Product School San Francisco January 31 2015

1twitter @meetsamir

@Product School Jan 31st, SF

2twitter @meetsamir

3twitter @meetsamir

The Growth Master

• Founder, CEO of DoRevolution and Growth

Mentor at 500Startups Silicon Valley,

Optimized $1B+ in Ads.

• Founder of SearchForce and pioneer to apply

Wall Street Analytics and Quantitative Trading

Techniques to Advertising for Portfolio

Optimization. Raised $10M+ in financing,

developed a Cross-Channel Optimization SaaS

Platform Based and took the company to

profitability.

• MBA in Brand Marketing from Cornell's Johnson

School of Business.

4twitter @meetsamir

How to Build a Growth Engine

• Scalable

• Repeatab

le

• Predictab

le

5twitter @meetsamir

BOTS Take Over Social Selling

6twitter @meetsamir

Automate Visits to Profiles

7twitter @meetsamir

Profile Current & Clear Action

8twitter @meetsamir

9twitter @meetsamir

Dave McClure Startup

Ecosystem

9

• 1,000 Bootstrap Startups ($0-10K)

• = 1,000 Parents/Garages/Basements @ $0-500/mo food+rent

• 300 Accelerator Startups ($10-100K)

• = 10-20 Accelerators @ $1-5M/yr, 20-50 co’s/yr

• 100 Seed-Stage Startups ($100K-$1M)

• = 5-10 Micro-VC Funds @ $10-30M/yr, 10-20 co’s/yr

• 30 Series A/B Startups ($1-10M)

• = 3-5 Early-Stage Funds @ $25-100M/yr, 5-10 co’s/yr

• 10 Later-Stage Companies ($10-100M)

• = 2-3 Later-Stage Funds @ $50-250M/yr, 3-5 co’s/yr

• 1-3 Mature Company IPOs ($100M+)

10twitter @meetsamir

- McKinsey & Company




Growth Trumps all Metrics

12

• High growth companies return 5X more to

share holders

• Growth predicts long-term success

• SuperGrowers (growth rate >60%) when

reached $100M were 8X more likely to

reach $1B than ones <20% growth rate

• Growth matters more than margin or cost

structure. Increases in revenue growth rates

drive 2X as much market cap gains



Be Vanilla or a Gorilla

International Ice Cream Association the Top 10 flavours of ice cream in order are: vanilla,

chocolate, butter pecan, strawberry, neapolitan, chocolate chip, french vanilla and cookies ‘n’ cream.

Vanilla (#1) got approximately 28% of sales and chocolate (#2) got approximately 8% of sales.

The rest got 6% or less.

In this instance, being #1 makes you 350% better off than #2.


Action

Grow Fast

or

Die Slow


Everyone needs to Grow.

But Growth is Hard.


Why is Growth Hard?

• Law of Vanilla Ice-cream

• Rapid Evolution of Platforms

• Increasing precision brings

complexity

• Speed & Machines

• Lots of Money at Stake


Platforms 2.0Search, Social, Mobile,

Video, Messaging

$100M+ Users Available

~ Dave McClure


A Zillion Ways to Acquire Users


SEO is not JUST SEO

~ Rand Fishkin, Wizard, Moz


Billions at Stake

~ Rand Fishkin, Wizard, Moz


Unprecedented Complexity


Precision Marketing


Action : A Historical Opportunity

Laser-Like

Precision Marketing


Action

Reflect on your current

knowledge and know the delta


The Rise of the Machines


Hedge fund Spent

$300M to increase speed by

3 Milliseconds


High-frequency trading factoids

80% Bot Trading!


Hyper Inflation & Irrational

Bidders


Google Pays $500M


Moneyball for Growth



Marketing Department vs

(Machines + Geniuses)

Do you have

DataStarson your team?


Actions• Grow Fast or Die Slow

• Markets are hyper-competitive and inflated

• Companies are using Artificial Intelligence,

Math and Stats to gain competitive

advantage

• Companies are hiring the best and brightest

minds and paying billions for them. It’s the

TEAM stupid.

• Easy to spend money, hard to make money

• Bottom-line : Pay attention OR you will end

up in the dead pool.






