마케터라면 둘 중 한 명은 읽어본 '그로스해킹'의 창시자, 한국에 오다ㅣ션 앨리스
Summary
TLDRSean Ellis, the creator of the term 'growth hacking,' discusses the common pitfalls companies face when attempting to grow through this method. He emphasizes the importance of understanding product-market fit and the need for cross-functional collaboration. Ellis shares his experience with companies like Dropbox and Eventbrite, highlighting the significance of testing and analysis in driving growth. He also stresses the cultural shift towards humility and curiosity in businesses that successfully implement growth hacking strategies.
Takeaways
- 📈 **Growth Hacking Challenges**: Many companies struggle with growth hacking not due to a lack of ideas, but because they fail to effectively collaborate across different teams like product, marketing, and engineering.
- 🧑💼 **Sean Ellis' Expertise**: Sean Ellis, the author of 'Hacking Growth' and the coiner of the term 'growth hacking', specializes in growing businesses in their early stages and has contributed to the rapid growth of companies like Dropbox and Eventbrite.
- 🎓 **Educational Background**: Despite initially struggling with traditional marketing methods after formal education, Sean Ellis found his unique approach to growth that differs from conventional marketing teachings.
- 🚀 **Growth Hacking Definition**: Growth hacking is defined as a scientific approach to growing a business through testing and analyzing across all levers of growth, from acquisition to monetization.
- 🔄 **Cross-Functional Nature**: Growth hacking requires a cross-functional effort where product teams work closely with marketing, engineers, and other specialists to drive growth.
- 🤝 **Team Synergy**: The success of growth hacking hinges on how well different teams collaborate and are willing to run experiments within the product.
- 📊 **Data-Driven Approach**: Growth hacking is heavily reliant on data analysis to understand which strategies are effective in driving user engagement and retention.
- 💡 **Product-Market Fit**: Establishing product-market fit is critical before focusing on growth hacking; Sean Ellis uses a specific question to gauge user dependency and satisfaction with the product.
- 💰 **Monetization**: A good product experience can lead to monetization opportunities, where understanding how to make money from users allows for reinvestment into customer acquisition.
- 📱 **Customer Journey Focus**: Growth hacking emphasizes the entire customer journey, from initial acquisition to retention and referral, rather than just focusing on one aspect like marketing or product development.
- 🤔 **Cultural Impact**: The practice of growth hacking can shift a company's culture towards one of curiosity and humility, where continuous testing and learning from results replace arrogance and assumptions.
Q & A
What is the main reason most companies fail with growth hacking according to Sean Ellis?
-Sean Ellis believes that most companies fail with growth hacking not because they struggle with coming up with hypotheses or test ideas, but because they can't get different teams to agree on how to work together effectively. As companies grow, specialist teams become more separated, which hinders the cross-functional collaboration essential for growth hacking.
What does Sean Ellis consider his strength in the business growth process?
-Sean Ellis considers his strength to be growing great companies. He has a track record of helping businesses, such as Dropbox and Eventbrite, reach significant growth milestones, including billion-dollar valuations and revenue targets.
How does Sean Ellis define growth hacking?
-Growth hacking is defined by Sean Ellis as a scientific approach to figuring out how to grow the business, involving testing and analyzing across all levers of growth from acquisition to activation, retention, and monetization.
What is the significance of the 'aha moment' in growth hacking?
-The 'aha moment' is significant in growth hacking as it represents the point at which users have a great first experience with a product, leading them to recognize its value and continue using it. This initial positive experience is crucial for driving user activation and retention.
What is product-market fit, and why is it essential for growth hacking?
-Product-market fit is the state where a product meets a need in the market and users are satisfied with it. It is essential for growth hacking because it ensures that users enjoy the product and continue using it, which is necessary for sustainable growth and customer retention.
How does Sean Ellis approach the customer journey in growth hacking?
-Sean Ellis approaches the customer journey in growth hacking by focusing on the entire experience from acquisition to activation, engagement, retention, and monetization. He emphasizes the importance of testing and optimizing each stage to improve the overall customer experience and drive growth.
