Dan Martell - Growth Hacking： How to Acquire 100K Users

00:00:00.000 What's up, everybody?

00:00:00.800 Dan Martell here, serial entrepreneur, investor,

00:00:02.720 and creator of SaaScademy.

00:00:04.080 In this video, I'm going to share you how to throw a laptop.

00:00:08.560 Here, man, just take it.

00:00:10.120 Anyways, I'm going to share with you how to growth hack

00:00:12.480 your startup to your first 100,000 users.

00:00:15.520 And be sure to stay to the end where

00:00:16.960 I talk to you about how to get access to my high tempo testing

00:00:20.640 training taught to me by the man, the legend, Sean Ellis,

00:00:24.640 specifically around the North Star metric.

00:00:27.040 So I'll share that with you at the end.

00:00:30.000 So if you're new here, I built a company called Clarity,

00:00:44.140 and it was a marketplace for entrepreneurs

00:00:45.660 to get advice over the phone by other entrepreneurs.

00:00:48.580 And when I built it, I thought,

00:00:49.740 man, this is the ultimate tool for micro-celebrities

00:00:54.160 and Twitter personalities and bloggers

00:00:57.300 to monetize their advice.

00:00:58.880 And I literally was like, this is going to be incredible

00:01:01.920 because it's going to allow people that have knowledge

00:01:04.380 to give access to the people that want it

00:01:06.120 and create an economic system to reward that.

00:01:08.340 And I even had a charity component built into it.

00:01:11.400 And then I launched.

00:01:12.680 And there were crickets.

00:01:13.800 I literally brought 300 people together in a theater,

00:01:17.380 gave them access to it.

00:01:18.960 I had, you know, Dragon's Den, Shark Tank experts,

00:01:22.520 entrepreneurs like Mike from FreshBooks

00:01:24.780 and, you know, Ryan at Hootsuite,

00:01:26.400 and all these incredible people available for this room.

00:01:31.080 And a bunch of people did not do any calls.

00:01:34.240 And what I realized, and I'm going

00:01:36.500 to walk you through the different strategies to Growth Hack,

00:01:39.720 because that company eventually grew to hundreds of thousands

00:01:42.720 of users doing calls over the phone.

00:01:45.880 But for the first nine months, it was nothing, nothing,

00:01:49.500 traction, traction, and then eventually growth curve up

00:01:52.620 and to the right, and eventually exited the business.

00:01:54.780 So the big lesson there was to nail a niche.

00:01:58.220 What I've discovered, and I'm going

00:01:59.340 to walk you through how to do that,

00:02:00.660 is you need to find somebody that, for us, for clarity,

00:02:04.140 was an entrepreneur that invests in themselves.

00:02:07.620 If that's not true, you can be an entrepreneur.

00:02:10.060 A lot of people, I just want to let you know,

00:02:12.180 there's probably out of 100 entrepreneurs, 90% of them

00:02:15.200 are not growth minded.

00:02:16.300 They don't read business books.

00:02:17.880 They're just accidental business people, entrepreneurs.

00:02:21.680 It was the 10% of the people that actually

00:02:24.240 went to conferences, bought books,

00:02:25.860 hired a coach that ended up being our best customers.

00:02:28.920 Once we understood that, everything else

00:02:31.020 from a marketing point of view changed.

00:02:32.760 And I'm going to tell you how to take that

00:02:34.140 and implement it in this video.

00:02:36.260 One, nail a problem niche.

00:02:39.120 Now, a lot of people tell you, like, oh, you need to,

00:02:41.520 you know, the riches are in the niches.

00:02:43.340 Here's the way I think about it, is you

00:02:45.240 can focus on a small group of people,

00:02:47.040 because you don't want to cast the wide net, right?

00:02:48.780 So the whole idea is you can try to be everything to everybody.

00:02:51.340 It's too wide.

00:02:52.680 And then you have, like, if the holes in the net are too big,

00:02:55.620 the fish swim through it.

00:02:56.940 Or you can kind of focus on less of the overall ocean

00:03:01.920 and close the squares on your net

00:03:04.260 so that you can actually start catching the right fish.

00:03:07.140 OK, so that's the concept.

00:03:08.440 But here's the reality is the problem niche.

00:03:11.300 They need to know.

