User Acquisition: The 5 Keys to Acquiring New Users for Free

1. Lecture Video Part I (25:26) - PW: manwithacam: - I co founded yipit dot com. - The problem we solve is that there are a lot of sales and deals online, - and we take them all, - and we put him in one place that searchable where you could be recommended stuff you can - set up alerts, - etc. - Round two starts of the last eight years. - The 1st 1 was fried, - which is online voice for game players that they could get together. - They still that four years later and found a carbon made his online portfolio of artists - and designers and creative people recently the last six months of starting a new company. - Basically, - back office is a service and software solution for start ups and of all sizes, - thinking that offer plate how many accounts while you were carbon made that you guys sign - up, - I think we reach. - Think why left with just under 500,000 for self funded company so kind of a freemium model - . - So she needed more videos and need, - like an enhanced profile. - You pay $12 a month, - and then the other guys remain free customers. - And then ah yep, - it were getting very close to a 1,000,000 people having signed up um, - all of which has been free. - We haven't paid for any of our users. - I'd love to actually be able to pay, - but can't afford to pay for the users. - So we have to figure out ways to do that for free, - Which is true of many startups. - Um, - so, - uh, - one reason that we wanted sort of wanted to teach this class in the first place is that we - feel like, - um, - there's a lot of misinformation out there about whether user acquisition is even nothing - you need to worry about as a start up on. - And then what are the different ways in which you might want to go about doing that? - Um, - the biggest thing that I always heard was that great products sell themselves. - And when you hear that, - it's kind of like a huge relief because you're like, - Oh, - thank God, - all I have to do is build this amazing product, - and then everyone's going to sign up for my service, - and I'll never have to worry about it. - But that's not really true. - Great products do sell themselves. - They just do so very, - very slowly and in the world in which we live in a VC, - um, - and competition. - You can't afford to wait for your product to sell itself. - You need to figure out ways in which to speed up the rate of which your product sells - himself and behind any sort of company that you read about with millions and millions of - users and having all this success, - they have a great product undoubtedly. - But behind that great product is usually an even better user acquisition strategy. - Now, - you may say, - Well, - how come I never hear about any of this stuff? - What makes a lot of sense? - Because when these founders are interviewed by the German by journalists and journalists - asked him like, - How did you get so many users how to go? - You know, - they're going to say while our product is great and people just sign up and you know it's - word of mouth because what they don't want to say is like, - Well, - yeah, - we have word of mouth, - but secretly we figured out this hack on a CEO. - Therefore, - we acquire all these users and it's really just sort of like this brilliant side strategy - that we have, - like no one wants to talk about that What they want to talk about is how great their - product is. - So you end up in these situations where people, - um sort of overemphasize how much the product sells themselves and under emphasized the - fact that there's a lot of very smart user acquisition strategy happening in the background - . - Um, - but before you start thinking about sort of user acquisition, - I think it's really important for you to think about what user you're actually trying to - acquire, - because the answer isn't everybody. - There's usually sort of some target demos in which you're looking for. - You know, - When I started type Frag, - I guess it's now. - That was 2003. - So 10 years ago now it was possible to just build the best product in the market, - and you didn't really have to do much because there were so many fewer players out there. - But now, - in the last, - like I'd say, - 34 years, - it's social crowded market in especially in the consumer side. - I think it's people are starting to move to enterprise side in the last six months to a - year, - but especially the consumer side, - there's just like you always fighting for people's down those I fear an iPhone app, - and then only a very few make it. - If your Web app like how do you drive traffic there? - And there's just constant, - like overlapping products. - So anyway, - so I would say like and I'm definitely seeing this now more than ever in my current startup - is you need to identify who your user is. - That's kind of like Step one. - And if you don't know who that person is, - it's probably cause you're not doing enough customer development. - And I think a lot of startups nowadays are so product focused. - They've got a couple engineers. - They've got a designer and, - like some of the leading product, - and they're like they're constantly in building and it got a road map of. - This is what I'm gonna do This is going to do. - But if you don't first understand and go out and speak to customers like try to sell the - product to them first, - even before the product does anything, - you're never gonna understand what to build. - And this whole thing of like fast operation is great. - But that tends only come once you start having some sort of user base, - and you started knowing like what these people are asking, - and then it's just a question of reaching out there, - finding out what specific needs that these people have in applying it to your product. - So if you're spending three months, - six months in stealth mode, - you're never gonna get anywhere and something I've been building my recent product is that - I've like we barely spent maybe three weeks out of the last 34 months actually building - product. - We've been going out speaking to customers and trying to solve their needs. - And a lot of this solutions that we're seeing right now is we're solving it with a service - level. - And then we started to build attack to support service level. - So that's a really good thing to do. - Um, - ways to identify users. - One I say is, - You know, - if you have something to ship, - ship it sooner rather later, - and I think it really good job with this, - Then you can start seeing kind of where the traffics coming and maybe you got picked up in - a blogger or something, - and you can start to identify who exactly your users are. - And if those people are starting to sign up, - you can say, - Oh, - what was their audience? - Who were there? - Demographics. - And it's hard to kind of play on that role. - So first user acquisition strategy is one that you'll see. - I think a lot more on the West Coast. - Fewer start ups in the East Coast. - Really think about it. - Um, - and that is search engine optimization Seo. - Um, - the way I think about this thes kinds of user acquisition strategies is, - first I think of it, - What is the opportunity? - And the second question you want to answer it is, - Is it for you? - Is it for the product that you are building doesn't meet this opportunity on search engine - optimization? - The big opportunity is this really amazing thing, - which is that all of us every day go to Google all the time and we just type in queries, - and we expect Google to point us in the right direction. - That is a tremendous, - tremendous fountain of user acquisition that is available to any start up. - Now, - the question you have to ask yourself, - is there a lot of people are there a lot of people typing in questions into Google queries - into Google that your start up can somehow be the definitive answer to that question. - Now let's talk about give you a bunch of examples, - so I'll start with you The queries that people are typing into Google every day is there - typing in restaurant deals, - New York or they're typing in shake Shack