With the advent and proliferation of "hacking growth", many products launch party with the hope pulling data tests a / B, and viral loops to produce a hockey stick growth curve.
it is easy to think that you can grow hack your way into a success overnight, but in practice it rarely works that way.
a new era of tech events began
We're back in new York in November for the 4th edition of our technology event focused . growth
instead, it looks more like this in the early days / months / years
Startups takeoff because the founders are off. A good metaphor would be the cranks that car engines before they had electric starters. Once the engine was going, it would continue, but there was a distinct and laborious process to get it going. - Paul Graham
growth Clever tactics can be very effective in the way that gasoline can be effective when building a fire, not in the way that light and dry leaves can
.You would not dump fuel on a pile of wet wood and hope that blaze -. And as a perfect viral loop does not do much for you if no one cares about your product in the first place
Obtaining these first users and customers take agitation , not piracy. You must go out into the world and connect with people that will help you learn if you have built a product they want, and help you narrow down on the right features and functionality.
In addition to being often ineffective, the growth engine too early may actually be detrimental. Austen Allred explains in his post, the growth Hacking is dangerous:
But more importantly, The hacking growth can cover all your other sins . Specifically, you can drive enough traffic that you (temporarily) get away with having a crappy product. At that time you build a nice veneer on a fragile foundation.
So you want to manually create the momentum and use it to create the right product? It is actually quite simple:
- Find some users
- Tell them, understand them, and adjust your product to make them happy
- Repeat
the first time through the cycle, the scale is small enough that you can get there without doing anything too expensive or intelligent. It just takes a little humility and noise.
when Pinterest was at this stage, Ben Silbermann entered his local Apple Store and set the home page on every computer pinterest.com. Ryan Hoover just sent a bunch of his friends and immediately had the foundation for the Hunt Community product.
But if security is tight at the Apple Store in your town, and you are not logged as Ryan Hoover was, you can always land those first users. It will just take a little noise.
Here are some ways to get started:
Make a plan
You can make enormous progress if you know just three things that you want to achieve, what message will resonate with and how to reach them.
Let's walk through it:
Who do you achieve
Each product solves a problem for a subset of the population and? the start you're probably better smallest subset that is. So instead of thinking about the big picture of your product to be loved by billions of people, think about the first hundred of which will love it.
Where do they work? Where do they live? What are they interested? How old are they? Where they gather together online? What are their opinions about the world?
As you start to answer these questions, you get closer to a profile of your target user.
What message will resonate with them?
Once you know who you need to reach, you can start thinking about how to position your product as a solution to their problem. It is best to start with how people solve this problem today, and consider ways you can do better.
is your cheapest solution? Faster? More reliable? Easier to use?
Choose a couple of those and run with them, and iterate as you go.
Now the hard part:
How can you reach
The good news is that it is easier to reach a targeted group of people today it has been at some point in history? . Depending on who you need to reach, there are many approaches that might work (remember the idea Apple Store above?). Here are some surprisingly effective ways to do this:
Forums
If the problem your product solves is tangible enough, you should be able to find people in online forums complaining and seek solutions -. or just talk about issues tangentially
If you are an expert in space as you work, you should be able to chime in these conversations in a way that is actually useful or Interestingly beyond your field. If you add value to the conversation, you can get away with a bit of promotion, from time to time.
This is how WhatsApp founder Jan Koum got word first for an application that finally acquired it for $ 19 billion
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Your comment on a forum is not going to get massive traffic, but if your product is relevant for the public of that particular forum, you should be at least some early users -. and that's all you need at this stage
The best tools:
- Quora
- StackExchange
Industry / special interest forums (eg FlyerTalk, Hacker News)
social media
Many people regularly use social media to share their interests, complaints about existing products, and the things they like. spambots Social media is rarely successful, but if you're willing to put in the time / noise there are huge opportunities.
First, you need to find the right people to engage with.
On Twitter, you can do so by searching for relevant terms and hashtags. Tweetdeck is an excellent tool for maintaining dozens of ongoing research:
Many people away, but they just end up self-favoriting all Tweets. People are immune to this, but if you go a little further you can hire them. See what they have to say, and implemented a thoughtful response. Perhaps their bio and click to say something nice about the company they work for. Do not pinch your product down their throat - it will not work
.Instagram is a little more difficult because you can not use a dashboard like Tweetdeck and people do not share as much information searchable. But if you come with the relevant hashtags, you should be able to find the right people. And then engage them. Do not send them a link, simply ask a question or say something nice.
It works.
The best tools:
- Facebook groups
the death of email has been predicted for more than a decade, but it just has not happened. If you want to attract someone's attention, email is still the best way to do it.
For this, the first thing you will need is email addresses. There are a number of tools that can provide you with this, but my current favorite is Clearbit Connect. It is a Chrome extension by Clearbit, giving you rich profile data for anyone who emails you (as Rapportive did before he stopped working).
But in addition to this, the useful feature is email search. This will find verified email addresses for you based on the name, employer, or role:
Once you have an Address targeted-mail, here are some tips to make your effective awareness:
not "spray and pray"
If you have a list of 200 companies or individuals you want to reach, the temptation is to send a large jet "-and-pray" explosion. Do not give in to this temptation.
Instead, send small batches and customize each message. Experiment with different subject lines, email lengths, pictures / GIFs, and positioning. Be sure to nail your funnel with Google Analytics before sending, so you can measure your emails based on the actual conversion and more opens and clicks.
Make no assumptions
You could really understand your customers, but it is useful not to make assumptions about the content that will resonate with them. The data show what works.
And once you have models to experiment, start sending emails one at a time. Make them personal in some way - talk about their business, their school, where they live, or whatever. If you can prove in the first sentence that the email was not generated automatically, you will be placed in a bucket already much better than all the other people that send cold emails to this person.
This is all the time, but it will pay off massively against just blasting emails.
Monitoring
Then followed a few days. I found something more monitoring tends to be unnecessary, but you should test yourself.
From your first email did resonate, you might want to try different positioning and messaging followed.
When people meet your cold emails back to them quickly!
Be respectful
Remember that you take the time people putting something in their inbox. Be respectful and thoughtful, and send the type of emails you would not mind you receive.
It is also important to familiarize yourself with the CAN-SPAM Act to ensure that you are not breaking the law.
The time it takes to send a personal note to each person will be worth it.
in person
Depending on the type of people you need to reach, there may be great ways to do this via meetups, conferences and other events. Do not be afraid to go out and pound the pavement.
Again, do not worry about the ladder here. If you can answer 20 people every week who are interested in using your product, you will have enough feedback to keep bringing good product / market.
As with any channel, just do not be the person who goes to a meetup beaked ground repeatedly - instead, getting to know people and share your story when he is actually appropriate
.With any of these approaches, there is no need to think about scalability or cost. These are tactics that will bring in your first hundred, or your first thousand users.
If you have built a product that creates value for the first user and you take the time to understand them and continue to do even better, growth will start to produce organically.
This is when you can start watching growth hacks. You created sparks and just need to add fuel for it to catch fire.
This post originally appeared on average.