)

Less than 1:1 Prep your resume

1:1 You’re losing money from every acquisition

3:1 The perfect level. You have a thriving business and a solid business model

4:1 Great news but you’re under investing and could be growing faster

LTV:CAC Prognosis

Other key metrics

Not so important:• Registered users• Downloads• Page views

Important:• Engaged users• Repeat vs first-time actions• Time between actions• Repeat action probability

AdWords Cost Per Click Rises 40% Between 2012 and 2014

So, assuming you haven’t raised $50M, what the hell can you

do to get users?

How do you feed the funnel?

SEO/SEM Paid search/Online ads App store optimization

Email Social/content/viral Affiliate

PR Partners Growth hacking

Focus area:

Content

Using content to drive sign ups

“We focused on building out a unique personal finance blog, very content-rich, that spoke to a young professional crowd that we felt was being neglected. The blog became #1 in personal finance, and drove traffic to the app. Our app didn’t have a high viral coefficient but we had content that was. Our infographics and popular articles became regular hits on Digg, Reddit, etc.”

Compelling content can come in many forms

Blog Webinar eBook

Video Opinion pieces Case studies

Podcasts Papers/reports Syndicated articles

Focus area:

SEO

Cover the SEO baseshttp://explorer.cognitiveseo.com/

https://positionly.com

https://moz.com/

Build killer websites and/or landing pages (and test, test, test!)

• A compelling image and/or video• An attention-grabbing headline• A strong value proposition (the benefits)• Social proof or an endorsement• A strong call to action

SEO action plan

Diagnostics:monthly

Key metrics: weekly

Keywords/content: weekly

Outreach, link building:

daily

SEO standards/co

mpliance: monthly

• Number of visits from the top search engines

• Which keywords are driving traffic, and how your site is ranking on each

• What terms do you competitors rank high for and why?

• Compare performance on desktop searches vs. mobile

• Compare your website’s performance over the past several month

Focus area:

Pay per click

Pay per click (PPC)

• Choose between display (banner) ads and search ads. • Banner ads are graphical and appear on relevant websites. • Search ads sit beside Google search results. Bid based on search keywords.

Banner ads & AdWords:

• Promote your Facebook page, and also promote landing pages outside of Facebook. • Disadvantage: restrictions on ad art, copy, and URLs. Facebook Ads:

• Floating ads are the new popups. • Ads hover over the current window. • Offer a free eBook or recorded webinar.

Floating Ads:

Example: Floating ad

Focus area:

Viral

Go viral

33,000,000 views

19,000,000 views

How do you help a video go viral?

http://goo.gl/C7z1Yj

Make it:• Short• Likeable• Sharable

In other words avoid this...

Focus area:

PR

Get coverage in the right spots

+40% sign ups in one week

How PR helps user acquisition

Supportuser

acquisition goals

Coverage

Awareness

Leads

Speaking slots

Awards

Focus area:

Social

So many social channels – Where should you focus?

• Facebook is a good way to generate trafficFacebook

• Perfect the frequency of promotional content, and Twitter can generate trafficTwitter

• LinkedIn is not usually a significant source of traffic. It’s best for raising brand awarenessLinkedIn

• Though not as good as Facebook and Twitter, Google+ can be a noteworthy source of trafficGoogle+

• If you promote your link well in the video description and have engaging video content, it can be a good source of trafficYouTube

• Has to be the right kind of product and audienceInstagram/Snapchat

• Pinterest can be a good source of traffic. Add a “Pin It” button to images on your website to encourage engagementPinterest

Great, low cost tools to help your social campaign

Focus area:

Email marketing

Get creative with emails, but try to keep it simple

Tailor your campaigns: Segmentation allows for more

personal messages

Review click-throughs, bounces, and other metrics to

measure success

Get feedback on email frequency, content, and

delivery method

Use automation tools to the fullest

Combine drip marketing with segmentation, social media tools, and CRM integration

Email marketing, drip marketing, lifecycle emails, autoresponders

Email marketing tools

Focus area:

App store optimization

Get content right:Title, description, icon,

screenshotsPick the right category

Generate rave reviews:Plugins like Appirater can help

App store optimization starting points

https://goo.gl/08KW64https://goo.gl/EUJPrq

Getting ahead in the app stores

Did you forget growth hacking?

Scratching the surface on growth hacking

https://goo.gl/c2dHnm

https://goo.gl/5gc07p

Focus area:

Partnering

Finding partners to help you carry the load?

Synergistic products? Similar user base?

Track record of partnership deals? Good acquirer?

30 second summary:• Don’t need Superbowl ads to acquire customers

• You do need to be diligent

• Takes a mix of tactics depending on your target

• There are lots of good tools to help

• Don’t be reticent in asking for help

Where to go next

Peter Mansfield: peter@cmo.la

Schedule a free one-on-one marketing session:Calendly.com/petermansfield