00:03:12.700 So one, they need to know they have a problem.

00:03:15.820 So too many people are building technologies for people

00:03:18.380 that don't know they have a problem.

00:03:19.800 they need to be actively looking to solve the problem.

00:03:23.520 If they're not, it's gonna be really hard

00:03:25.040 because then you gotta convince they have a problem

00:03:26.360 and then hopefully they start looking for a solution.

00:03:29.240 And number three, they have the means to invest

00:03:31.760 either time or money to make the economic engine work for you.

00:03:36.120 So that's number one.

00:03:37.040 I can teach you all the marketing hacks and growth hacks

00:03:39.960 that you'd ever wanna learn,

00:03:42.600 but if those things aren't true,

00:03:44.560 you have a problem niche that wants your solution,

00:03:47.440 everything else is gonna fall flat.

00:03:49.240 Number two, map the universe.

00:03:51.480 There are so many great examples of this,

00:03:53.560 of companies that said, OK, once I understood

00:03:55.780 who our core customer was, how do I

00:03:58.240 find a way to discover them in a programmatic way?

00:04:02.960 So for me, one of my favorite examples

00:04:05.180 is one of my investment portfolios, Steve at Payroll Hero.

00:04:08.920 They were working on trying to deploy a payment or payroll

00:04:11.840 solution out in Asia, and they were having a hard time

00:04:15.140 finding early adopters.

00:04:16.240 So what I always ask is, what's true?

00:04:19.180 What are the characteristics about that customer,

00:04:21.360 that early adopter?

00:04:22.780 And long story short, after evaluating

00:04:25.460 a bunch of different options, we realized that for them,

00:04:28.240 their best customers, the customers

00:04:29.680 that we're using and loving the product today,

00:04:31.740 we're all using Google Apps for domains.

00:04:34.020 Now, this might seem obvious because everybody watching this

00:04:36.020 uses Google Apps or Gmail for their corporate email.

00:04:39.620 But there's still a lot of people in the world that don't.

00:04:41.740 They use Lotus Notes, if you remember that one.

00:04:44.540 They use Outlook, et cetera.

00:04:47.060 But once we realized that, then we

00:04:48.960 could programmatically take all of the potential customers

00:04:52.260 that they had, run them through a filter,

00:04:54.620 check what's called the DNS, the domain name service,

00:04:57.920 of the email record, and find out

00:05:00.200 if they were using Google Apps for Domain as their email

00:05:03.120 client or their tool, and filter out all of the, let's say,

00:05:06.680 100,000 potential customers down to the 25,000 that

00:05:10.100 would be incredibly perfect for them.

00:05:12.620 So I think of this all the time, both in,

00:05:16.460 you know, what's true about the customer?

00:05:18.200 How can I programmatically discover?

00:05:19.960 There's so many great companies out there,

00:05:22.180 like Full Contact for social media or social contact

00:05:25.020 data, Built With for technographic data.

00:05:27.820 I mean, there's so many different ways for you

00:05:29.080 to figure out from a URL or an email or a database

00:05:33.540 the specifics that's true about your best customers,

00:05:36.520 and then filter out and ask yourself,

00:05:38.320 now that I've got that, how do I get in front of them?

00:05:41.140 Number three, value in advance.

00:05:43.700 Now, here's what I've always loved and what's true for me

00:05:47.080 is I love using education-based marketing.

00:05:49.420 I think it is the most powerful way.

00:05:50.960 This video is an example for me to add value in the market,

00:05:54.860 teach my customers something extremely powerful

00:05:57.640 that'll get them a result.

00:05:58.860 And if they want to find a way to do that faster or quicker

00:06:02.020 or easier, they can kind of move forward

00:06:03.800 down that path of that discovery.

00:06:05.520 And that's true for all the software companies

00:06:07.180 that I work with.

00:06:08.180 For the most part, we want to figure out

00:06:09.480 a education-based strategy that's going

00:06:11.900 to allow your best customers to discover you

00:06:14.440 because they're searching for a problem that they are searching

00:06:17.800 for a solution they have a problem on.

00:06:19.540 The other thing is, so you have two ways.

00:06:20.940 You have content, you have product.

00:06:22.240 The product is splintering off, typically,

00:06:24.340 as a splinter strategy, some feature of your core solution

00:06:27.960 that maybe people are paying for and making it

00:06:30.580 as a free widget, either as a Chrome extension, et cetera.