What is the role of cross-functional collaboration in growth hacking?
-Cross-functional collaboration is crucial in growth hacking as it requires the product team, marketing team, engineers, designers, and data analysts to work together. This collaboration helps to align efforts and maximize the impact of growth initiatives across different functions within the company.
How does Sean Ellis prioritize and select ideas for growth hacking experiments?
-Sean Ellis prioritizes ideas for growth hacking experiments by first conducting qualitative analysis to understand why the product has product-market fit. He then generates ideas to improve the situation, prioritizes which ideas to test, runs the tests, and analyzes the results, focusing on a high velocity of tests to find the most effective strategies.
What impact does growth hacking have on the culture of a business?
-Growth hacking impacts the culture of a business by fostering a less arrogant environment where team members become more curious and cooperative. It encourages a culture of continuous learning and experimentation, where people work together to find the right answers and uncover the truth.
What is the importance of running a high volume of tests in growth hacking?
-Running a high volume of tests in growth hacking is important because it increases the chances of finding successful strategies that drive growth. Each test is an opportunity to learn and improve, and a diverse range of tests can uncover insights that lead to significant breakthroughs in the business's growth.
How does Sean Ellis plan to engage with the Korean business community?
-Sean Ellis plans to engage with the Korean business community by conducting workshops and working directly with Korean companies. His goal is to help them overcome growth challenges by applying his expertise in growth hacking and sharing his insights on effective growth strategies.
Outlines
🚀 The Birth of Growth Hacking and its Challenges
Sean Ellis, the author of 'Hacking Growth' and the person who coined the term 'growth hacking', discusses the common pitfalls companies face when attempting to implement growth hacking strategies. He emphasizes the importance of running experiments within the product itself, rather than relying solely on external marketing tactics. Ellis shares his experience of growing companies like Dropbox and Eventbrite to billion-dollar valuations by focusing on the critical first year of a business. He also highlights the difficulty many companies have in coming up with effective hypotheses and test ideas, and suggests that this may be due to a lack of understanding of the product's value proposition.
🎯 Defining Growth Hacking and its Key Components
Ellis defines growth hacking as a scientific approach to growing a business by testing and analyzing all aspects of growth, including acquisition, activation, retention, and monetization. He explains the importance of capturing user's attention (acquisition), ensuring a great first experience (activation), and keeping users engaged and retaining them over time (engagement and retention). Ellis also discusses the role of product teams in activation and the challenge of balancing existing customer needs with growth opportunities. He emphasizes the significance of a great activation step as the primary driver of retention and engagement.
💡 Identifying Product-Market Fit and its Importance
Sean Ellis talks about the concept of product-market fit and its critical role in the success of a business. He shares his method of assessing product-market fit by asking users how they would feel if they could no longer use the product. According to Ellis, a retention cohort that plateaus indicates product-market fit. He explains that businesses with a high level of user retention have found product-market fit, which is essential before focusing on growth hacking. Ellis also discusses the advantage of joining a company with product-market fit but no growth yet, as it presents an opportunity to capitalize on the company's potential before it becomes more expensive to invest due to increased valuation.
🌟 Embracing Cross-Functional Collaboration in Growth Hacking
Ellis stresses the importance of cross-functional collaboration in growth hacking, noting that it involves not just marketers, but also product teams, engineers, designers, and data analysts. He points out that as companies grow, teams can become too specialized and siloed, which hinders the effectiveness of growth hacking. Ellis also addresses the challenge of running a high volume of experiments, which is crucial for growth hacking success. He uses the analogy of sports to emphasize the need for numerous attempts to increase the chances of success. Additionally, he highlights how growth hacking can transform a company's culture by reducing arrogance and promoting a more curious and cooperative environment where teams work together to discover the right answers.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Growth Hacking
💡Product Market Fit
💡Activation
💡Engagement
💡Retention
💡Monetization
💡Referral
💡Cross-Functional Teams
💡Experimentation
💡Hypothesis
💡Customer Journey
Highlights
Most companies fail with growth hacking, often resorting to external marketing rather than experimenting with their product.
