Growth Hacking Magic?
Sean Ellis
September 17, 2014
CEO of Qualaroo,
GrowthHackers.com
Twitter @seanellis
Going Beyond the Hype to Take Your Business to the Next Level

About Me
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Founder/CEO of Qualaroo & GrowthHackers.com
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Previously VP Marketing for customer zero to NASDAQ IPO filing at LogMeIn and Uproar.com
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Then interim marketing exec roles at Dropbox, Lookout and Eventbrite

Extreme Competition for Attention
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@seanellis

Rapidly Evolving Channels
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WOM
Email
MySpace
Facebook
Craigslist
Twitter
iOS
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James Currier @seanellis

Yet Some Huge Startup Successes
Little or no traditional marketing…
@seanellis

GROWTH HACKING
MAGIC?
@seanellis

No –Rigorous Process of Experimentation
1. Ideas
2.Prioritize
3.Test
4.Analyze
5.Optimize
@seanellis

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
@seanellis

Desperation Drove Startups to Innovate
• Aggressive targets, tight resources
• Traditional approach not realistic
• Had to think rethink growth…
@seanellis

The Growth Hacking Playbook
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Experiment with all available growth levers
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Understand what’s driving growth, test to improve it
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Heavy focus on product and optimization
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B2B or B2C?
• Growth hacking isn’t just for consumer-focused
companies.
• B2B often requires integration with sales process.
@seanellis

HubSpot’sGrowth Hack –Free Tools
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Yammer –Engineered User-Get-User
@seanellis

LinkedIn -Engineered User-Get-User
@seanellis

PUTTING GROWTH HACKING TO WORK FOR YOUR BUSINESS @seanellis

Finding Your Own Growth Hacks
• Areas of exploration
• Process, team and tools
@seanellis

Some Areas of Exploration
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Platform integrations
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Engineered user-get-user
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Free tools
Examples
25+ M users
@seanellis

Areas of Exploration (Cont)
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Powered by
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Reverseengineer success
Examples
@seanellis

Success Data: Airbnb’sPro Photos
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Airbnbdiscovered that listings with high-quality photos received 2-3x bookings
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Airbnbinvested in professional photography
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Booking activity explodes as desire increases
@seanellis

Other Growth Studies for Inspiration
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Experimentation is Key to Success
• Generate many ideas for experiments
• Prioritize by impact, confidence & effort
• Balance high impact & high probability tests
@seanellis

GOAL: INCREASED UNITS OF GRATIFICATION

Double Down on Success
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Challenge is not finding many channels that work, but rather finding one.
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Often your best growth opportunity is to double down what’s already working.

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

Some 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. Hubspot, Optimizely)
@seanellis

Relentless Execution of Growth Process
1. Ideas
2.Prioritize
3.Test
4.Analyze
5.Optimize
@seanellis

Key Takeaways
• Emerging marketing challenges require all to rethink growth
• Growth hacking is based experimentation, not silver bullets
• Add process/team to maximize number of experiments
• Get inspiration from data, VOC and what’s working for others
@seanellis

Questions?
THANK YOU.
Sean EllisCEO of Qualaroo & GrowthHackers.com
Twitter: @seanellis