00:06:33.300 I mean, so a great example is Vidyard.

00:06:35.420 So Michael Litt, one of my best buds,

00:06:37.500 He actually took one of their video solutions inside of Vidyard

00:06:41.520 and front-loaded that for free as a browser extension, now

00:06:44.580 called GoVideo, that is arguably one of the fastest growth

00:06:49.320 channels that they have to attract top-of-funnel awareness

00:06:52.980 for their core Vidyard products.

00:06:55.060 So much, though, that HubSpot actually

00:06:56.900 integrated GoVideo into their sales CRM solution.

00:07:01.620 So that's on the product side.

00:07:02.740 On the content side, again, value in advance.

00:07:04.660 Two strategies, content or product.

00:07:06.780 On the content side, Unbounce, a company that I invested in,

00:07:10.040 that team there, Rick and the team,

00:07:11.580 they crushed it on building education-based content that

00:07:15.760 really serves their customer and their market

00:07:18.780 until they're ready to buy a solution like Unbounce.

00:07:21.840 And it is their number one channel,

00:07:24.020 and it's helped them grow exponentially.

00:07:26.320 So that, to me, is just from a growth hacking point of view,

00:07:30.100 those are two really powerful strategies.

00:07:32.440 Number four, drafting strategy.

00:07:34.260 So one of the strategies I think is powerful

00:07:36.620 is find somebody else that's further along,

00:07:38.920 that has access to your core customer,

00:07:41.040 and figure out a way to draft behind them. 0.55

00:07:43.560 Recently, I got into road biking

00:07:45.000 because my good buddy, Jarrett, said, hey, don't worry.

00:07:47.580 You will not look funny in spandex.

00:07:50.100 I still don't think that that's the truth.

00:07:52.240 But anyways, we got a road bike, and I went out with them.

00:07:54.640 And what's cool is, if you've ever done it,

00:07:56.920 if you tuck in behind the lead person

00:07:58.960 or somebody who's a lot stronger in front of you,

00:08:00.900 they make the whole biking process so much easier.

00:08:03.440 They cut the wind for you.

00:08:04.480 They create a giraffe to pull you forward

00:08:07.120 so that you can keep that same level of momentum

00:08:09.600 without exerting any, like probably half the energy

00:08:12.020 required to keep that pace.

00:08:14.000 And I just think about that in regards to partnerships

00:08:17.060 and growth in our business.

00:08:19.100 There's a strategy I teach called OPN.

00:08:21.560 So I got it from, in the real estate people,

00:08:23.400 they call it OPM, other people's money.

00:08:25.700 In the growth market strategy, it's OPN, other people's

00:08:29.160 networks.

00:08:29.700 So if you think about it, Airbnb did

00:08:31.440 this beautifully by essentially using Craigslist network

00:08:36.020 to get distribution, right?

00:08:37.820 Instagram did this beautifully using two networks,

00:08:40.740 the iOS network and their growth.

00:08:42.420 If you look at Instagram, what it launched

00:08:44.000 and the growth of that market.

00:08:45.480 And Twitter, people posting on social, specifically Twitter

00:08:49.040 photos.

00:08:49.660 Before that, Twitter didn't really have a great photo solution

00:08:52.360 in the feed.

00:08:53.520 Using that drafting strategy and OPN,

00:08:55.860 trying to find a network that has access

00:08:58.040 to your perfect customer and build

00:08:59.920 some kind of publishing solution.

00:09:02.460 And the easiest way to do this at an enterprise level,

00:09:04.920 if you're watching this and you're like,

00:09:06.300 that won't work for me because I'm mid-market or enterprise

00:09:08.380 SaaS, is what's a report that you could share publicly?

00:09:12.260 Something that your tool could generate for the customer

00:09:14.280 that they would feel comfortable sharing publicly,

00:09:16.200 that would be one.

00:09:18.320 So a widget, we did this with Clarity

00:09:20.240 where we created a profile widget for our experts

00:09:22.800 on our platform, and we allowed them

00:09:24.380 to add that to their website.

00:09:25.780 So we got exposure through their personal networks.