deals or Hill Country deals. - So they're typing in a business name, - deals or they're typing in a category. - Maybe a city deals. - Yep, - it has built a bunch of landing pages that we aim to be the definitive response to those - queries and that allows us to sign up a bunch of users on a daily basis. - Because Google we basically put out all these landing pages. - They're all indexed by Google. - And then when people type in these queries, - we show up on that list and we sign up those users. - Now you may think O s io that can't be that big a deal. - It's actually huge deal for many, - many startups that you've heard of. - Another example is stack overflow, - um, - stack overflow day type in a developer Ever when I was building the original version of - Yipit, - I've run into all these problems and what do you do you take the air message and you pasted - into Google, - and then you're hoping for a definitive answer to that air message. - What turns out Stack overflow precisely does that they come up with definitive answers. - Two types of queries, - two types of questions like that programming questions. - Another example is Yelp. - Their huge S CEO story Yelp. - What people type in type in business name because they're looking for information, - looking for photos, - looking for a phone number. - Maybe they want to know if it's a good business or they type in category searchers. - So they're like best restaurants. - Chelsea, - If ever go to Yelp School down all the way to the bottom where they have, - like the crazy stuff and start clicking around and you're going to see this wild world of - like, - recent searches go click on this little thing called recent searches at the bottom. - And it's just this like weird, - nonsensical, - huge list that obviously no users actually going through there helping Google index all of - that content for them. - So they've created these landing pages for all sorts of weird sort of combinations of what - people are typing online. - Um, - a bunch of Other examples I would give is, - um, - Cora does how they get a bunch of their users. - Amazon itself, - people Google products they land on the Amazon page is always the first result hunch when - they were around, - that's how they signed up a lot of people stuff like how cast they signed up a lot of - people through S E O. - Um, - remember, - the opportunity is there's a bunch people searching every day. - Can you take the content that you create and provide the definitive response to that query - ? - So the car made, - everyone got their own portfolio, - and the way we did that is your named carmen dot coms. - We gave everyone their own unique two main aim at the bottom. - We had little car made length so their friends could see kind of where this beautiful - portfolio was built. - They could link back to it, - and what we started to see is what been said is that people would search for persons name, - and Carter made what appears like the top search result because not only to be put, - it is the title, - but we put in the about page. - You put as many places that we could for the names. - So whenever anyone did a name, - search on someone card made portfolio choke first. - So we did that a long time. - We also did. - We would aggregate all the artists of a certain county courts a photography illustration so - forth and list all the illustrators under there. - So people did, - like illustrator and then someone's name that they would appear topped there, - too. - So something that thin was saying was create these little sites where you highly highly - focus s CEO around and build basically the site based on the S E. - O. - So write the copy, - right? - What keepers you want to target and then go the design and then build the code for their - certain ways that you can do it. - And if you like Google s CEO tactics, - you can figure it out. - But you know, - h one tags h two tags. - Very important Title tax are very important. - You know what you've folded in a paragraph can also add weight to it, - and then linking from other services can help us. - Well, - that's how we kind of did it. - A card man. - It was very, - very successful in terms of the pros of S e o The way you think about it is you're looking - for. - If you're starting was really gonna make it, - you need a repeatable, - um, - sales process repeatable, - scalable sales process, - right. - You need to figure out some way in which you're gonna add more users. - And as your user base grows, - it's gonna add even more User is gonna get growing. - Growing prose with the CEO is that it scales with your content. - So especially have user generated content so that you know, - something like help. - They're constantly writing reviews, - constant writing reviews. - The more reviews they write, - the better those business pages get the mawr relevant search results they get for all types - of weird queries. - So the bigger their audience got, - the more constant they were able to create good landing pages with, - the more they were able to attract a seo traffic. - Um, - the other big pro is CEO, - um is huge in terms of what can break. - If you really nail it on S e o, - it could really make your business. - It could be the thing that gets you sort of 75 80% of all of your new users and if you look - at a lot of sites I was talking about Stack, - Overflow and Cora. - A lot of them rely primarily on S CEO to get a bunch of their new users and traffic. - Here's the big, - big con toe CEO and one that I sweat about every day, - which is that ultimately you are beholden to Google's out. - So if you think about it, - you're signing up all these users every day, - every day, - and then you'll hear this murmur right coming from like the S e o world. - And it's like, - Oh, - you know, - there might be some sort of update to the algorithm and, - like, - really badly is they give him, - like, - these little names like pandas. - Right. - So, - like, - uh, - panda update comes around and literally overnight your traffic and fall off 40 50%. - Think about it like you're telling your veces everything is going really well. - Your investor they've been going with and literally overnight. - You have to explain to them that you just lost 40% of your new users. - You were adding, - you know, - 2000 years ago today, - now you're only adding 1200. - Today it's demoralizing, - right? - And then What do you gotta do? - You gotta react to Pan. - Then you gotta fix your stuff. - Look, - you might get there. - Might not. - But keep in mind that it is like you are beholding to the algorithm. - Every day. - You get traffic from them. - It's a gift, - and it's a gift that could be taken away. - For instance, - Yelp, - I'm sure suffered from this When Google all of a sudden decided you know what? - They're gonna create Google places. - And now, - when you search in there and create Google local, - and now when you search restaurants, - New York used to be a help was the very first thing. - Now you can't even see yelp because Google will actually know you restaurants in New York - on Google, - you get like the 10 Google results first, - right? - So now everyone starts cooking on those results overnight, - you'll probably got literally hammered by that Google change. - So keep in mind, - Google may even launch a competitor in your own space, - and they're gonna just start showing their results above yours. - You have to be careful about that. - Um, - opportunity number two. - Um, - way to think about acquiring users is PR, - um, - the opportunity is, - you know, - very kind of obviously, - that journalists write articles every day. - They have to find new things to write about. - And people like to read what? - You know journalists, - right? - Is it for you? - I think a lot of startups way, - way over focus on this concept of a launch. - Um, - launch press is great. - You can get it. - You know, - you'll get some people to sign up. - It's a great way to get some initial users to jump start your site. - It is not a long term, - repeatable, - scalable sales process. - You're not gonna be able to get people to write