Debunking the myths of user acquisition. Leveraging low-cost methods and case studies of familiar brands. Written and delivered in 2016 in Gaza Sky Geeks and Leaders.ps startup incubators.

1. User
Acquisition

2. HELLO!
Bonny Lai
Startups Advisor . Co-Founder .
Head of Product At Roost
500 Startups Alumni
@ansonwolfe
Bonny.lai@gmail.com

3. Agenda
1. What is it?
2. Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing
3. User Behaviour
4. KPIs
5. Analytics Tools
6. Basic SEO

4. User Acquisition – what is it?1

5. A set of methodologies and
systems to manage customer
prospects and inquiries generated
by marketing techniques.

6. : Users from from various channels
: Users enjoy 1st experience
: Users come back
: Users like product enough to refer
: User does some monetizing behaviour
Customer Lifecycle

7. Marketing
Growth
Hacking
Customer
Acquisition
Distribution

8. It costs money.Myth :

9. “If you have more money than brains, you
should focus on outbound marketing.
If you have more brains than money, you
should focus on inbound marketing.”
- Guy Kawasaki

10. Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing2

12. • “Interruption Marketing”
• Higher average cost to acquire new customer
• Press Releases
• Billboards & Outdoor Advertising
• Trade show booths
• Paid advertising (billboard, TV, Radio, News)
• Paid app reviews
• Social Media Advertising
Outbound Marketing
Try to avoid unless you are
well established& well funded

13. • Get attention organically
• Uses creativity, talent & effort
• SEO & PPC
• Opt-In Email Lists
• Supporting / Sponsoring events
• Community building / blogging
• Word of Mouth & Viral Marketing
• Content Creation
Inbound Marketing
Always ask:
Who is your audience?
Go target that audience.

14. User Behaviours3

15. • Awareness – User first learns about you
• Interest – something piques user’s
interest to continue engaging with you.
• Desire / Decision – Tipping point that
pushes user to commit.
• Action – the desired outcome you want.
The Customer Funnel / Sales Funnel
Each stage has leaky holes. Your job is to
find out where these holes are and fix
them.

16. • Personal finance platform, acquired by Intuit for $340Million
• Grew 1 million users from 2007 to 2009
• Adding thousands of new users every day
• Made access to platform limited.
• Incentives: Bloggers given access, asked to display badge (creating
desire for others to want)
• Had an active Questions & Answers platform for personal finance
• SEO the Q&A massively
• Active blog with actionable tips for readers (blog alone was 20% of
new users)
• Attractive and educational infographics to share on social media

17. • 12 million new users in one year
• By adding in one single line to every email sent by
users with a link back to hotmail’s home page.
• “PS: I love you. Get your free email at Hotmail.”

18. • Gamify it – 5 people found this article useful
• Infographics with educational and shareable content
• Blogs & Guest blogging – Google favours articles of 2,000 words or more.
• Short video clips – quick ‘How to’ tips
• Free ebook – 37 Signals published a book on business design and
programming
• Referral bonuses – Dropbox refer a friend, get more free storage
Other things that drive growth

19. Pick ONE feature to ask them to write about.
(Make sure it’s something that people care about,
specifically their readers).
If approaching bloggers
or publications

20. Bad ask:
Here’s a list of ten features you don’t really
care about. Will you write about it?
Good ask:
We have a new feature that helps you do
something really cool and no one else has it. Will
you write about it?

21. 1. Find their contact (it’s usually their first name @ company). Or
call company and ask.
2. Write the article for them.
(Make it super easy for them to write about you. They can edit
it if they want.)
3. Let them know what you do.
4. Keep it short and to the point!
Approaching bloggers or writers

22. Psychology of Language

23. “Remember that a person’s name is to that
person the sweetest and most important
sound in any language.”
~ Dale Carnegie
YOU.

24. We are all governed to aim for the lowest hanging fruit.
~ Ariely’s principle of Loss Aversion.
FREE .

25. Because.
Creating a causal relationship is incredibly persuasive:
"even giving weak reasons have been shown to be more
persuasive than giving no reason at all."

26. Instantly.
"Words like "instant," "immediately," or even "fast" are
triggers for flipping the switch on mid-brain activity."

27. People are rational.Myth :

28. Putting a badge
of anything will
make you look
more authentic.
Chris Nodder
Evil by Design

29. Establish your expertise early, and soon.
Answer questions pre-emptively.
Follow with social validation.
Make a small Ask.
If you do have to run ads, constantly test and change
to find out what is most effective. Change up your
images, ad copy, message, etc.
A/B test them. Always.

