Sean Ellis
CEO and Founder at GrowthHackers
Discussion
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Sean Ellis
@seanellis · CEO, GrowthHackers
Hi everyone, really looking forward to this Product Hunt live chat today! I’m happy to chat about anything - though my biggest passion is growing businesses, from startups to more established companies. I recently wrote a book on the subject that will be published in April called Hacking Growth http://amzn.to/2ll80L3. I’ve helped several multi billion dollar businesses gain traction in their early days including Dropbox, Eventbrite, LogMeIn and Lookout and today I’m founder and CEO of GrowthHackers.
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Kiki Schirr / 史秀玉
@kikischirr · Founder, WeKiki Video Chat Platform
Hi Sean! Thank you for taking my question. One of the frustrations I see my marketing professor parents face is their students have watched too much Mad Men and don't think math is a part of marketing. What would you say to students that are reluctant to delve into numbers in order to convey the importance of stats/ROI?
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Sean Ellis
@seanellis · CEO, GrowthHackers
@kikischirr Hi Kiki, I think it starts with understanding why the students are attracted by Mad Men style marketing. It's much more exciting to many people that data driven marketing. Just look at how many people get excited about Super Bowl commercials. So I think certain people are just kind of wired to gravitate toward this type of marketing. I personally feel like the most malleable growth minds are engineer CEOs. They tend to be driven, experimental and numbers oriented. I would much rather try to teach this person growth than the typical person that is attracted to a marketing degree.
The good news is that data driven experimentation is much more fun than it sounds to many people. So I think your marketing professor parents would probably benefit from introducing the students to some marketing prediction games like you'd find on Behave.org (formerly WhichTestWon). That starts to make it clear that the only way to know if something works is to test it and measure the results. Hope this helps.
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Sean Ellis
@seanellis · CEO, GrowthHackers
Sorry to have to put this comment here, but no new places to put a comment after the session ends. I just wanted to thank everyone for the great questions. This was a lot of fun! If you have ever more questions, feel free to post them on GrowthHackers AskGH and @mention me in the comments to ask me to answer them. Have a great day everyone!
Bruce Kraft Jr.
@brucekraftjr
@seanellis I just missed the session! Are you familiar with viral growth widgets on websites, similar to one developed by Queue tech?
Synap
@getsynap · Synap Software Labs
@seanellis @mention Thanks for taking the time to do this and to send such thoughtful responses.
Philip Kuklis
@philipkuklis · Co-Founder, Hubble
Hi Sean, what's the most ingenious growth hack that you've seen so far?
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Sean Ellis
@seanellis · CEO, GrowthHackers
@philipkuklis Hi Philip, I think it's important to understand that true sustainable growth rarely happens because of an ingenious growth hack. It's much more about truly understanding what makes someone passionate about your product and making lots of tweaks to get new people to a similar experience with the product. I know that isn't as exciting as an ingenious growth hack, so I'll actually try to answer the question you asked too. I think the overly cited Airbnb growth hack where they reposted listings on Craigslist was super smart. They understood where the behavior was taking place that they wanted on their platform and found a way to tap into it and shift people toward their "better way."
Alex Baker-Whitcomb
@awhitcom · Founder of Whitcomb Works
If you could give yourself 1-2 pieces of advice when you first started your company at zero, what would it be?
Andrew Bass
@andrewdbass · Startup junkie and improving hacker
What is the biggest mistake that people make when first getting into Growth Hacking?
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Sean Ellis
@seanellis · CEO, GrowthHackers
@andrewdbass I think the biggest mistake people make when the first start growth hacking is not testing enough. Then when they realize the power of testing, they don't focus the testing enough on the biggest opportunities to impact growth. The best opportunities can be uncovered by combining quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis on your overall growth engine. Once you understand the opportunity, you can help the team focus on it by setting clear objectives and sharing a summary of the analysis with the team.
spicer23
@spicer23
Hello Sean, Can you walk us through your typical Road Map - when you're beginning to search for >> potential customers, prior to launch? >> Thanks in advance.
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Sean Ellis
@seanellis · CEO, GrowthHackers
@spicer23 Hi Spicer, I personally don't do much searching for customers prior to launching a product. I do basic problem validation and then get to work on the solution. Most of my customer growth efforts happen once the product in launched where I'm able to let people experience it and then start to hone in on the signal of what makes a passionate customer. At this point ROI efficiency really isn't very important. You just need to throw enough users at the product to see if any of them are able to get "must have" value from it. Then it's all about replicating and scaling that value delivery engine.
Naomi Assaraf
@nassaraf · CMO, Technophile, pancake lover.
@seanellis @spicer23 That's excellent. What if you get there and then need to monetize? Is it just a series of A-B testing? How do you implement payment after clients have received product for free in the name of growth?
