Growth Hacking 101scale your app from zero to hero

Lukas MasuchGoogle+: +LukasMasuch Twitter: @lukasmasuch

Henning MuszynskiGoogle+: +HenningBalboa Twitter: @henningmus

Benjamin RäthleinGoogle+: +BenjaminRäthlein Twitter: @B3nRa

About us

FacebookThe Growth Hack everybody knows

Growth Hacking?

Growth Process

Growth Process

Validated-Learning-Cycle

Analytics Tools

Google Analytics: “Arm your team with the marketing data & insights they need to make informed decisions”

Crashlytics: Stay tuned about the crash behavior of your app.

Google Play Dev Console: Get general metrics such as number of downloads and user rating

Product/Market FitHow Dropbox got 70k customers without a product

70000 users signed up for beta overnight and strong interest by investors

Landing PageCatch your audience

Outperformed competitors with $4500 video.

Todays valuation: $615 million

Landing Page – A/B TestingHow Highrise doubled signups with a pretty face

Landing Page – A/B TestingDon’t be the John in your team

Landing Page – ToolsGet your Landing Page up in minutes

Launchrock: Click your landing page for free

MailChimp: Collect, manage & send your mails

LeadPages: Launchrock on steroids

Waiting ListMostexclusivewebsite.com – the title says it all

Over 1 million users signed up resulting in 63.76 years were spent waiting

Waiting ListMostexclusivewebsite.com – the title says it all

Over 1 million users signed up resulting in 63.76 years were spent waiting

Waiting ListStanding in line for Mailbox

800k users in queue at once resulting in over 1 million sign-ups in 6 weeks

Invite system for 1 year, beta for > 3 years

Invites were sold for up to $500

Invite SystemThis has to be an April Fools Hoax

Invite SystemOnePlus and the circle of VIPs

25.6M visits in Dec. 2014 to check invite status and generated a total revenue of $300 million

Invite SystemEllo pokes the giant

35k invites / hour (28. Sept. 2014)

Waiting List & Invite SystemThe Yin & Yang of Growth Hack

Buzz, Beta Testing & Stability

Combine with benefits for social media actions

Exclusivity & Snowball Effect

Combine & Conquer

Big Press LaunchBoom goes the dynamite

Press Release App. Buy PR. Get Press. Growth !?

When should I launch my startup? My answer is almost always the same: don’t – Eric Ries (Lean Startup)

Don’t combine product release with a marketing launch. Do a marketing launch later when you have good indicators and a clear strategy.

Launch StrategyRelease silently, grow organically and collect feedback

Promote Promote PromoteSpam Spam Spam your Target Group

Promote Promote PromoteHackerNews Launch - Success Story

Takeaways: If not successful -> post again, encourage participation, time your post (morning/breakfast time in SF), join conversation, ask for specific feedback

Social MediaWhat fuels engagement

Social MediaBest Day

Social MediaBest Timing

Social MediaTools

It’s a set of actions that separate customers who find value in your product from those who don’t.

AHA MomentThe one metric to rule them all

AHA MomentHow long it needs to get hooked

Study about how many episodes it takes to get you hooked on a TV show.

AHA MomentTwitters point of no return

Once a user follows 30 people, they're more or less active forever – Josh Elman (Growth Manager @ Twitter)

Figure out your AHA moment and focus your UX to encourage people to reach it

AHA MomentFacebooks magic number

Get a user to reach 7 friends in 10 days after signing up – Chamath Palihapitiya (ex-Lead of Growth @ Facebook)

This number was the single focus and allowed the team to drive towards a clear objective

AHA MomentAirbnb bookings depend on aesthetics

The photos were really bad. No one was booking because you couldn't see what you were paying for.– Joe Gebbia (Co-Founder of Airbnb)

Airbnb now offers its hosts free professional photography services from thousands of freelancers

Reddit was first populated with content submitted by fake users to not look like a ghost town.

Fake It Till You Make ItFaking demand does not only work the on stock market

User Activation Push Notification

User Activation Facebook Photo Tagging

Facebook’s photo tagging feature turned out as an extremely effective viral growth and retention loop

Retention: Notifying inactive users resulted in retention rate of 75% (visual and personal stimuli)

Growth: Fueled user acquisition by notifying non-users about photo tagging

User Reactivation This email brings users back to your app

Referrals – PayPal

One customer acts as sales person for bringing in other customers – Elon Musk (Co-founder of PayPal)

Started a $10 Refer-A-Friend viral marketing campaign in the early 2000s

7-10% daily user growth resulting in about 1 million customers in one year

Referrals - Dropbox

Increased signups from 100k to 4 million users (60%) in 15 months with about 2.8 million referral invites

Referrals - Airbnb

Increased bookings by over 25%

Referrals – Airbnb Learnings

A rebuilt referral system involved 3 months, 30k lines of code and extensive A/B testing.

Focus: personalization, discoverability, localization

Referrals - Uber

Personalization

Social Sharing

Progress

Leverage Friends – Facebook

• Famous ambassadors

• Seeing all your friends

• Word-of-Mouth

• Television Appearance

QuizClash: Addictive social quiz makes it easy toplay with your friends

Facebook API is much more restrictive nowadays

Leverage Friends – Address Book

Black-hat Growth Tactic: LinkedIn had to pay $13m for spamming mails to your contacts

When LinkedIn introduced Address Book Import their invitations increased by 30%

Sign-up and Friend Discovery via phone numbers is a proven concept

App Store Optimization

App Store Optimization

Polish your visuals: Video, Screenshots and App Icon

Research your Keywords: Put them in the title and repeat them in the description

63% of Apps are discovered through app store searches„“

App Store OptimizationSEO for your mobile app

App Store OptimizationAdWords Keyword Planner is here to help

Social ContestsQwertee – the friendly shirt dealer

Collected more than 200.000 likes on their page

CountdownThe ever-effective trick from a psychologist‘s tool belt

Groupon grew faster than Ebay, Amazon or Google

Call-to-Action with clear benefits

CountdownThe ever-effective trick from a psychologist‘s tool belt

Countdown for psychological pressure

CountdownThe ever-effective trick from a psychologist‘s tool belt

Online peer pressure

CountdownThe ever-effective trick from a psychologist‘s tool belt

Social components: Sharing and Buying for a friend

CountdownThe ever-effective trick from a psychologist‘s tool belt

CrosspostingOr: How YouTube became the powerhouse it is today

CrosspostingOr: How YouTube became the powerhouse it is today

CrosspostingOr: How YouTube became the powerhouse it is today

CrosspostingAirBnB helps itself using Craigslist

CrosspostingInstagram made it easy to post to every platform

When posting shareable images add a watermark

Investor suggested to put “PS: I love you. Get your free email at Hotmail” under every E-Mail

• 3000 new signups every day

• 1 million users after 6 months

• 1.5 years later: 12 of 70 million internet users were registered

WatermarkingHotmail loves you

There is no right, no wrong, just growth!Test and experiment as much as possible

Learn from the best and apply it to your brand / product

Define your metricsto get actionable insights

Key TakeawaysIt’s all about the growth

Lukas Masuch

Henning Muszynski

Benjamin Räthlein