Sean Ellis, the author of 'Hacking Growth' and the person who coined the term 'growth hacking', specializes in growing companies at their early stages.
Dropbox, one of the companies Sean Ellis worked with, became the fastest SaaS company to reach a billion dollars in revenue.
Growth hacking is defined as a scientific approach to growing a business, involving testing and analyzing all levers of growth from acquisition to monetization.
Activation is considered the most powerful lever in growth hacking, focusing on users' great first experiences with a product.
Product Market Fit is crucial for growth hacking; it means users enjoy the product and continue using it.
Retention cohorts are used to quantify Product Market Fit, indicating the percentage of users who continue using the product long-term.
Growth hacking involves a cross-functional effort, requiring collaboration between product teams, marketing, engineers, designers, and data analysts.
The main reason companies fail with growth hacking is the inability to get different teams to work together effectively.
The process of growth hacking starts with qualitative analysis to understand why there is product-market fit.
A high velocity of tests is crucial for successful growth hacking, emphasizing the importance of running many tests to find the most effective strategies.
Growth hacking impacts business culture by making everyone less arrogant and more curious about finding the right answers through testing.
Sean Ellis will be in Seoul in April to conduct workshops and work directly with Korean companies.
The concept of growth hacking has become well-known worldwide over the last 12 to 13 years since its inception.
Sean Ellis also helped Eventbrite and Lookout reach billion-dollar valuations.
Network effect businesses like LinkedIn and Facebook had to be creative in their growth strategies due to not being able to spend heavily on customer acquisition.
Growth hacking is distinguished from traditional marketing by focusing on getting users to actually use the product rather than just building awareness.
The process of growth hacking involves analysis, idea generation, prioritization, testing, and result analysis, repeating this cycle to improve strategies.
Transcripts
what I would say is that most companies
fail with growth hacking it's
unfortunate but it's it's the reality so
they get frustrated so then they stop
trying to run experiments in the product
want to run all their experiments on
Facebook or on Google or some something
external and then it's not growth acing
anymore then they're just doing
marketing and so but I don't think it's
because they they have a hard time
coming up with a hypothesis or or a hard
time coming up with the right test idea
I think it's
because
uh hi I'm Sean Ellis I am the author of
hacking growth I'm also the person who
coined the term growth hacking which has
become pretty well known around the
world over last 12 years I think or 13
years since I came up with the term what
I'm really good at is getting people to
to use good product when I'm uh
responsible for growing them thought how
can I structure a way to only focus on
the first year in businesses and and get
really good at that stage if that's the
most important stage and so I did that
for a number of years and that's when I
went to Dropbox I joined Dropbox Dropbox
was less than 10 employees at the time
Dropbox became the fastest SAS company
to reach a billion dollars in Revenue so
faster than any company before it soon
after I left Dropbox was was when I
coined the term growth hacking but
really the techniques that I had used to
grow these companies were the techniques
that are are really what what we talk
about when we say growth hacking today I
also did a interim VP growth role with
with Eventbrite also reached the billion
dollars valuation right after Eventbrite
I went to Lookout also reached the
billion dollar valuation I really think
my my strength is is growing great
companies and so that's been my more of
my focus in recent years you can read a
book but when you actually try to do it
it's really hard so I I do a lot of
workshops that's a lot of what my focus
is these days when they run into
challenges I've gotten pretty good at
helping them in the areas where they
have challenges so that's part of why
I'll be going to Korea
in April will be to to do some workshops
and to work directly with Korean
companies and so that that should be a
lot of
fun so in in the first company I told
you I started in sales when they said
you know we want you to do this and
we'll make you the the marketing guy I
never took Marketing in school I don't
know what I'm doing so then I decided I
would go back to school and take some
classes in marketing and so I went to
New York University
did really well got a got an A in the
class and then and then I went back and
tried to to do it and I got I was really
bad at it after the class the class kind
of broke me made made me think about it
the old way of doing marketing I I
became too kind of academic and so it
was a very like I had to like okay get
that out of my head now and go back to
it so that was kind of the first time I
realized like my Approach is a little
bit different than how they teach
marketing but then I just kind of forgot
about it and I was just focused on how
do we grow these businesses how do how
