The Blueprint for all your Growth Problems 🚀

Essay by Domi Hess

“Growth”

Some People love this Topic. Some People hate this Topic…

But why?

Maybe because Growth is mostly associated with Marketing and Sales.

And like with every other Skill and Profession, some People are good in doing Sales or Stuff like Performance Marketing. And others don‘t.

This Text will explain you why the Above doesn‘t matter. This Text will show you why we all, different in Ideas and different in our Opinions, should care about Growth.

Let‘s go back into the Year 2004. A young College Drop-Out named Mark Zuckerberg started a new Social Network called Facebook.

We all know how this Story of little Mark and his Startup went till today.

But now one Question… Because Facebook, even being a great Product already, faced the same Problem we all have to deal with…

“How can you grow in a repeatable and sustainable Way?”

To solve this Problem, Mark decided to give the Topic of „Growth“ his full Focus.

So Facebook started its legendary Growth-Team…

Even today, there are still a lot of mythical Stories told in Silicon Valley about this Team. A Team which invented groundbreaking Methods for attracting new Users.

But what was so Special about them?

Instead of filling it with Marketing Guys and Sales People. Facebook staffed the Growth-Team with their best People and only the Best.

We are talking about Physicists, Harvard MBAs and a lot of PHDs from a wide Range of different Topics here.

With only „Retention“ as Key Growth-KPI and a lot of well thought out Experiments, the Growth-Team grew Facebook to over 500 Million Users in only a couple of Years.

This was maybe the best Growth Result in modern Business History and shows the Power of the right Blueprint in this Major Topic.

But enough of the Storytime here. Let's get into the Specifics and bring you this Blueprint at your Hands. And I promise this works in every Industry…

The right Mindset & the right Focus

First Things First. You need to approach Growth with the right Mindset and Focus. If you not following this Path, you may lose yourself in the Marketing Jungle.

Your first Objective should always be to generate long-term and sustainable Growth.

Everything else leads you to „flashy Stuff“ like getting Press in famous Magazines or getting featured in the Apple App-Store.

This Sounds maybe nice, but gives your Product only a short spike.

I experienced this myself with an Art App I was involved with. Even world-famous Celebrity couldn‘t save us long-term Growth.

So I can’t recommend you to lay your whole Existence in Ideas like this…

Therefore, you should not follow „Silver Bullets“. Instead you should „fire“ a lot of „Lead Bullets“. (different Growth Experiments which lead to compounded Growth)

To be clear. It‘s better to increase your Sign Up Funnel with 5% than try to land the next TV Interview. The Latter pushes your Ego, the Former your Revenue for Years.

This is Why you need to Focus here. Picking your right „Northstar Metric“ is Key.

For Facebook, this was „User Retention“ after the Sign-Up-Process.

Facebook made it easy to find your first 5 Friends fast and give you a Reason to Login again and again.

Another Example is LinkedIn. You may remember that the Platform asked you to connect with your Email-Contacts after the first Sign-In?

That was Genius, because they could notify all of your Contacts that you are now using LinkedIn and made them desire the same.

Last but not least, you have to think in Experiments all the Time.

Therefore everything you do to generate more Growth, has to be measured and tested.

Only this Way, you can ensure to learn what works and adjust your Strategy on the Go.

Thinking in Experiments & How to Rank them

Thinking in Experiments means, that you have to collect all your Ideas for Growth. Therefore you should write down „What you do“, „What is the Objective“ and „How you measure the Success“.

Like in the following Example…

It‘s also important to „rank“ your Ideas in Terms of the „Ease of Doing“, the „Likelihood of Success“ and “Cost”.

But please never forget the other necessary Step:

Reviewing the Results and adjust through your Learnings after. You should do this at least every 2 Weeks with your Experiments.

A great System to come up with the right Ideas and Channels for Growth, is the „Bullseye“-Strategy of Justin Mares and Gabriel Weinberg.

This straight Forward Method lets you choose 3 promising Channels from their Framework, then test them out and choose the best performing Idea.

If this Channel is sending you to the Path of Growth, Perfect.

If not, Repeat.

Then use 3 other new Channels until you find a high performing Result.

Here is the Framework. It also offers a great Overview of all Possibilities for Growth…

But bear in Mind, the Channel which brought you to 1k Users is maybe not bringing you from 1k to 10k Users.

“Growth is a never ending Hustle.”

So be prepared to adjust accordingly on the Way up…

The supporting Thesis for this Assumption is the „Law of Shitty Clickthroughs“. A Term coined by the Growth-Mastermind Andrew Chen.

This Law describes, that every Marketing Method reaches a Point of decreasing Clickthrough Rates over Time.

That’s Why you see every other Year a new Marketing Trick in the Social Web.

And almost every Company is trying desperately to jump on that Train. A little Tip here:

“Going into the same Direction as Everyone is running too, is usually always a bad Idea.”

So think more “Intelligent” in these Situations. I repeat, “Growth is a never ending Hustle.”

Parting Advice - Be Resourceful

Before you leave, here some Tips you should try to implement in your Growth Thinking:

Achieving sustainable Growth is far from easy. And you have to compete with a lot of other Products and Services out there for Customers. So remember…

„You need to be relentless but patient!“

I also advise you, if you think about Growth Experiments, to be lean and resourceful. Most of us can‘t use VC Funds or Budgets like Google has, to stimulate Growth.

So you need to be effective with your Resources.

If you find a Method that‘s working and the Retention of your User is getting higher and higher, then you should go full Force. Not before.

Last but not least, you should think in Warren Buffet’s famous „Compounding Interest“-Idea. Several tiny, but sustainable Increases of Growth are better than to follow a shiny Marketing “Hype-Train”.

Again, you are here for the long Game. And this is where you will find your Success.

So keep growing…

Every Time you face a Growth Question or Situation in the Future, come back and start here.

Please feel free to share with People which facing Growth Problems in their Endeavours.