30. KPIs4

31. • Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
a business metric used to evaluate factors
that are crucial to the success of the
organisation.

32. • Cost per Acquisition (CPA)
A measure of the costs associated with
acquiring a new customer, lead, or action.
A low cost per acquisition is an indication
of cost-efficient Internet marketing
practices.

33. Other variations
• CPS – cost per sale
• CPL – cost per lead
• CPI – cost per install
• CPC – cost per click
• CPM – cost per Mille
Always keep track of your costs
per conversion.

34. • Life Time Value (LTV)
a prediction of the net profit attributed to
the entire future relationship with a
customer.

35. Example LTV value for Airbnb customers:
Average customer travels 3-4x a year, average 5 nights.
Most commonly used lodgings are mid-range priced (i.e.
$80/night).
On average, customers spend $400 in lodgings.
Assuming customers use Airbnb in this way for 10 years.
LTV = $400*4 = 1600/yr * 10 years = $16,0000
,

36. • Daily Active Users (DAU)
• Monthly Active Users (MAU)
How many users are on your app daily?
How many users are on your app monthly?

37. • What is the defining KPI for
your startup?
Every startup has a slightly different metric
that is meaningful to the startup’s health.
You can have more than one KPI. Make it
meaningful.

38. Sample Company KPI (unique to company)
Airbnb Number of nights booked
Starbucks Coffee Number of cups of coffee sold
Amazon.com Revenue for the year

40. Analytics Tools5

41. Google Analytics
1. See your most important analytics data first.
2. Find out which online campaigns bring
the most traffic and conversions.
3. Determine where your best visitors are located.
4. Learn what people are searching for on your
site.5. Visualize what people click on the most.
6. Uncover your top content.
9. Discover if you need a mobile site.
8. Determine where people abandon the shopping
cart
7. Identify your worst performing pages.

42. Alternatives: Localytics, Kissmetrics, Mixpanel *
*While these cover more points, they are also more
technical resource-intensive to implement.
Use Google Analytics in conjunction with
another metrics tool if you can.

43. What’s most engaging
on your page?
A/B Testing & Heat Map Visualizer
Optimzely, Crazyegg, Wvo,
Zarget, Sumome, Convert,
Adobe Test & Target

44. Choose a tool that lets you quickly set up
different test scenarios, and test results
without needing a whole development
team.

45. SEO basics6

46. Keywords.
Think of your keywords as search terms. Scatter
them across your site but do not overuse – they will
get marked as spam.
The title tag and page header are the two
most important spots to put keywords

47. Mobile - Optimised
Web pages that do are not optimised for mobile
device screens are ranked lower than mobile-
optimised sites.

48. Sitemap
Adding a site map -- a page listing and linking to
all the other major pages on your site -- makes it
easier for spiders to search your site.
"The fewer clicks necessary to get to a page on
your website, the better."

49. Canonical URLs
www.puppyfun.co.uk/puppyhealth/vitamins
www.puppyfun.co.uk/11789/s201.htm
vs.

50. Alt Tags
Search spiders read text, not images or Flash.
Every image you have on your site is an opportunity to type in
a descriptive ALT tag description the spiders will read.
<img src = “filename.jpeg” alt=“startup founders in Palestine”>

51. Fresh Content
A company blog serves as both content marketing for you as
well as tells the search engine spiders of fresh updates.
"The best sites for users, and consequently
for search engines, are full of oft-updated,
useful information about a given service,
product, topic or discipline."

52. Social Media Distribution
Whenever there’s fresh content on the blog, be sure to
announce over social media channels as well.
POST TO YOUR OWN BLOG FIRST.

53. Link to others
Return favours when you can. Ask other webmasters if they
will link to your site, write a guest post for you or let you write
one on their site.

54. There are a lot more to SEO than mentioned above.
Read the Moz SEO for Beginners report. GREAT read!

55. Resources:
1. http://blog.hubspot.com/
2. http://www.quicksprout.com/
3. http://www.daniellemorrill.com/
4. https://blog.kissmetrics.com/resourc
es-for-customer-acquisition/
5. https://blog.kissmetrics.com/guide-
to-customer-acquisition/
6. https://moz.com/blog
7. https://moz.com/learn/seo
8. https://growthhackers.com/

56. THANK YOU!
Bonny.lai@gmail.com
@ansonwolfe