do we do our very best to grow these
businesses I moved to Silicon Valley in
2007 but then as I got to meet some
people I discovered that there were some
companies that were actually doing
something similar to how I was
approaching it so uh Facebook for
example was doing similar to how I was
approaching it LinkedIn and and so I
think the reason that that the company
and Twitter I think the reason that
these companies did it a similar way is
because their their Network affect
businesses they couldn't go out and
spend $10 million on customer
acquisition to get that business started
they had to be very creative on how do I
get enough users so that they get value
and so you started to see some really
creative things from LinkedIn would say
you know connect your address book and
you'll be able to see who else is on
here and and Facebook would be able to
start to see form
when you are connected to to this person
and also this person but both of you are
connected to a lot of other people you
might also know and so then they they
would make these recommendations and you
had these kind of creative ways that
they were growing and and they were very
data driven and test driven and so and
they were growing faster than any other
company in Silicon Valley so my
companies were growing faster and these
companies were growing faster but 95% of
the companies were doing it differently
I also had a lot of venture capitalists
who were introducing me to Founders they
said can you help this founder they're
really having trouble growing and and so
I said sure and then I would sit down
with the founder and the first thing
they would say is we really need your
help to build awareness I've never focus
on building awareness I want them to
actually use the product and so for me
it was like how do I get them to sign up
for the product to use the product get
value from the product pay me money for
the product and then I take that money
to get more customers and and create
something that's much more sustainable
so kind of this mis idea from the
founders that they needed to build
awareness you know just in general I
just that's when I started to recognize
that my Approach was different and so
coming up with the idea of calling at
growth hacking we need to stop calling
this marketing because I Define growth
hacking as a scientific approach to
figuring out how to grow the business
are testing and analyzing across all of
the levers of growth from acquisition to
activation retention and monetization
yeah acquisition I'm mostly thinking
about how do you someone's attention and
get them to come and maybe sign up for
your product so that's acquisition
activation then is really how do you get
them to have a great first experience
with your product so we we call that the
aha moment at what point do they
actually experience your product in a
way where they say aha this is what I've
needed for for all this time this is
exactly what I wanted and so that first
experience with the product is generally
the product team's role now and so
acquisition was marketing activation is
product then the next one is engagement
becomes product as well the challenge
though is that most product teams are
thinking about okay who are my existing
customers on the product what do they
need and then I build a road map to keep
making the product better for them where
the majority of growth opportunity that
gets lost is that activation lever that
sits between uh product and marketing
because the product team doesn't really
think about it marketing team maybe
thinks about it but they don't have the
trust from the product team to do
anything there or even maybe the skills
because there's usually some engineering
that would be required there that most
marketers might not have would say the
most powerful lever of any of them
activation is like the the most
important one I would generally focus on
it's the first one that I focus on when
I work with a company engagement and
retention there's there's essentially
what you're doing is what what brings
someone back again and again to come in
and use the product and so someone comes
back to your product because something
triggers them to come back they have the
need or maybe they get an email or they
get a notification but something brings
them back a lot of things that you can
do to bring people back which would be
engagement of course the most powerful
thing to bring people back is a great
first experience which is actually the
activation so the biggest driver of
retention engagement is a great
activation step in the customer
acquisition process then you can still
be tactical about you know what are the
what are the prompts what what do I do
to bring someone back and then how do I
make sure that every time they come back
and use the product that they're even
more likely to come back and use it
again the next time how do how do I get
them to actually invest something into
the product so maybe do a little bit of
customization that makes it a little bit
more valuable each time and makes them
feel like they they have some ownership
around that experience so so we've
covered acquisition activation
engagement and retention and then
revenue is pretty obvious just how do
you make money from users when they come
in these are all interdependent because
if I if I'm really good at making money
from the users when they come in I can