00:09:28.600 But with the report, you can either do it publicly

00:09:30.920 or even just sharing it amongst their team

00:09:32.560 to get other people aware of your solution

00:09:34.540 and using and collaborating around the tool

00:09:37.380 to help it make it more sticky.

00:09:38.920 I mean, think about Slack and the communication channel

00:09:41.680 that they created.

00:09:42.500 And inviting other people to collaborate around channels

00:09:45.100 made the product sticky and created a kind of viral exposure

00:09:48.400 inside the company network.

00:09:50.320 So drafting strategy, to me, is a powerful way

00:09:53.320 to think about it for your SaaS, your product, your business,

00:09:56.920 to find somebody that's already moving forward,

00:09:59.200 that it talks to your core customer and draft behind them.

00:10:02.500 Number five, rinse and repeat.

00:10:04.480 Now this might be simple to say, but hard to execute.

00:10:07.060 What I've seen companies do is they

00:10:09.160 have something that's working, and they're

00:10:10.840 starting to see a little bit of traction and light

00:10:13.160 around a growth strategy.

00:10:15.040 And instead of doubling down and investing in it,

00:10:17.440 they keep moving to other things.

00:10:19.040 So what I want to say is rinse and repeat

00:10:20.880 around the things that are working

00:10:22.240 to kind of build more velocity.

00:10:24.180 But at the same time, if you feel

00:10:26.080 like you've tapped out.

00:10:27.020 If you're three iterations in, so if you do a two-week dev

00:10:30.700 cycle like a Scrum or an Agile process,

00:10:32.920 if you're three two-week cycles, a month and a half in,

00:10:36.480 and you haven't been able to move the needle

00:10:38.080 on that specific channel, then go back and reintroduce

00:10:41.240 another growth strategy or idea that your team came up with

00:10:45.000 to make that happen.

00:10:45.940 But rinse and repeat around all of these.

00:10:48.220 But if you've got traction and reinvest in trying

00:10:50.860 to make it grow, and if you don't add a new one,

00:10:53.120 and having that discipline of focus and measurement

00:10:55.940 will be the unlock for you in building a growth strategy

00:10:59.440 gets you 100,000 users.

00:11:01.340 So quick recap.

00:11:02.520 Number one, nail the problem niche.

00:11:05.000 Make sure that they feel it and they want a solution for it.

00:11:07.400 Two, map the universe ideally in a programmatic way.

00:11:11.440 Number three, add value in advance

00:11:14.060 through content or splintering off a product feature.

00:11:17.200 Number four, drafting strategy behind other people's momentum

00:11:21.980 in what I call OPN, other people's networks.

00:11:24.100 And five, rinse and repeat using a high tempo testing framework

00:11:29.620 that I'm going to share with you next.

00:11:31.160 So as I mentioned at the beginning,

00:11:32.660 I want to share with you a training

00:11:34.160 I did called High Tempo Testing taught to me.

00:11:36.580 Full credit goes to Sean Ellis, the creator of this.

00:11:39.660 He's also essentially the originator

00:11:41.680 of the term growth hacking.

00:11:43.280 He was an advisor in my last company, Clarity.

00:11:45.320 He's been a friend for almost a decade

00:11:47.140 and one of the smartest marketing minds out there.

00:11:49.980 And I taught it at my recent SAS Academy intensive.

00:11:52.700 I want to give you access below.

00:11:54.120 If you click the link, you'll get access

00:11:56.060 to that specific training.

00:11:57.020 Specifically, you want to figure out

00:11:59.000 what your North Star metric is, your NSM.

00:12:02.000 That alone will make all of these strategies I just

00:12:05.000 shared with you work like lockstep.

00:12:07.620 So click the link below.

00:12:08.460 Get access to that.

00:12:09.380 If you like this video, be sure to smash the Like button.

00:12:11.720 Subscribe to my channel.

00:12:12.880 And if there's anybody you think this video could serve directly

00:12:15.220 that you care about, feel free to share it with them.

00:12:17.460 As per usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger life

00:12:19.700 and a bigger business.

00:12:20.460 And I'll see you next Monday.

00:12:21.940 So you're going to throw the computer, right?

00:12:23.680 I'm going to throw it.

00:12:24.700 Throw in the laptop.

00:12:26.400 Cash.

Dan Martell - April 29, 2019

Growth Hacking： How to Acquire 100K Users

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