about your launch every other day. - Obviously, - you launch ones, - but it's a great way to get some initial users jump starting to have some network effects, - etcetera. - Test what your concepts are. - Get some feedback, - etcetera. - The other press strategy that you can try to employ is to basically put yourself is part of - a trend. - Yep, - It we really benefited from this. - Initially, - we got a ton of users this way, - and that trend was that there was in 2010 and in 2011 there was this big story about group - on being the fastest growing company in history. - And then all of these clones that were coming after right LivingSocial on by with Me and - Tipper and then Google offers was competing with them. - So all these journalists kept every time there was a new one of these, - they would write another article about Oh my God, - there's so many of them. - And guess what? - Yep, - it at the Bulls at the bottom of every single article and at the end of the beach, - articles like there's even an aggregator fall of these things and they would link to Yep, - it. - And we guess what? - People reading that article, - They're like, - Oh my God, - there's so many of them Oh, - there's a convenient aggregator So they were all click on that and then sign up. - We got on Good Morning, - America. - We were on CNN. - We're on The New York Times three times in a month, - all without a PR agency, - all without any outbound. - This was literally they were just inbound writing about us because we're able to put - ourselves in part of a trend. - How did they know about you? - But the way this kind of works is a journalist. - If you're able to put yourself in one of these articles as a journalist, - you can imagine you're tasked with writing about this new trend. - You're like, - Oh, - my God. - What? - I don't know anything about this. - They google it, - and what do they do? - They read it in an article about it, - and then they read the article and says, - Yep, - it on it. - And then they google it again and they see another article that says, - Yep, - it So they're like, - Oh, - I got include dip it as well. - So now they know about you. - But so once you get the nice thing is, - once you sort of get into that trend, - you'll stay. - In that trend, - people will continually right about you. - The bad news is, - someday the trend stops being written about right. - The group No. - One, - No one is writing anymore about like have you heard about right at this point everyone's - heard about so eventually that goes away and you have to be prepared for that. - You have to have a long term user acquisition strategy is you have to adjust after that - sort of happened. - Is that active on your part? - where you knew some reporters covering you were reaching out for the first few, - at least where they recover When you say, - Hey, - I'm an aggregator or were they just actively saying Here's a few? - And so the question is, - how much outreach did we have to do initially to get to get involved? - Part of the nice thing about being on TechCrunch early on and getting on we're in Wired - magazine is that some of those early reporters caught on um But we did 1/3 thing, - which is actually how we did most of our outreach very early on, - and then we sort of didn't do it. - And it happened. - The third way in which you can get some press is if you become sort of a data source for - the industry. - So in our industry, - we said, - whoa, - you know, - there's all this interesting stuff happening with Groupon living social. - So we started providing market share data like how I was group on doing relative to living - social, - And how did they do this month and how did you do last month? - Um, - what I can say is that was good for getting the attention of investors and getting the - attention of other journalists. - Being a data source in an article isn't going to sign up a lot of users, - as you can imagine. - Like, - people read these articles and like, - according to you, - but data no consumers like I got a sign of rip it, - you know, - there's like, - I mean, - have you ever signed up for you know, - the blank data source of an article you're reading about? - Like no, - right. - That being said, - we happen to also have a data business. - So it's actually great marketing or use a requisition for our data business, - cause then people who are interested in getting mawr of this data, - they would call us up. - So that was great. - Um, - a lot of companies do. - This usually works much better in a B two b context. - Um, - for Spencer startup, - he might. - He might if he wanted to do something on the press release side on the back office stuff. - He might be a way to sort of release some interesting data about recruiting or whatever it - was he was working on. - And in. - Startups would read these articles and they'd be like, - You know what? - Who is this company, - and then you might want to sort of call him up and see if they're interested. - Um, - the only consumer company I've seen ask if anyone else is a good example of using data in a - way that actually got more users. - Um, - consumer interest, - I thought was OK. - Cupid. - OK, - keep it. - Took a lot of their profiles and ran all these interesting analysis about, - like, - a za guy. - You're supposed to look into the picture or look away from the picture, - right? - It's like, - Amazing. - I mean, - who doesn't want to read that? - Like So there's all these interesting stuff about whether, - you know, - as a girl, - do you want to be a seven or a 10? - You know, - there's all this is the questions, - believe or not you Well, - it's like how consistently like do you want to be by other guys? - So there's always really interesting stuff, - and they would people their stuff would get picked up dramatically. - And then I think they were able to turn all of that into sort of usage into new years or so - . - I thought that worked really well for them. - So, - you know, - my summary on sort of the PR stuff is on the pro side. - It's a great way to get some initial users. - It doesn't take a lot of word of mouth on the con. - Side is, - it's not really sort of long term, - sustainable growth. - You're gonna find very few very successful startups that will say PR was everything for us - . - PR also, - incidentally, - helps you on a CEO. - Ah, - lot of that PR generates inbound links into your site, - which then Google values your site more and is going to rank them up on search terms more, - more often, - talking a little bit about like the data is an acquisition strategery. - Um, - I can't think that kind of falls under two under content marketing, - which we talk a little bit, - but it also helps with Seo and stuff like that. - And if you can really become a thought leader in your space, - so people kind of go to you as as the source, - it helps a lot, - especially for you know, - um, - enterprise companies. - So you could be the dedicated source for X information like, - how do you set up your payroll provider? - Like what? - You know, - benefits package that pick no one was really like owning that, - and if you go directly to this providers, - then you know you're going to get it by a source. - But if you can kind of get like some sort of IRA Gator and it kind of teach everyone, - this is the way you should do it because no Foursquare doesn't this way and and yet it does - it this way and kind of become that source. - So content marketing. - It's kind of like a very important strategy that kind of goes along with it. - We've best store waste of money, - and it's striking that works with PR agencies wore on paper place. - And then basically, - you tear a division that actually were relevant to your partner audience. - And you said the menu prices paid most. - Yeah, - I just find that PR's the We'll probably think that that placement is worth a lot more than - it actually is, - which is so like, - yeah, - I love to do a play station where it's like, - Oh, - I'll pay you $50 Thank you. - So you have to You have to have it where you think that's a very smart way of approaching - it a different