spend more to bring them in in the first
place so that does tie back to
acquisition referral is the main one
that we focused on at uh Dropbox and
part of that's because just the natural
process of using Dropbox is you're
exposing it to other people if I want to
share a file someone who gets that file
gets to see Dropbox if I set up a shared
folder they experience Dropbox so
there's like a natural piece but then we
also built in incentives to get them to
to use Dropbox and so that would be
referral so that that covers really all
of them but hopefully hopefully it's a
little uh clear on what each one
means and the one thing that I that
really helped me be successful with
growth was that people actually loved
the products that I was working on if
people don't like the product all you
can do is get really good at getting
people to try the product and then they
disappear what we call product Market
fit when when someone tries the product
they enjoy the product they keep using
the product so if you can't retain
customers you can't grow so it's really
you know validating that you have
product Market fit is is really critical
before you get obsessive on on growth
hacking and and trying to grow the
business for me picking product Market
fit became really important so I came up
with a question that really helped me
which was I asked users on the product
how would you feel if you couldn't use
this product anymore I only asked people
who had really used the product so they
they've come in they've used it
hopefully the right way and even more
than once but then it's a a random
sample of people who've used the product
more than once hopefully recently when I
asked that question if say % of the
people said that they'd be very
disappointed without it that's not
enough I'm I'm not going to be able to
grow that business was was really what I
told myself what I eventually I had run
that question across hundreds of
companies so ones that I worked with and
ones that I didn't work with and what I
found is that about 40% of the users
said they would be very disappointed
without the product those companies were
generally successful to some level
whether I worked with them or not that
question a good leading indicator of
product Market fit the obviously more
important thing is if people keep using
the product and so that's what we call
we call a retention cohort so if you get
100 people who start using the product
and after you know 30 days zero of them
are still using the product you do not
have product Market fit but you're not
going to have all hundred of them using
the product that's that that would be
nearly impossible and so usually what
happens is 100 people start using the
product one week later it's down to 70
and then down to 60 then down to 50 if
it keeps going going to zero you don't
have product Market fit but if it goes
down to 50 and then those 50 keep using
it over the long term now you have a
signal that for half those people it was
something that was so valuable they keep
using it that's product Market fit and
you can grow that so yeah we call that a
retention cohort that plateaus so it
essentially runs parallel to the x-axis
at some number it depends on the
business so some businesses like Comm
the uh the meditation app they they
plateau only about 5% of the users
because they have to they have to
develop a a habit of doing meditation
which is hard for people where Instagram
plateaus at more like a 50 or 60% um
part of it too Instagram is free and com
cost money so that's another reason why
people might stop using it so it's it's
less important where it plateaus but if
it if it always goes to zero eventually
you're not growing you're just replacing
you're replacing the original people who
signed up and and so for a while you can
grow but eventually you're going to
flatten out and so product Market fit is
something that you can quantify for me
the best company for me to work on is
one that has all the signs of product
Market fit but no growth yet because the
minute that it has growth is when the
investors say wow this will be valuable
and they start pouring money into it
what I want is if I see the signs of
product Market fit it doesn't have the
growth yet that stock is still very
cheap and so I get my stock options and
then then I can make good money off of
that if I come in later like once the
company's already growing really fast
they they of course won't give me very
much stock so for for me one of the
important things is trying to pick after
product Market fit but before
growth and and what I would say is that
most companies fail with growth hacking
it's unfortunate but it's it's the
reality but I don't think it's because
they they have a hard time coming up
with a hypothesis or or a hard time
coming up with the right test idea
growth is cross functional growth is
something that requires a product team
to work with a marketing team to work
with Engineers to work with designers to
work with data people most companies
aren't organized that way as they get
bigger companies essentially have more
and more specialist teams that become
separated that's what causes growth
hacking not to work in most businesses
most digital marketers today are clever
enough to know I need to do a lot of
testing the the problem with it though
every everyone else has gotten very
smart at that too if everyone's testing
