Lecture 6 - Growth (Alex Schultz)

Summary

The speaker shares their journey from studying physics at Cambridge to becoming a successful marketer, highlighting their experiences with SEO, online marketing, and growth tactics. They emphasize the importance of retention for growth, the value of a great product, and setting a clear 'north star' metric for a company. They discuss viral marketing strategies using Hotmail and PayPal as examples and stress the need for scalability and internationalization. The talk concludes with practical advice on email, SMS, and push notifications, underscoring the importance of execution speed and relentless experimentation for growth.

Takeaways

• 🔍 **Start Small in SEO**: The speaker started with a niche website on paper airplanes and learned early SEO techniques like using white text on a white background.
• 🎓 **Physics and SEO Journey**: They transitioned from studying physics at Cambridge to mastering SEO and internet marketing, showcasing the value of transferable skills.
• 🌐 **Evolution of SEO**: From dominating early search engines like AltaVista with simple tricks to adapting to Google's complex algorithms and AdWords for monetization.
• 💡 **Retention is Key**: The speaker emphasizes that retention is the most crucial factor for growth in any business, highlighting the importance of keeping users engaged.
• 📊 **Understanding Retention Curves**: Analyzing retention curves helps businesses determine product-market fit and predict long-term viability.
• 🚀 **Magic Moments**: Identifying and optimizing for 'magic moments' (key user experiences) can significantly enhance user retention and growth.
• 🔄 **The Role of Growth Teams**: For startups, the entire company should focus on growth, with the CEO setting the direction and prioritizing the right metrics.
• 🌍 **Internationalization**: Expanding into new markets early and effectively is crucial, as seen with Facebook's scalable translation infrastructure.
• 📈 **Virality and K-Factor**: Successful viral growth depends on payload, frequency, and conversion rates, with examples from Hotmail and PayPal illustrating different viral strategies.
• 📧 **Email and Notifications**: While email is less effective for younger audiences, personalized and timely notifications (email, SMS, push) are vital for user engagement.
• 🔗 **SEO Best Practices**: Effective SEO involves thorough keyword research, acquiring high-authority backlinks, and proper internal linking for optimal site visibility.
• 🏆 **Execution and Experimentation**: Growth requires relentless experimentation and rapid execution, with a focus on running more experiments and learning quickly from them.

Q & A

What is the speaker's educational background and how did it influence his career path?

The speaker studied physics at Cambridge and found it provided transferable skills useful in other areas. Unlike Paul who suggested physics as a good field of study, the speaker chose to indulge in physics and later transitioned from being a physicist to a marketer, utilizing his physics background in his internet marketing career.

What was the speaker's first online marketing venture and what did it teach him?

The speaker's first venture was creating a paper airplane site where he learned SEO techniques of the 1990s, such as using white text on a white background to rank high on search engines like Altavista.

How did the speaker's experience with the cocktail site contribute to his understanding of SEO and programming?

The speaker created a cocktail site in college to seem cooler, which led to learning programming and further SEO strategies, especially after Google's launch when page rank and backlinks became important.

What is the speaker's view on the importance of retention for business growth?

The speaker believes that retention is the single most important factor for growth. A business is viable and has product market fit if its retention curve asymptotes to a line parallel to the x-axis, indicating long-term user engagement.

How did the speaker use the concept of 'North Star' in the context of business growth?

The 'North Star' is a guiding metric set by the company's leader that everyone in the company should focus on to drive growth. It varies by company and vertical, like eBay's focus on gross merchandise volume, rather than just revenue.