way, - and I would recommend you look at it that way. - It makes more sense, - right? - Accountability and it's commission based. - But you still have to make sure that the math works out like it's gotta see how many users - you signed up like. - You'd be surprised. - But being on TV, - isn't that great? - Because when you're on TV, - most people like you know you're on TV, - so someone's watching on TV, - like often Do you sign up for something because you saw it on TV right there, - usually not in front of your computer. - There's no direct link, - a lot of which is forget. - If they don't hear it again, - it's just gone etcetera, - whereas you know something like from a PR basis. - The top, - um, - the top sign up sources that I've experiences Lifehacker. - They are a monster. - You get on, - my factory will sign up. - We once had a different project. - That was in a list of five things that Lifehacker wrote about. - We were actually the thing that they were saying not to sign up for, - he said. - This is the bad version of the things that we're recommending, - and we still sign up like 4000 people being the bad thing on the list of five other great - stuff are like the daily emails were really good thrills of the world and daily candy in - the world. - You get mentioned in those things that could have a pretty big impact. - Um, - Nelson Consumerist Anyone reads that log. - And if you could just treat your customers very well, - hopefully one of them are right consumers and saying talking about this amazing experience - that they have, - we had someone. - This lady had me refund her after five months ago. - She cancer account Anderson confusion. - She wrote this long piece saying how he was going to our school, - she could afford a car made refunded or six months worth of payments. - Evolved, - got consumers. - And it actually made us, - like thousands of dollars. - So you know, - it's true. - Your users well can lead to that story that it shows up like fashion consumers, - other sources, - more questions. - PR, - Yes. - Yeah, - the becoming a big star. - You other people. - Hey, - this is for you. - So sounds like you could kill two birds per se. - I guess I'm not so sure why, - You know, - I think validating your customers a lot like the researcher doing on the data side, - I think, - Is it, - like, - is not gonna go a long way, - In my opinion, - invalidating the customer The best way to validate a customer is to get in front of them of - the product or trying to sell them and seeing it go everybody. - I think there's a lot of emphasis placed on research and, - you know, - having some abstract view of how the industry will play out. - But the best way to validate a customer is just getting from that customer. - Ask him, - you know, - showing your product and see if they're willing to. - By the way to play it the way to open your email, - read your emails. - I always welcome in that way more to validate customers. - I feel like a lot of people do surveys, - so they send out all these surveys. - So they're like 100 friends. - But like I could write a survey that will always guaranteed everyone will love what I'm - about to build because, - like, - you know, - people are answering these surveys there, - usually kind of biased to say, - Oh yeah, - and then I was like, - Look, - it's a real idea, - 100 people told me that they really want this. - But you know that if the and you're like oh, - pay $5 for and everyone's like Wow, - you see, - I just don't have it right now You know, - it's like any people that you know with their money where their mouth is. - The best way to do customer felt you because you can sign up 10 25 different companies like - for us. - And if no one's pain, - it doesn't really say anything right in your product. - Probably nothing you can, - I think, - charge less traditional customers like 50% off. - It is long paying something monthly yearly or whatever. - I think that's the best way for you to understand yours. - The 1st 500,000 users is the most difficult. - Once you have those users, - I understand your audience better. - You just find more people like that because they're 1,110,000 people just like those guys. - But one thing to just Addis with hard made. - Originally for six months, - everyone was like Oh, - you know, - needs to be a Web development to create tools. - They use carbon and so forth, - and you should add all these features and I don't know those people would pay us money. - So we just, - like, - you know, - vocals back. - The people that are paying us money where they didn't know each didn't notice it since we - built a part for that and those with people with dollars. - So you gotta be careful. - Don't go in. - Provide support features for the guys that are gonna pay anything. - Make sure focus around users that 2. Lecture Video Part II (32:32) - PW: manwithacam: - So let's go ahead to the third user acquisition. - So that recap one is the CEO to his PR. - The third is Always think of it as explicit invites. - The opportunity here is that people are generally willing to explicitly invite their - friends to use your service. - The reason why is many fold, - but the main one is that people sort of, - um, - thankfully, - people want to feel like they're the ones that introduced their friends to this cool new - thing. - You know, - like here's like other people introducing kayak It's like, - Oh, - you search for flights like kayak. - It's so smart, - like the best way to search for flights. - And you get some, - like, - weird satisfaction out of being the person that recommended this thing to your friend. - Thank God, - because that means get word of mouth worth. - The challenge with word of mouth growth is unfortunately, - it's dependent on a number of mouths. - There are to spread your word right, - so ultimately, - if you don't have that many mouths and you don't have any users and you're growing and I - have a certain word of mouth growth, - it's gonna take a long time for that, - actually to go anywhere. - So even though people are nice enough to do that, - sometimes you want toe pushed him along a little bit more the first way in which you get - people to explicitly invite friends. - So yep, - it We've never successfully done this, - but I've seen a lot of other companies be successful with, - and I'll show you some characteristics placement characteristics that make them successful - . - For instance, - when people used to send up the very first version of Yipit, - the fourth sign up screen, - I took a I took this picture of Jim. - I'd just come and take a picture of my co founder, - Jim and myself, - and we both put on glasses and we had, - like, - these like, - really like, - sad looking like clothes on. - And we had, - like, - I had hand written a thank you on a white billboard, - and we were both waving like it was like the nerdiest sadist looking picture. - And it was like, - you know, - like we're gonna find every deal for you if you could just help us out and, - like, - recommend this you know, - to your friends via Facebook or Twitter and or email and like, - you know, - that's like the pathetic request for someone to invite people. - Turns out, - people are very selfish online. - And even though we had done this, - what I thought was an unbelievably pathetic picture, - people still didn't really meaningfully engage with it. - The best way to really get into people to invite their friends is to make it selfish for - them to invite their friends. - So the idea is it's truly better. - Their experience on your service is truly better if their friends are on it. - So examples of stuff like that is like Twitter, - you know? - Follow me on Twitter, - right? - Come following. - Why did they do that? - Because they wanted to show tell you about a bunch of interesting stuff? - Nope. - The reason why they did that because they were embarrassed that their Twitter follower - number was so low. - And they're constantly trying basically get that Twitter number higher so that they can - feel like, - you know, - they can feel better about themselves. - So, - uh, - Twitter had a