everything and optimizing on return on
investment Facebook and Google and all
of these other platforms are making it
bidding anytime someone gets good at
these things the prices keep going up
now it's harder and harder to find a
profitable way to get people to the
website and so the only way to really be
competitive on acquisition is to
actually focus on the entire customer
Journey and so this is where growth
hacking then becomes so marketing is
more how do I just get them to come in
growth hacking starts to look at the how
do I get them to come in how do I
convert them how do I give them a great
experience once they come in how do I
get them to come back a lot more often
how do I get them to tell their friends
what's the right way to get money from
them and these are all areas that you
can test so grow attacking is going to
cover a lot more and and it turns out
that probably the product team does more
with growth hacking than even the
marketing team because there's a lot of
opportunities within the product to
improve the value of the customer and
retain the customer but half of their
energy is spent trying to convince the
product team to run an experiment that's
inside the product so they get
frustrated so then they stop trying to
run experiments in the product and so
then they want to run all their
experiments on Facebook or on Google or
some something external and then it's
not growth ecking any anymore than
they're just than they're just doing
marketing and so the main point of why I
believe companies fail with this is is
because they can't get these different
teams agreeing on how to work together
effectively there's a good great quote
from Amazon's uh founder former CEO
where he said our success in Amazon is a
function of how many experiments we run
per day per month per year and so volume
of experiments really starts to matter
when we talk about the growth hacking
process it's it's uh it starts with
analysis and so that's really the first
analysis I'm doing is is more of a
qualitative analysis of who loves the
product and why do they love it so the
first thing that I do when when I
validated product Market fit is I figure
out why do I have product Market fit
because if I don't understand why I have
product Market fit you know then I'm not
going to be able to grow very well let's
say I think that people love the product
for this reason but they really love it
for this reason all of my advertisements
all of my messaging is pushing them to
do something with a product that it's
bad at doing then then I'm probably not
going to keep those people it's really
important if you have product Market fit
to to understand what is the main
benefit that those musthave users are
having so it's really hard to improve
something you don't understand so that's
where the analysis starts then you start
to say okay I have ideas to improve this
situation and so that's the next step is
to generate some ideas the next step is
to actually prioritize which of those
ideas you want to test first then you
start to run the tests and you analyze
the results and it's just that that
repeating process of you need to try a
lot of ideas to figure out what's going
to work and what's not going to work and
so one of the most important things in
growth hacking is just running a lot of
tests a high velocity of tests I'm going
to emphasize that over and over because
it's really important and I think a
great analogy is is one that comes from
the sports world where you have there's
a quote from a a hockey player Wayne
Gretzky that essentially says you miss
every shot that you don't take so but
that also applies to soccer uh or or
football as they call it in most of the
world but essentially if you only take
one shot maybe you make it but if you
take 10 shots in a game or 50 shots in a
game you're much more likely to win
because every shot is an opportunity to
score and it's the same thing with
testing every test you run
is an opportunity to find that one big
test that ultimately is a lot more
successful than everything else that you
do and so it's a mistake often when
teams are obsessed on trying to run one
perfect test they get so excited about
an idea that they they only want to
focus on one it's much better to to make
sure that every week we're running three
different tests every single week or
five different tests every single week
depending on the size of the company you
just don't know which one's going to be
the one that that ends up being super
high impact and and uh making a big
difference in the growth of the business
one of the biggest impacts of growth
hacking on the culture of a business is
that everyone becomes less arrogant they
if they used to think they had the
answers and tests keep revealing that
they're wrong a big part of the time
they stop being so insistent that they
have the right answer and they start
being curious about what is the right
answer and that to me creates a much
better culture where where business
starts people start working working
together to find the right answers in
the business and and they work together
more humbly there's less arguments about
my opinion versus your opinion and more
cooperation and how how do we actually
uncover the truth I'm really excited to
to to be in Soul in April and hopefully
I I get a chance to meet a lot of people
watching
this
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