Lessons Learned from Building a Growth Team.

Kieran FlanaganVP Marketing @ HubSpot@searchbratkflanagan@hubspot.com

“There is a disproportionate value in being the first mover into a new space”

- Gary Vaynerchuck

When it comes to marketing, it certainly pays to be a fast follower.

Examples?

Advertising has been around for a long time.

The first American magazine is published in Philadelphia.

This is what an Ad looked like.

Then,

A scholar named Samuel Johnson writes:

Whatever is common is despised.

A scholar named Samuel Johnson writes:

Whatever is common is despised.

Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very

negligently perused.

A scholar named Samuel Johnson writes:

Whatever is common is despised.

Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very

negligently perused.

It has become necessary to gain attention by

magnificence of promises.

Ads moved online in 1994

The following banner appeared from AT&T in

Hotwired magazine in 1994.

It had a CTR of 44% …

Consider this CTR versus that of Facebook Ads

c

44%Hotwired ’94

1.8%Facebook ‘14

In 1996 Gary Vaynerchuk took over his dad’s wine business. It had $3 million in revenue.

By 2005 that number was $50 million

His weekly newsletter was a big part of that growth.

Those emails regularly got open rates of +80%.

Mass adoption of email for marketing has lead to a steady decline in CTRs.

That decline is set to continue

AirBnB grew by automatically posting your listing to Craigslist.

And is now being disrupted by vertical markets like AirBnB.

This is a common cycle in marketing

Effe

ctiv

enes

s

Time

1. Tactics Discovered

2. Tactics Optimized

EVOUTION OF TACTICS

3. Tactics Adopted by Masses

4. Tactic Fatigue

Image courtesy of http://www.reforge.co/growth-series/

THE POPULARITY OF POP UPS

Neil Patel (Yes/No) Pop up

Fast FollowersAdopt

Lots of Tools helps Mass adoption

CTR normalize for all users

“It works for a while, until your customers get used to the effect, and start ignoring it”

Andrew Chen, Entrepreneur

A growth team helps you foster a culture of validated learnings, help find points of leverage and will innovative on existing channels.

@Searchbrat

Here are some of our learnings ..

Growth Lessons

1

2

Goals for Experiments

Approach to Experiments

3 Examples of Experiments

1 Goals for Experiments

Experiments can help change the world.

An additional $60 million in campaign funds.

All good marketers focused on growth should have an obsessive focus on a singular goal.

They know how to measure and prioritize the right metrics.

This will change how you measure the success or failure of your experiments.

CRM Active Users

Would video increase active users of our CRM?

One version of the sign up page had video explaining the product.

Version A Version B

Version A Version B

Generated 30% more sign ups

Version A Version B

Generated 10% more active users

* WINNER *

Active Users > Sign ups

Having a culture of shared learnings means other team members can benefit.

LeadIn Active Users

Would video increase active users of LeadIn?

One version of the sign up page had video explaining the product.

Version A Version B

Version A Version B

Increased sign ups by 13%

Version A Version B

Increased active users by 130%

The PIE model will mean you work on experiments with highest impact.

The PIE Model is based on 3 simple scores.Potential – The potential ceiling for this experiment Importance – The importance to the businessEase– Ease of implementation

Number of SEO Visits

% CTR on Sign up page

% of people who add email and

domain

% of people who get error messages

% of people who have existing

portals

% CTR on Onboarding

emails

WATs

CR Team Member Invite

Page

POTENTIAL SHOULD BE TIED TO A RANGE

Number of SEO Visits

% CTR on Sign up page

% of people who add email and

domain

% of people who get error messages

% of people who have existing

portals

% CTR on Onboarding

emails

Number of Teams (+1)

CR Team Member Invite

Page

{10,000}

{20%}

{2,000}

{40%}

{800}

{50%}

{400}

{20%}

{80}

Number of SEO Visits

% CTR on Sign up page

% of people who add email and

domain

% of people who get error messages

% of people who have existing

portals

% CTR on Onboarding

emails

Number of Teams (+1)

CR Team Member Invite

Page

{15,000}

{20%}

{3,000}

{40%}

{1200}

{50%}

{600}

{20%}

{120}

Number of SEO Visits

% CTR on Sign up page

% of people who add email and

domain

% of people who get error messages

% of people who have existing

portals

% CTR on Onboarding

emails

Number of Teams (+1)

CR Team Member Invite

Page

{10,000}

{20%}

{2,000}

{40%}

{800}

{50%}

{400}

{40%}

{160}

Hat Tip to WiderFunnel for

PIE>> widerfunnel.com <<

@WiderFunnel

2 Approach to Experiments

Each marketer has their own experiment funnel.