very successful way of doing that. - People on Facebook, - they wanted more friends early on, - so they didn't want to just go on Facebook and have, - like, - three friends and look sort of lame in front of all of the other people that were on the - service. - Um, - now you see a bunch of brand saying, - you know, - more fans on Facebook there was trying to get more fans on Facebook. - A good example of selfish is Group me. - Um, - you know, - basically, - group me doesn't work really well unless you invite your friends to use that service right - to get your bunch of your friends on there so that you can do it on your ski trip or - whatever house. - So you definitely want a service. - If you can think about your service that way, - where it's selfish in their best interest to actually invite their friends cause it makes - the experience better, - that works really well. - Um, - the other way to really incentivize people to invite people is to reward them, - Um, - something that this usually happens when you have a service where you have this thing that - the user values more than it costs you. - So the example there is, - like dropbox. - You value storage from drop box. - And Dropbox has put a price on how much storage should cost. - Right. - And what Dropbox would say is if you invited a friend, - they would give you more storage, - and what was great about that is you thought you were getting X dollars. - But really, - it costs Dropbox a lot less than acts to provide that service for you. - Gilt groupe. - They did this a lot by giving people a $20 credit for guilt. - That's great for them because you think $20 goes like $20. - But for guilt, - $20 on guilt is actually probably like $10. - Then costume is much, - especially when you consider the fact that maybe some of that $20 wasn't even used up - because people walked away or whatever the case may have happened from very early on, - we decided, - I think, - to our detriment that we wouldn't be a social service and we would silo every portfolio - because ideas of portfolio is not a social experience. - And you know, - your work shouldn't be seen with comments around and so forth. - And some of our more recent competitors, - like the hands and others, - have kind of surpassed car made in growth because of this kind of sharing and social thing - . - And what they've done really well is it's this idea of like someone do que props or like - you're a piece of work. - It kind of filters up and you kind of start to get more followers. - And they've separated that whole social component to the portfolio itself and something - that we had talked about doing early on. - But we decided not to do it and just stick to the portfolio of by itself. - But, - um, - to our regret somewhat but idea that want ad Teoh finish that I think the world class in - terms of giving away something for free, - is the free poker bonus sites that people have. - You know that they're willing to give you $5100 treated sign of your friends and get you - some money as well. - Um, - because they know they're gonna go instead. - More money. - That's like a very good thing. - And if you can kind of create those cliffs where you you get might get 20 hours of guilt, - but you have to spend $50 to get that money back. - That's a great strategy as well. - Three data. - When the user experience, - it's best to let people know that by sharing with friends, - actually a lot of users because it seems like people are People are very share that until - at some point in the experience like so the awesome thing is, - it ultimately depends on the product that you're building. - And when you demonstrate value, - the awesome thing is like you don't have to look into data because you can just tested. - You could just try it. - In the beginning, - you can try it in the middle. - You can try, - and in the end you confined in an email you can find on the web. - Tried everywhere, - everywhere until it so it works. - I'll tell you what, - he will do it together because this is sort of the downfall of this strategy. - So pro of the strategy is when a friend invites another friend, - it's an awesome thing, - right? - Cause you're getting so that this personal recommendation from someone to sort of join this - service, - the Pro is it could be really big if you figure out the funnel right. - So if you get it so that you know, - significant number of friends are inviting people of those people, - the message is good enough that people sign up, - and then those. - When those people sign up, - it creates sort of this viral loop because then so for 1000 people get 500 people to sign - up. - Well, - then, - those No 500 people, - they're gonna get 252 people. - Sign up, - right? - It's a geometric progression, - right? - So it's basically like 1000 people is actually 2000 people. - All of a sudden, - you basically double how many new users you're signing up just to this invite mechanism - because of that, - very interesting. - And the the higher that percentage gets, - the crazier that math gets. - And if that goes above one, - then you're in, - like you know, - you probably you. - I'd love to hear about how you got there. - Now here's the big con is that it's actually hard to get that percentage to be high. - If you think about it. - Here's why people do it right the beginning because for every 100 will sign up for a site, - maybe 20. - Come back right after that initial sign up. - So you know the question of whether you do it right on it right away or later is now you're - gonna get to pitch the 20 as opposed to pitching to 100. - All right, - so maybe people pitch to those 100 cause it, - even if that 20 is is good. - Is it five times better than if you were pitching to those 100? - So you think about the math. - It gets really scary, - which is 100 people sign up every day. - Let's they undergo a suicide every day. - What percentage of them are willing to invite people? - Maybe 10% maybe 5%. - And I only talking five or 10 or inviting How many people did they invite? - Maybe two people, - maybe three people. - So you're talking 15 20 people, - right of those people. - How many of those respond and sign up for your site? - Maybe 5% respond to an invite. - Email, - maybe 10%. - Right now you're talking like one or two people. - All right, - so, - like that doesn't look very good. - You went from signing up 100 people to getting an extra one or two a day. - That's not very good, - right? - So that math can get pretty scary pretty quick, - and then you got to think about. - That's why it's so important that it's in their selfish interest because you got to get - that 10% toe like 30% or 40%. - And then what you really want to get this is the secret to the whole explosive invites is, - uh, - all all the real value is generated when people don't invite one people. - But invite everybody, - right? - Because if you're having your convincing your users to invite just one other person and - you're not gonna get much out of it, - the good stuff, - the real good stuff is when they email like 100 people telling you to sign up. - That's where you get some real bang for your buck. - But, - you know, - then you start getting into all sorts of weird things like Are you being a spammer? - Right. - Is your side spanning? - People are People are upset. - They didn't realize that they were voting. - Not many people want invite 100 people, - right? - So, - like, - were you kind of which she watching with the language when they were signing up? - Right. - You start getting into all sorts of gray areas. - I've always been kind of obvious benefit of the female form you filled out. - What I prefer is to kind of give your users some sort of link or profile cage or something - that can share with other people that they kind of feel proud of. - So you know, - whether it's like a little Twitter but in our countries. - But in our our case is a carbon for polar. - They share with their friends because they want to kind of show piece of themselves to the - world. - And that way, - kind of their friends are gonna quick. - Oh, - this is interesting. - I want one