What Growth Hacking Really Means Patrick Maloney

Marketing Manager, Startup Grind@malopatrick

…or, why startups don’t do traditional marketing

What is “dead” exactly? Patrick Maloney @malopatrick

Why it doesn’t work for startups

•Expensive •Limited Reach •Slow •Hard to Track•Dot com bust

Patrick Maloney @malopatrick

So, What’s Alive and Kicking?

“Multi-billion dollar valuations with $0 spent on traditional marketing”

Patrick Maloney @malopatrick

-Paul Graham, Founder Y Combinator

“Make something people want”

Patrick Maloney @malopatrick

The rise of Growth Hacking

• Hacking (beating the system) focused solely on growth outcomes.

• The rise of “super platforms”

• Literally billions of built in users to tap into

• Customer acquisition vs. brand awareness and positioning

• Identifying key growth levers specific to your business

Patrick Maloney @malopatrick

vs.

Who are Growth Hackers?

• Growth hackers often have technical backgrounds

• They are marketers, product managers, and engineers

• Approach the question “how do I get more customers for my product?” in a process oriented way.

• Use quantitative and qualitative data

• Automate as much as possible

Patrick Maloney @malopatrick

Growth Hacking: What it REALLY means

• Rapid experimentation

• A/B testing, landing pages, viral coefficients, email deliverability, SEO, open graph

• Organizational autonomy

• Many build tools to solve their own problems

• Close collaboration between product, engineering, and marketing

• Model conversion and funnel scenarios.

Patrick Maloney @malopatrick

“The fastest way to spread your product is by distributing it on a platform using API’s not

MBA’s” -Andrew Chen

Ensure virality is built into the business model / product

Keep track of what is working, test, and optimize on that

growth

BEFORE PMF AFTER PMF

Patrick Maloney @malopatrick

The Growth Hacking Lifecycle

Product Market Fit

Case Studies

• AirBnb - Posting to Craigslist

• Twitter - Following 30 People

• LinkedIn - Invite drip campaign

• YouTube - Embeddable videos

• PayPal - $10 for every user that signed up

• Dropbox - Storage for referrals

• Hotmail - “P.S. I love You. Get your free email at Hotmail”

Patrick Maloney @malopatrick

1% optimization in a huge enterprise can

mean millions in revenue increases

“Focus on the least resource intensive (engineering & marketing) channel that can

have the biggest growth impact on your business”

1% optimization in a startup company

likely means very little impact

Patrick Maloney @malopatrick

Traction Channels• Virality • PR • Unconventional PR • Search Engine Ads• Social and Display Ads • Offline Ads • SEO • Content Marketing • Email Marketing • Engineering as Marketing • Targeting Blogs • Business Development • Sales • Affiliates • Existing Platforms • Tradeshows • Offline Events • Speaking Engagements• Community Building

Source: Traction

Patrick Maloney @malopatrick

The Bullseye Framework …or how to focus on your growth channels

Source: Traction Patrick Maloney @malopatrick

*Totally determinate on your specific business

“The Law of Shitty Click Throughs” …or, nothing lasts forever

Source: Andrew Chen / Brian Balfour Patrick Maloney @malopatrick

•Customers respond to novelty

•First to market never lasts

•More scale means less qualified customers

Technology Adoption Lifecycle

Source: Andrew Chen Patrick Maloney @malopatrick

•Early adopters seek out novelty •Mainstream customers want a product to solve their problems

Building a Growth Machine: Process Over Tactics

Source: Brian Balfour Patrick Maloney @malopatrick

Thought Leaders• Andrew Chen: Audience Science

• Brain Balfour: Hubspot

• Sean Ellis: Qualroo, Growth Hackers

• Hartley Brody: Buffer

• Justin Mares: Traction Book, Rackspace

• Noah Kagan: Mint, AppSumo

• Neil Patel: Crazy Egg

• Jason Cohen: Smartbear, WP Engine

Patrick Maloney @malopatrick

Reading List• Traction by Justin Mares &

Gabriel Weinberg

• Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products by Nir Eyal

• Captivology by Ben Parr

• Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday

• Online Course

• Programming for Marketers

Patrick Maloney @malopatrick

Tools • Tweepi - Twitter Following

• Import.io - Web scraping

• Buffer - Automate content sharing

• Click to Tweet - Social Share

• Crazy Egg - Site Heat Mapping

• Hello Bar - Easy CTA’s

• Zapier - Integrating apps

• Greylock Stack Survey

Patrick Maloney @malopatrick

2 for 1 Code startupgrind.com/conference

Want the Slides? Have Questions? patrick@startupgrind.com