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Sean Ellis
@seanellis · CEO, GrowthHackers
@nassaraf @spicer23 Hi Naomi, I think monetization is very important when you're trying to scale growth, but I personally don't care too much about it when I'm trying to validate value in a product. Once I understand where the value is, then I figure out the monetization piece. That's when you need to figure out how price sensitive the customers who need the value are and also what their next best alternative is. Business model is one area where I don't do a lot of A-B testing, but maybe I should :) I've done it a bit when trying to hone in on the best price with Dropbox and LogMeIn, but in both cases we had enough user flow on the free product to make this testing pretty easy.
Naomi Assaraf
@nassaraf · CMO, Technophile, pancake lover.
@seanellis @spicer23 Thanks- I'm at 200k users now, so I think I've figured out the value prop. Now time to figure out the value. :) How much drop off from free to paid did you have (percentage wise) when testing with Dropbox and LogMeIn?
Hugo Fauquenoi
@hfauq · user success @twistappteam @todoist 🚀
With hindsight, do you regret the wording of "hacking"?
Lots of people seem to chase quick hacks to get rich fast, the "change your CTA color and get 300% more signups", when sustainable growth most often comes from improving the customer experience relentlessly, understanding what makes people successful with the product, and driving others to that outcome.
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Sean Ellis
@seanellis · CEO, GrowthHackers
@hfauq Hi Hugo. I don't regret using the word hacking at all. Anytime you can put a name on a concept that gets worldwide attention, then you're doing something right. I used the word hacking to really contrast against the marketers that sit around a white board for days strategizing about how to grow a business. Compared to this approach I prefer the "get rich quick" hacks that you're referring to. Of course the best way to grow is not to think that you are going to uncover a silver bullet, but instead you are taking a very systematic approach to testing with a solid feedback loop of data and qualitative insights. But no... No regrets at all on the use of the word hacking. It started a conversation that has led lots of people to try to figure out a more effective way to drive sustainable growth in businesses.
Timur Zhiyentayev
@tima_zhi · Cofounder of Drizzle
Sean, what worked and what did not work for promoting/marketing GrowthHackers.com? Are there any strategies which worked really well? Thanks.
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Sean Ellis
@seanellis · CEO, GrowthHackers
@tima_zhi Hi Timur, Twitter was really effective for us when we were first growing GrowthHackers.com. It helped that I already had a decent following on Twitter so we just needed to shift the conversation to GrowthHackers. Over time Twitter has become less effective because it's getting very noisy with content. But it was great for getting traction. Something else that was important was understanding and tapping into why people were using the site. It was largely about reputation building, community and inspiration for growth ideas. So over time we've doubled down on functionality that supports these needs. The one thing I wish we were better at was retaining visitors. We have a lot of monthly churn in visitors. If I could figure out a way to double our retention, that would be more powerful for growth than any new customer acquisition channel.
Darren Lee
@darrenlee · Zen Refinery / Darren Lee Network
Hi Sean looking great there! Just curious what are the thoughts usually that you have when you wake up every morning? For example this morning? Also, do you have any morning or daily routines ?
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Sean Ellis
@seanellis · CEO, GrowthHackers
@darrenlee Hey Darren, lately my thoughts when I wake up are "crap I have a lot of stuff I need to do today!" I then calm down and get to work. I know I probably shouldn't do it, but I check email first thing in the morning. When I get into the office, I generally ask my operations manager to leave all admin stuff for the afternoon. I try to dive into our big business challenges first thing in the morning because I believe my subconscious was probably working on solutions during the night. I don't want to clutter my brain with reactive stuff until after I get a chance to dig into these business issues/opportunities. At 9:30 am we have our standup, so usually starting about 9:15 I'll list out the items I want to get done today and what I focused on the previous day.
Darren Lee
@darrenlee · Zen Refinery / Darren Lee Network
@seanellis haha that's funny. But I can imagine that work could be both overwhelming and be the motivator as well. It's nice that you have such a great routine. I like the list idea. Thanks for sharing! I do hope to meet you one day but first I need to learn. 😄
Synap
@getsynap · Synap Software Labs
Oftentimes people are looking for flashy/newsworthy ways to grow. What are some of the more basic but consistent avenues of traction that you've found success with?
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Sean Ellis
@seanellis · CEO, GrowthHackers
@getsynap Hi Synap, I think growth generally tends to be very un-newsworthy... It takes hard work of studying customers and data to figure out how your product really delivers value to them. And then it's about looking for ways to introduce that value to other people with the same characteristics as your most passionate customers. Not surprisingly most of the great growth people I know are pretty introverted. They are driven by curiosity and tend to geek out about very unsexy growth stuff.