too. - So it's not exactly, - you know, - spamming putting everyone's email address. - It's kind of sharing service that you're hoping that other people come back to. - And it's says owners of these companies were selfish because we want more people shares - well, - so you can make that easy. - Share your portfolio to Twitter shared this Facebook that conspired words. - Um, - your point you just made before about 100 users and then 20 may come back. - I guess this is more attention, - but what do you think about digest emails or something that do give them value is a way to - get them back? - Do they actually work? - And these present Twitter, - where they'll give you a week's worth of summary of notable stories that you may have - missed? - Ah, - digest emails are monsters and getting people to come back to your service. - They're really strong. - Twitter send you emails because they know what they're doing. - They send emails because they obviously work. - They will take all this time to send you a summer email because they want to make sure that - you caught up on your news. - Um, - digest emails. - Uh uh, - you know, - Facebook. - They send you so many emails about every little thing that happened on your site because - they're really smart. - Because every time they send you an email, - you come back to Facebook, - and that's how they get you back. - So, - um, - I highly highly recommend as a daily email company. - Highly recommend that you send emails to your users is a retention mechanism to that end, - Um, - an email, - uh, - the battle is waged on the subject line. - Um, - if you think about it, - how many so many emails do you look at where you never go past the subject line? - You have to be really, - really thoughtful about the subject line. - Getting people excited. - Facebook is like a person's name. - Tagged a photo of you. - You're like holy shit like that is like you. - Yeah, - you're like, - What is this picture? - Like, - all my friends were seeing it right now. - Someone just made fun of me. - Like your your like, - freaking out. - Like Facebook, - for instance. - Used to say someone sent you a message and they wouldn't even put the message in there. - So you have to click to go to Facebook to read that message. - Do you think that they technically could have probably figured out a way to get that - message in your email? - Sure. - But then you wouldn't have gone back to Facebook. - And Facebook knows what they're doing. - Right? - So, - um, - so sorry. - So this is sort of getting us to the fourth point. - The fourth user acquisition strategy. - This is probably the hottest one right now, - um, - to focus on and this is the implicit invite. - Now, - the opportunity here is that when people use your product, - um, - your service, - um there's an opportunity for them to for you to get them to demonstrate to others that - they are using your product or service. - Now, - is this for you? - Um, - it's not for everyone, - but the startups who get this right are the start. - If you read about in the news and the startups that don't get it. - Writer startups that struggle to find other ways to grow. - But, - um, - the best best way to do this is by example, - the The earliest example that I know of is a great example. - Is Hotmail Um, - when Hotmail came around? - Believe it. - Another time, - there wasn't really free Web mail for consumers. - Everyone got their email through work or maybe through school and Hotmail is this constant - people free Web mail. - So they launched Hotmail, - and it's kind of growing, - you know, - But it's not really taking off, - you know, - it's growing, - it's good. - But, - you know, - it's a great product, - but now it's selling itself, - but not that well. - And then what Hotmail does is on. - It's actually now a huge dispute. - I read about between the original V C and the entrepreneurs to whose idea this waas. - But the idea was at the bottom of every Hotmail email. - They were gonna put in a little thing that said, - you know, - sent using, - you know, - my new free email service, - Hotmail. - And as soon as they added that it literally turned into a virus like a soon as anyone would - email so they would see it. - Someone one, - email someone in Paris and then immediately all around Paris, - they would get like, - accounts, - signed up, - and then someone would email like Munich and then really around Munich, - all these people would sign up, - and that's my whole point is like great products do sell themselves, - but there are ways to make it so that it's a lot easier on great products, - and this is such a simple thing. - So Carbon made is a great example of this. - So Spencer said, - Oh, - it's night, - you know, - not every startup could do a carbon, - made it, - and it was awesome that Carbon had this opportunity. - But by using carbon made is to create a portfolio. - What people do when they have portfolios, - do they secretly keep them hidden in the box? - Now they actually linked to them everywhere, - right? - They put him in their email footers, - etcetera. - So whenever anyone went to carbon made, - carpet made would have grown a lot slower if they didn't have a little link at the bottom, - right somewhere or wherever it is that they had the little plug that says, - you know, - created by carbon made like use carbon made or some like that. - I bet if you remove that little link, - you'd like collapse in terms of new user growth. - So, - um, - this is a about that me very similar to carbonate in the sense of people create, - like, - an account for themselves. - You know, - you've got about that me paid, - you know, - Is it about that page? - And there's usually a plug somewhere to sign up for. - About that me account. - Um, - it's, - um, - this example of, - um whenever it is that you ever constant your users create if you can somehow attach - yourself. - Here's a NAWF line example which I love Izaak Sports. - They're so good at this, - right? - What? - How does anyone know how zahk sports is good at this T shirts on Saturday and Sunday. - You can't walk around New York City without seeing a sock sports T shirt. - So what? - The exports could easily just not put stock sports on that T shirt, - right? - And if they did, - no one really know about Doc sports. - I doubt it would have taken off as well as it did. - But now you walk around and you see all these people happily walking, - sweating from there like volleyball game and a kickball game where they're playing a game - and they'll have a saw. - Exports, - export socks, - boards, - A great example of like little things like that. - Attaching your brand. - Attaching your message somehow onto um, - the users of your service is a great way to sign up a bunch of the users. - Geek Squad is a great example, - you know, - Wherever they go, - you see the brand everywhere you see on their uniforms are walking around, - which is a great thing. - Tumbler, - that really interesting way and apartment. - What they saw BSU is that they would. - They were trying. - They were constantly looking where they're traffic came from and who was using couple. - Early on, - they found that a big segment of future based, - almost like 50% of a huge number early on from the Philippines and trying to understand, - like wise it. - What is it about tumbler that people in the Philippines love so much? - And they start their like started, - create support people around that do customer development around that they just grew out. - That entire section and team created language filters for specifically for Filipino people - , - and they really smart early on about looking at the exact trapping and where it came from - Terminal Prock decisions. - And that's something that you you know, - it goes back a little bit today, - these air developments. - But we kind of looked at that, - and I did that really well. - And Rick are made to Vince Point. - We saw. - I think something like 30 40% of all of our traffic. - All of our science is just this little. - But in the bottom, - I think 50% that the other side was Facebook and Twitter, - people sharing the