8 Qualities of World Class Growth

Teams• Possess Data-Driven Thinking

• Rapid Learners of Dynamically Changing

Marketing Channels and Growth Platforms

• Understand Growth Process

• Are Highly Product-Savvy

• Have a Hustle Mindset

• Possess a Cross-Disciplinary Skillset

• Connect Marketing to Product Development

• Possess Technical Acumen

• Hiring connections




Stop PUKING Data.

Make Money from it.


Data Storage & Retrieval

43twitter @meetsamirTraffic Acquisition

Market Research & User Feedback

Email Marketing

Competitive Research Tools Sales Intelligence

Lead & Customer Acquisition

AB / Multivariate Testing



~ Brian Balfour


Website.com

Emails &

widgets

Campaigns,

Contests

Biz DevAds, Lead Gen,

Subscriptions, etc

Homepage /

Landing Page

Product

Features

1. ACQUISITION

SEOSEM

Apps &

Widgets

Affiliates

Email

PR Biz

Dev

Campaigns,

Contests

Direct, Tel,

TV

Social

NetworksBlogs

Domains

Emails &

Alerts

Blogs,

Content

System Events &

Time-based Features

~ Dave McClure, 500Startups


Risk Management ~ Process

•KPI’s

• Growthaly

tics

• Kaizen



49

No Silver Bullet



~ Brian Balfour, Hubspot


Action

Establish

Clear,

Quantifiable

Goals.


Customer Lifecycle

• Acquisition: users come to the site from various channels

• Activation: users enjoy 1st visit: "happy" user experience

• Retention: users come back, visit site multiple times

• Referral: users like product enough to refer others

• Revenue: users conduct some monetization behavior

AARRR!



Action

Think

Lifecycle.

Customer

Journeys.


Experiment

• Objective

• Hypothesis

• Design

• Resource Estimation

• Results

• Findings

• Action Items


Running Growth Experiments



Action

You must breathe

Continuous Improvement

59twitter @meetsamirEstablish Objectives and Key

Results (OKRs)

• Set your objective based on what’s going to

have the greatest impact on your business

right away

• Establish a timeline for testing

• Set multiple Key Results (KRs) based on

level of difficulty:

KR 1 – 90% chance of success. You did a good job.

KR 2 – 50% chance of success. You did a great job.

KR 3 – 10% chance of success. You hit it out of the park!


Example -- Growth via Adwords:

Goal: Lower their CPA for accredited investor signups via AdWords without a significant drop in conversion volume.

1. Focus on Search Network to drive lower CPA

2. Set timeline for 60 days

3. Three Key Results will be attempted:

• KR1 -- (90% change of success): Raise conversion volume by 10% by focusing on strategic bid modifications RLSA audience lists.

• KR2 – (50% chance of success): Lower CPA by 20% by limiting the keywords they buy to high performing terms only, and setting location bid modifications by income-tier.

• KR3 – (10% chance of success): Lower CPA by 20% and raise conversion volume by 10% by combining these two strategies.


Action

Establish

OKR’S for

everyone on

the team.



Platforms

• Data Use / Action Ninjas /

GrowthStack


Data Storage & Retrieval


How Big is your Data?

66twitter @meetsamirStop Data

PUKING

67twitter @meetsamirTraffic Acquisition

Market Research & User Feedback

Email Marketing

Competitive Research Tools Sales Intelligence

Lead & Customer Acquisition

AB / Multivariate Testing




Website.com

Emails &

widgets

Campaigns,

Contests

Biz DevAds, Lead Gen,

Subscriptions, etc

Homepage /

Landing Page

Product

Features

1. ACQUISITION

SEOSEM

Apps &

Widgets

Affiliates

Email

PR Biz

Dev

Campaigns,

Contests

Direct, Tel,

TV

Social

NetworksBlogs

Domains

Emails &

Alerts

Blogs,

Content

System Events &

Time-based Features

~ Dave McClure


Customer Lifecycle

• Acquisition: users come to the site from various channels

• Activation: users enjoy 1st visit: "happy" user experience

• Retention: users come back, visit site multiple times

• Referral: users like product enough to refer others

• Revenue: users conduct some monetization behaviorAARRR!



Action

Think

Lifecycle.

Customer

Journeys.


