Soothe: Largest on-demand massage service and app now in 50 cities.
Results:
12 months of Month over Month double-digit revenue growth.
23-31% MoM revenue growth each month in Q4 2015
Created Adwords and Facebook acquisition programs, scaled them 20X (2000%) between August 2015 and September 2016.
Increased download to activation rate from 6% to 20% for Soothe App.
Grew from 1 to 46 cities.
Placement in 100+ National and Local Publications and TV Shows, including Ellen, USA Today, Bloomberg, Techcrunch, etc.
Funding:
- Angel funding
- $10.6 MM Series A (after 2 years of work together,)
- $ 35 MM Series B (after 2.6 years or work together.)
What is Growth Marketing?
A process ….of research, prioritization, and rapid experimentation…..across marketing channels, product development, and messaging to identify the most effective and efficient ways to grow a business.
Making a Company Grow
Get straight on these first. In this order:
Principles
Process
Team
Tactics
ROAARRR: A Simple Growth Framework
Research
Optimization
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Revenue
Referral
Some Principles of Great Growth Teams:
Optimize for Impact.
Growth Is Art And Science.
Rapid Beats Perfect.
Growth Is Never Done.
Research: Where is the opportunity?
Analytics instrumentation and Baseline
Funnels
Devices
New vs Returning User behavior
By Geography
Time of Day
Form Analytics
Speed baseline
Research: WHO are we targeting?
Google Display
FB Audience Insights
Research: WHY are they dropping off?
Moderated User Testing
Better than usertesting.com
Customer Development
Just do it FFS…
Polls
Hotjar, Qualaroo
Optimization
Create Experiment Matrix (ranked by what would make you the most money with the least effort).
Write Your Hypotheses and Run Your Experiments.
Experiment with Channel, Messaging, Pricing, Page Design, Copy, App Flow, Funnel Length, CTAs, Video, Imagery, Email Frequency, etc.
Acquisition
A) Digital
Adwords - they already want what you are selling.
Facebook - Lookalikes. Find your best customers. Tell Facebook to find more like them.
Re-Engagement Ads - Market to existing customers again.
Remarketing - GDN, Facebook. Market to those that did NOT convert.
GA Remarking Lists - can do “drip” with creative.
Acquisition – say NO to most things
We said NO to:
Social media marketing
Blogging
Content Marketing
Outdoor
Radio
Cable
Print
Airlines Magazine
Our board.
And our CEO.
Our friends selling us $^%t.
Earned Media
National PR
Financial PR
Local PR - launches
have a playbook.
Coordinate tightly with supply if you are a marketplace.
Activation
Raised download to register rate from 6% to 20% with 1 before-after test/improvement.
Moderated user testing in airports while traveling.
Insight: TOO MUCH NAKEY TIME in the app at first glance for many female customers.
Retention
Manually, via Mailchimp for 6 months.
Mainly email, some SMS, etc.
Then shifted to Autopilot and more automation, triggers.
Segmentation.
Testing: Time of Day, Day of Week, Promotion Amount, Subject, Copy, Imagery.
Revenue, Referral
REVENUE
Price testing, esp. in certain cities - e.g New York.
REFERRAL
Incented, unincented.
Test them all: after registration. after purchase. after happy service completion.
The Growth Process:
1.Collect Quantitative Data to Find Our WHERE
A) Build funnels for Desktop, Mobile, Native, New, Returning, by Country, etc.
B) See where the friction is in the funnels.
2. Collect Qualitative Data to Find out “WHY?” and “WHY NOT?”
A) Do moderate User Testing, not just UserTesting.com.
B) Use polls (Hotjar, Qualaroo).
3. Create Experiment Matrix (ranked by what would make you the most money with the least effort).
4. Write Your Hypotheses and Run Your Experiments.
5. Experiment with Channel, Messaging, Pricing, Page Design, Copy, App Flow, Funnel Length, CTAs, Video, Imagery, Email Frequency, etc. etc.
Qualities You Want in Growth Team Members:
Scrappy - figure out quick and dirty ways to test hypotheses.
T-shaped or “Pi-Shaped” – has 1-2 areas they are deep in, and broad exposure to all facets of growth/product/digital marketing.
Data Driven.
Learns new stuff fast.
Aggressive/competitive when it comes to hitting numbers.
About the Author
The name’s Houston Golden. I’m the Founder & CEO of BAMF ― a company I’ve grown from $0 (yes, really) to well over $4M in revenue over a span of 3 years. How did I do it? Well, it’s quite simple, really. I’ve helped hundreds of business owners and executives get major traction (because when they win, we win). I tell you how on this blog. Growth hacking is a state of mind. Follow along as I explore and expose the unknown growth strategies and tactics that will change the way you think about marketing.
The framework we used to grow Soothe 600+% 