profiling. - So it's always a sharing culture that got us a lot of our users. - Five years ago, - there wasn't there wasn't a lot of sharing. - There wasn't really people didn't have Twitter accounts, - didn't have Facebook accounts that they were actively sharing on. - There wasn't sort of like this push to Facebook pushed to Twitter mentality. - That is really big. - Now, - um, - there are two types of startups right now, - they're the started that are pushing aggressively to Facebook and Twitter and then the - start of the dirt and the ones that are having a lot of success, - and the ones that don't are struggling to find other ways to grow users. - It can be done. - We don't get to push anything to Facebook and Twitter. - Um ah, - great example of that is something like four square. - When Foursquare sort of came upon, - um came out, - it was like in 2009. - Um at the time, - Twitter's message was, - What are you doing right now? - And that's why people used to say, - I don't remember Twitter back then, - but people would say like I just showered like I'm brushing my teeth because like, - that's what you're What am I doing right now? - That's what you would sort of say, - right? - And then, - um, - and so foursquare whenever you checked in anywhere they would say push it to Twitter. - And at the time people were pushing the Twitter cause that's what I'm doing. - It's a lot better than brushing my teeth, - which is what I normally come up with, - because it's not what I'm reading. - It's not what's interesting. - It's not like with thought I'm having now. - It's like what's happening right now. - Right now, - it's like they've changed that that query. - So now people don't say anymore like I'm brushing my teeth a lot a lot of gold, - but at the time you totally look at people's Twitter feeds. - And it was just like Fourscore trick and Fourscore check and fourscore chicken foursquare - check. - It was just like everywhere, - and people were honest because, - like, - that's what I'm doing right now. - I'm using the service the way it's intended. - Um, - so foursquare really, - really benefited from that. - And then Fourscore benefited from that on Facebook because when you check in somewhere and - you check in at the Yankees game, - you kind of want to brag to all your friends that your at the Yankees game So you push it - to Facebook, - right? - And like there's a picture of you and your like, - you know, - etcetera. - But guess what you're doing in all of that when all your Facebook friends are looking at - what they see on the bottom, - they see, - like this person is using foursquare like that's a great implicit invitation for them to go - . - Try fit to try foursquare. - If you know Foursquare's really aggressive, - like they have sticky, - sticky buttons, - which means that if you push it once to Facebook the next time you go to check in, - it's default pushed the Facebook. - You have to remember like you can't remember to turn that off or else it gets pushed again - . - Facebook four scores Really good about getting all the badges put. - Push to Twitter. - Right? - So it's like, - Look how much fun this person's having. - They just got, - like, - the player, - please badge, - right. - And like Oh, - my God, - I wish I was having that much fun, - right? - Another example of that and this is huge is instagram. - Um, - Instagram has had tremendous. - There was actually plenty of other services that had great filtering, - great image editing in the APP store. - Instagram is the one that got the sharing part. - Really? - Well, - well done. - So on Instagram, - it's like, - you see your friends start showing up on Facebook with, - like, - this amazing picture you're like, - there's no way that guy knows how to take a picture that good. - So when you see, - like, - what is this instagram and you click on it and then boom, - there's a huge landing page pitches you to sign up for instagram. - Um and really this is, - like, - really big the way you sort of think about it. - Whether your startup has a chance to get into the zone is you want something that I think - of as many too many sharing. - And the way you're gonna get in the zone is if it's something where you use your to you use - your someone uses your service a bunch on a daily basis, - maybe on a weekly basis. - They do a bunch of stuff, - and when they want to share it, - they don't want to share with one person. - They want to share it with everyone, - meaning whatever content that they've created on your service, - whatever action they've taken, - they think is of interest to their entire network. - Right, - So a great example of that is like, - um, - foursquare is something you check in many times, - but you're many times you go to different places and then you want you want to share that - with all your friends so that they know where you are. - Instagram. - You take many pictures and you want to share those pictures with many friends. - There's no real reason something that's bad for Yep, - it is. - Let's say you like a specific offer. - You're not gonna miss really want to share that offer with all of your friends because - maybe they don't live in New York. - It's on applicability to them, - right? - There's all these issues of like, - applicability is the action that you've taken of interest to your many audience, - and it makes a lot of sense to sort of baked this kind of stuff in really early on. - Um, - and to really maybe even adjust how your startup work so that you can you can hang. - You can get attached to this. - All that being said, - there's definitely some super aggressive companies recently, - vividly. - And, - um, - what's name of the other video company social camp. - They were crazy, - aggressive, - like I had an experience where I signed up for and I'm like, - I got to check this out and I'm always check out stuff. - And then I'm like looking through these videos and I'm seeing which very minor watch. - And then I go and I pick the Batman trailer. - This is like, - you know, - a year ago, - whatever nine months ago and I watched the Batman trail and then all of a sudden I get a - little Facebook. - Notification from not from Spencer is from someone else saying, - like I can't wait to see that movie, - too, - and I was like, - What the and I'm like, - What is that? - And then Spencer messages, - meetings like, - dude, - you're using Social Cam like they push all your stuff to Facebook. - And I was like, - Oh, - my God. - And then I was sitting there and I was like, - this could have gone so much worse for me. - Okay, - so But the truth is, - when you get when you get into that zone like, - I literally was terrified of using social, - I just never knew anymore. - If there's gonna be pushed or not pushed, - right, - you have to be careful with that stuff is, - Well, - Cora gotten a little bit of trouble for this where they were getting really aggressive with - some of this stuff. - So, - you know, - there's a fine line there, - like anything. - You'll notice a lot of this stuff, - whether it's inviting friends, - creating a CEO pages, - whether it's, - you know, - implicit invites, - experts invite there's this gray area. - You have to walk. - You have to be very careful not to abuse. - Trust you. - Yes. - This is whatever you have as easy as possible for the people at the office. - Decide for yourselves and all the rage. - Now sign in with Facebook. - Obviously, - I'm sure pros and cons there you want your own registration fees is possible. - But in many instances, - it doesn't get any easier. - And signing Twitter, - Facebook what you got seen in terms of successes and failures, - those types of deliberations that helped drive position I've seen. - I think it seems easy right to sign in with Facebook. - But a lot of you are very uncomfortable sending Facebook the reason why companies push it - as much as they do. - It is usually because someone signs up with Facebook and Twitter. - They end up being even though I think I bet their conversion rate goes down a little bit. - Just giving supply and email. - Those users is becoming much better