Your Eyes are ‘Analytics’


Process

•KPI’s

• Growthaly

tics

• Kaizen



~ Brian Balfour



Action

Establish Clear, Quantifiable

Goals.

Think Attribution Modeling.


Experiment

• Objective

• Hypothesis

• Design

• Resource Estimation

• Results

• Findings

• Action Items


Running Growth Experiments




Action

You company must breathe

Continuous Improvement

84twitter @meetsamirEstablish Objectives and Key

Results (OKRs)

• Set your objective based on what’s going to

have the greatest impact on your business

right away

• Establish a timeline for testing

• Set multiple Key Results (KRs) based on

level of difficulty:

KR 1 – 90% chance of success. You did a good job.

KR 2 – 50% chance of success. You did a great job.

KR 3 – 10% chance of success. You hit it out of the park!


Example -- Growth via Adwords:

Goal: Lower their CPA for accredited investor signups via AdWords without a significant drop in conversion volume.

1. Focus on Search Network to drive lower CPA

2. Set timeline for 60 days

3. Three Key Results will be attempted:

• KR1 -- (90% change of success): Raise conversion volume by 10% by focusing on strategic bid modifications RLSA audience lists.

• KR2 – (50% chance of success): Lower CPA by 20% by limiting the keywords they buy to high performing terms only, and setting location bid modifications by income-tier.

• KR3 – (10% chance of success): Lower CPA by 20% and raise conversion volume by 10% by combining these two strategies.


Action

Run Growth

on OKR’S.


How to Build a Growth Engine

• Scalable

• Repeatab

le

• Predictab

le



Samir [email protected]

President & CEO,

DoRevolution

Growth Mentor

@500Startups

Connect on Linkedin

Twitter@MeetSamir

mailto:http://www.linkedin.com/in/growthmaster


Hack#3 : Marketing Strategy


Hack#4 : Brand Experience


Hack #5 : Lean Canvas Hack


Hack#6 : Themeforest + Fiverr +

Wordpress


Hack#7 : Six Killers of Mobile

Sites

1. Unplayable videos

2. Faulty redirects

3. Smartphone-only 404s

4. App download interstitials

5. Irrelevant cross-linking

6. Page speed


Hack#8 : Wordpress +

Yoast


Hack#9 : Buzzsumo for Content

Strategy


Hack#10 : Outsource Content

Writing


Hack# 11 : Link Twitter Bio


Hack#12 : Pay Using a Tweet

Provides users access to your content,

product, or service once they’ve tweeted or

posted about it

Impact on Growth:

• Invite people to pay with a post across

major social media channels

• Measure traffic, conversions, click and

geo data


Hack# 13 : Nimble, Social Signals

Hack

Consolidates your contacts, email, social signals,

activities and follow-ups from everywhere, allowing

you to manage your relationships more effectively.

Impact on Growth:

• Easily manage contacts across multiple channels

• Tracks the complete history you and your contact

share—on every channel


Hack# 14 : Moat


Hack#15: Moz Links Explorer


Hack#16: SpyFu


Hack#17: BuiltWith

DoubleClick, Twitter Ads, AdRoll, RocketFuel, MailChimp, AppNexus, GA, CloudFront etc


Hack#18: KeywordTool.io


Hack#19: QuickSprout


Hack#20: ListBuilder

A free way to collect the email addresses of

users who visited your site.

Impact on Growth:

• Build your subscriber list and easily

download it as a CSV

• Integrates with other email services and

allows you to use your own custom email

form


Hack#21: Long Copy Hack


Hack #22: SellHack


• Unplayable videos

• Faulty redirects

• Smartphone-only 404s

• App download interstitials

• Irrelevant cross-linking

• Page speed

Hack #23 : Mobile Site Killer

Hacks


1. Mobile Bid Adjustments : Need to get on top

positions because of form factor, bid higher for

location based targeting.

2. Mobile Preferred Ads : Separate mobile/desktop,

Call directly or provide a promotion based on time.

Different URL for mobile.

3. Call Extensions: Ad scheduling based on call

center, Your own number or Google’s forwarding

number

4. On Site Call Conversions: Track calls from phone

number embedded on website when users need to

reach more before they buy

Hack #24 : Mobile SEM Hacks


Hack #25 : Exit Intent Hack


Hack #26 : Deploy Inbound

Software