Here is how I would growth hack one of my favorite places on earth and it is not an online business but a barbershop.

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2. We interviewed 180+ growth hackers
including Sean Ellis, Brian Balfour, Josh Elman
and Gagan Biyani.
VIDEO EDITOR AT GROWTH HACKER TV
Helping and advising 200+ startups about
growth and hustling. Trained 150+ growth
hackers at our growth school. Watch our video
on YouTube at StartupFood.
GROWTH HACKER AT THEFAMILY
I write an essay every month to help
companies grow faster. I talk especially about
growth hacking, business intelligence,
behavioral and cognitive psychology.
BLOGGER AT HACKISITION
JULIEN LE COUPANEC
« Growth hacking is fundamentally like playing with
Legos. It is about having an up-to-date vision of
all the cubes to imagine growth experiments. »

3. THE PROCESS WE WILL FOLLOW
While a growth hacker is still a marketer on many aspects, the main difference is that he has to think about growth in a
holistic fashion. Focusing merely on acquisition and activation is just one part of the job. We also have to be creative
regarding retention, referral and other details that can push revenue to the top. We’ll take care about the quality of our
service and make use of many growth hacks to lead our customers to experience the core value of what we do.

4. #1. SPOT AND TRIGGER
OPPORTUNITIES
Let’s say that we are located in a renowned Parisian
street but no one knows us yet. We just opened and so,
are very early-stage. Our first focus is to identify all
the things that might create awareness about our
incredible shop so that people pass the doorstep.
HIGHLY TARGETED FACEBOOK ADS
RUN HIGHLY TARGETED ADS ON FACEBOOK FOR PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THE LOCATION.
USE EMOTIONAL ANCHORS
BUY A GIANT CHEWBACCA, MAKE HIM A GOATEE AND PUT HIM IN FRONT OF THE STORE.
SOCIAL CIRCLE AWARENESS
MAKE SURE EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT I DO, THE ADDRESS OF THE PLACE AND ITS NAME.
80 %
60 %
75 %
SUCK PAYING CUSTOMERS OF DATING WEBSITES
BY EXPORTING THEIR EMAIL ADDRESS WITH YAHOO. CUSTOM AUDIENCE OR COLD EMAIL.
70 %
ADWORDS CAMPAIGNS GOOGLE MAP
TRACK THESE CUSTOMERS BY ASKING THEM HOW THEY FOUND US.
90 %

5. #2. DESIGN THE MOST OUTSTANDING FIRST EXPERIENCE.
If we want to retain them, making a compromise on the first experience is not an option. I even remember an
entrepreneur arguing to me once: « you better focus 80% of your efforts on the first user experience as
everyone must go through it ». Good news, that’s exactly what we are going to do. Here are the main variables
we will have to continually optimize to reduce the “friction”. Ultra customer care leads to retention and referral.
But be careful, since a company’s culture and the customer service it delivers are closely tied together, great
customer service and the resulting happy customers are only possible if you treat your employees well.

6. ULTRA CUSTOMER CARE
LEADS TO RETENTION
AND REFERRAL.
If there is one thing I have learned, most people are
impatient and don’t like to wait. If we want our
customers to be happy from the first to the last second,
we will have to deal with this embarrassing situation
and avoid as much as possible to be late.
DUET MULTITOUCH COFFEE TABLES
DEAL WITH CUSTOMER WAITING TIME AND IMPROVE WORD OF MOUTH.
INCREASE PROXIMITY WITH STORIES
FIND HIS AREAS OF INTEREST AND FOCUS THE CONVERSATION AROUND THEM.
PINTEREST, DRIBBBLE AND GRAPHICRIVER
THINK ABOUT THE STOREFRONT OF ANY SHOP AS A LANDING PAGE.
80 %
90 %
85 %
KNOW CUSTOMER’S NAME
THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST UNDERESTIMATED THINGS AMONG BARBERS.
80 %
10% DISCOUNT ON THE FIRST VISIT + PRODUCT SAMPLES
THAT’S A CLASSIC AND I HAVE SEEN PLENTY OF PEOPLE USE THAT TRICK.
70 %

7. #3. CREATING A HABIT
AND ACCELERATING
REFERRALS.
Deliver great customer service and let your loyal
customers do your marketing for you. At the end of
the day, stuff sells because people like it and
recommend it to other people. Nonetheless, let’s
accelerate this natural behavior.

8. MOST LOYALTY CARDS
ARE STUPID AND HERE
IS WHY:
• First, many are made with paper which can make
you lose or forget about them. That’s why I
would automatically create a virtual loyalty
card and make it easy to access through their
name with a special url like « mybusiness.com/
julien ».
• From a customer perspective, they also tend to
promise you no reward until you reach your 10th
purchase. That’s like promising a 5 years old
he will have a Ferrari when he will hit 31. I
prefer to believe in fragmented rewards: on the
second visit I would offer a discount or an
incentive attractive enough so that they
remember to come, on the fifth visit another
one and then, on the 10th visit, a free cut.

9. FOCUSING AND
GROWING FROM
INSTAGRAM.
Trying to be the best on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin,
Instagram and Pinterest is the best strategy to be
mediocre on each one. In our case, we will only try to
grow on Instagram as there is a great engagement
regarding fashion pictures. We will take pictures of
our most good looking beards to bring legitimacy, to
show that our work is an art, to come back in our
followers’ minds but especially to increase the
connection with the models while growing from
their own social circle as we will tag them.
SMIIRL INSTAGRAM
« The best way to get someone to share your
product is not to beg him but to make him become
a creator. Because it becomes a part of him. »

10. NOTICE A RECURRING
PATTERN AND GROW
FROM TWILIO.
Interacting with our customers by SMS may also be a
promising experiment to increase retention. I’m sure
there is probably some efficient tactics to imagine
using Twilio. Personally, I go every 7 days, but it
should be easy to notice a recurring pattern for
each customer. If we see that someone is passing
the doorstep every 15 days, it could be smart to
send him a text message and come back in his
mind with an incentive if he haven’t visited us let’s
say, for 20 days.

11. TO INCREASE
REFERRALS WE WILL
ASK FOR IT.
• If we have a good feeling with a customer, we will
ask him to talk about our shop to his friends
just after he leaves.
• Ask your satisfied customers to leave you a
review at Yelp (or whatever platform is the most
relevant for you), and give them a coupon with e.g.
20% discount for their next visit in return.
• He can be given a 10% discount voucher if he
tweets about the experience or reviews the shop
on Facebook.
REVIEWS ARE PRECIOUS
« This also means to engage with negative reviews
by displaying the human side of your company:
when you spot a negative review online, fix it. »

12. #4. EXPERIMENTING
WITH PRICING AND
INCREASING REVENUE.
keep in mind the adage: « a confused mind does
not buy ». Pricing for a barbershop should be easy and
smart. We will use a simple system and round the
prices to avoid to deal with changes. If we have a great
retention, we will also increase our prices a few bucks.
With this model, if it happens that our retention is very
high, we will open another barbershop and run
another Facebook ad on a small sample of
prospects offering this time the first beard for free.
That would be a way to accelerate growth as it
becomes difficult to find a more attractive incentive.

13. THANK YOU.
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