users because all there, - because then they can quickly find their friends. - And they completely see what their Twitter followers are. - Follow ease they match everything up in the experience is better. - So they basically made a bet that if they push someone to sign up a Facebook and Twitter, - they got a bet they've analyzed. - And they noticed that even though the percentage of sign ups may go down by by aggressively - pushing for that, - it caused. - Those users become better users. - So you know, - it's like maybe you get 10% month users, - but those users are 30% better. - So in the end, - it's actually mathematically smart for them to force people. - Tokyo did a huge and analysis of this long, - long posts about it, - saying that it was actually any benefit to sign of brakes on Facebook and Twitter. - They're just having a sign up form. - But like I mentioned, - you get this additional information about a person. - I'm pretty easily like. - Their gender, - like their hometown, - isn't always information. - Click off boxes, - and then you can see that in your database and run like Cruz on it. - Smart judgment. - So there was a desert you know, - tend to be better if users, - but again like it's I don't necessarily want as he has a user that service. - Like I never signed up for Facebook. - I never signed always for us, - and I think you will find I give you one more example on that, - which is I had a friend who was trying to come up with this way toe a nap that was supposed - to make it easier to post items you want to sell on Craigslist. - So instead of taking a picture and then adding on description was like an act that would - intelligently like take the picture, - it would help you filter make it nicer. - It could maybe find the Amazon Lee for the thing. - And then there was like, - this is just prices, - you know, - just like value added stuff for people who want to put stuff on Craigslist like, - Oh, - I can't really figure out my, - you know, - sort of user acquisition strategy like, - How am I gonna grow this thing? - What would you recommend to them based on what we've talked about those prices using that - it's a right like, - how awesome is that at the bottom of the Craig's post? - It should say Like Like obviously, - this post is also like, - you can look up, - jump up and compare this Don't other crap. - You see, - on Craigslist, - I use this service called Blank, - right. - And it could be this awesome sign of pitch right there. - And then just something like that could have a dramatic impact on the user acquisition for - that start. - Um, - so you have to sort of think, - think that way, - remember It's like people are creating content on your service or they're conducting - actions on your service. - Then they're pushing that constant or pushing that action somewhere else. - You either forced them to put that together for you. - Convince them to push. - You know that that action or content somewhere else or if they're doing it on their own, - you gotta, - like, - attach yourself to that content so that people know that it came from you and that they - were using you so that people see that and then sign up for your service. - Okay, - um, - we're gonna get to the 5th 5th strategy for user acquisition. - And this one is, - um probably a lot of people here know about it on, - and it applies to all the ones before this. - But I think it's super important. - Is getting really good at a B testing landing pages. - Sign up. - Funnels, - etcetera. - Is it for you? - Probably 100%. - It's for everybody. - Um, - you'd be surprised. - I would expect if you guys run a B tests on your land. - So maybe test on the landing pages where you take your landing page and then you try what - your current version is then you Actually you can use something called, - um, - used to be everybody be called. - But now Google Analytics has something called Google content experiments. - So if you go in their content, - sorry, - that was what he used to be called. - Now it's called Google Content Experiments, - and we've been using and it's great. - We're happy with it on what you do is there's other services. - There's Optimized Lee and a couple of other ones. - There's, - like Web site optimizers dot com, - But what they do is, - um, - you basically have all users like you turn on the test and then they basically randomize - which page to show users. - And what you're able to then see is, - well, - I got 100 users and 50 ever went to version A 51 to version be the 50 that introversion A I - got 10 to sign up to 50. - Then with the version B, - I got 20 to sign up. - That happens inversion a happens to be original one. - You just double the number of users. - You sign up every day, - right? - Your conversion rate just doubled, - I would expect for anyone here which was doing a B test, - especially if you've never really created landing pages before and you have your original - sign of page. - I would expect you to get anywhere from like two times, - maybe even a 56 time bump in the amount of users You sign up every day, - and that could be big. - That's a different scene. - Signing up 100 years of the day or signing up 200 or 600 years of the day puts a whole - different ballgame. - Um, - it's not just that. - Do it running a B test on your SDO pages, - I think a year ago, - RCO pages were converting it like 2%. - 4% 5%. - Now they converted like 15 20%. - That's huge. - Really, - really big deal. - Um, - there's a lot of different sort of stuff to read about and different techniques. - Usually the simpler, - simpler, - the better A B test. - I usually recommend doing pretty dramatic things on the page. - Tried different thematic concepts, - something I found unfortunate doesn't seem to help. - Very much is aesthetic improvement. - Taking the exact same page structure. - Wives feel wise, - but just really polishing it up in cleaning it up. - I found crazily, - not toe have a huge impact on conversion rates. - Try lots of things that they have something that maybe testing is like, - You have to sit there, - you know? - Yeah, - we actually tried. - Um, - we read this 37 signals thing, - and they use these pictures of people, - and that was a really big improvement for them. - Is that these days on the hip it Langfitt, - for a little bit. - We had these, - like, - huge people on our on our landing page, - and they were, - like, - pointing at the sign of box, - and it didn't worse. - Terrible. - And my theory is that we have, - like, - a son looking thing on the top. - Left enough sometimes start, - we don't have any more, - but start if you have, - like, - a little logo and they have, - like these, - like, - it looks like a son sort of behind the son. - I don't know why, - um and we didn't really remove that for the test, - so it kind of looked like they were. - These were giants like they're like scary giant people who were using our service on dso it - . - Then it didn't perform as well. - Um, - an interesting thing that we did is we used to just We try an experiment where instead of - asking for city and email, - we just ask people for their email 10% reduction in conversion rate. - Think people were getting get excited that this is like a city specific thing, - and they're more excited about that because it matters more to them. - So sometimes, - actually adding something like that, - it seemed like it would complicate the sign of flow by asking one more question during the - sign up, - but actually caused it to get better. - Um, - I think, - but improving you know these. - And then if you think about like the implicit invites, - like it's not just enough, - like you convince a user to push to to Facebook or Twitter. - But then it's like what gets pushed. - What does it say exactly? - Like when someone looks at on Facebook? - You know, - what's the picture that is used? - What's the language that is used? - How can you How can you change that? - Um, - so that you improve that part. - So it's it's all about like measuring every step of the funnel of how someone ends up - signing up for your site, - right? - So if it from from.