IDEAS

EVALUATION

PIE SCORED

RUNNING

ANALYSIS

OUTCOME

All experiment ideas

Gather all information for PIE

PIE Score

Active experiments

Analysis of run experiments

What we learned

Shared experiment board on Trello

Shared experiment board on Trello

In a given week we have 20 to 30 experiments running.

Add Growthhackers Projects

Growthhackers Projects

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

- Thomas Edison

3 Experiments J

Our experiments are split into the following categories.

Prove a hypothesis about the way something works.

ANALYSIS

Prove if a different version would perform better than the control.

TESTS

Prove if an untested tactic or channel can provide us with points of leverage.

PILOTS

Let’s Run Through Some Experiments

Increase Organic Traffic

Increase Content

Performance

Increase Leads from

Blogs

Increase Sign ups

with Copy

Experiment to rank more of our content in Google’s answer box

Look for commonalties in the content that ranks for featured snippets.

From a sample of just under 5,000 queries, I found that the CTR to our website for high volume keywords increased by over 114%, even when we ranked #1.

@matthewbarby

What we found

Search query should appear as header with clear steps directly after it.

In general the “answers” were between 54 to 58 words.

Google will often show the “Steps” listed in chronological order.

Based on learnings, we updated 80 blog posts that ranked on the first page of Google for 199 keywords.

Over 10% of keywords moved into Featured Snippet box.

Organic traffic to these posts increased by 23%.

Let’s Run Through Some Experiments

Increase Organic Traffic

Increase Content

Performance

Increase Leads from

Blogs

Increase Sign ups

with Copy

Experiment to create the optimal editorial calendar for our blogs

Longer content on our blog gets more organic traffic.

It also attracts more inbound links and social shares.

We can use this information to run experiments around content formats.

Let’s Run Through Some Experiments

Increase Organic Traffic

Increase Content

Performance

Increase Leads from

Blogs

Increase Sign ups

with Copy

How much of a difference does user intent make?

Before: “how to write a press release”

After: “how to write a press release”

How to overcome the effects of “CTA blindness”

End-of-post banner CTAs historically had generated a lot of leads but their impact had declined.

Track performance of CTAs so we can spot downward trends.

We tested against CTAs that looked less like Ads.

Anchor text CTAs increased our leads generated on that post by 121%.

Always look for that fast follower advantage.

Would making the design of our blog a lot ‘cleaner’ increase CTR on those CTAs?

Good for content discovery but could be very distracting.

We removed it and monitored our results over 4 weeks.

Clicks on our anchor text CTAs only improved by 5% L

But load time of our blog posts improved by 50% and organic traffic is trending upwards.

Let’s Run Through Some Experiments

Increase Organic Traffic

Increase Content

Performance

Increase Leads from

Blogs

Increase Sign ups

with Copy

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

Sometimes the experiments with the best results are the simplest ideas.

Small copy changes can superchargeviral loops.

Small copy changes can superchargeviral loops.

User adds LeadIn to their blog

The user clicks on the “Powered” by

link

The user creates a LeadIn account

We changed the copy for that link ….

… and increased the number of people who clicked on it by 340%

Small copy changes can remove frictionin your sign up flow.

We added 6 words of copy to alleviate peoples concerns …

… and increased our Free Trial sign up by 10%.

Remember, not every experiment is meant to be a run-away success.

We run experiments to learn what our future points of leverage could be.

Maybe communities like Slack will be more important for brands than email?

Performance to date only slightly better than email with 6% CTR.

Could push notifications provide better results than email?

Could push notifications provide better results than email?

Constantly experiment with new platforms that may have relevant audiences.

An experimental approach to marketing helps you build a plan based on future trends.

@Searchbrat

Remember when surviving a bear attack ….

Get in Contact.Twitter: @searchbrat

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kieranjflanagan

Google: Search for “Kieran Flanagan”