21 areas in which you can employ growth hacking tactics to grow your user / customer base. http://yongfook.com/actionable-growth-hacking-tactics.html

1. 21 Ways to get
More Users
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics
Virtual Assistant@yongfook
http://beatrixapp.com

2. Growth Hacking
ooh social proof!

3. Disclaimer!
Based on first hand experience growing a !
user-base of 500,000 (1.5 years) at previous company!
and doing customer acquisition consulting!
!
Focus is on users with an explicit ARPU!!
e.g. SaaS, E-commerce, Gaming...!
Consumer internet may not be applicable!
!
YMMV, don’t tase me bro etc.
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

4. www.growthhackinghandbook.com
Now Buy The Book!!
A handy guide of 100 online
marketing tactics for your startup, !
from quick wins to complex hacks.
Buy the Book Now

5. Jon Yongfook!
Director of Online, Glamour Sales!
#2 Luxury Flash-Sales Site in Japan!
US$XX million per year sales!
Joined at 0, left at ~500,000 members!
Lived in Japan for 10 years before moving to Singapore!
!
Founded recipe portal opensourcefood.com - acquired 2009!
!
Founder of http://beatrixapp.com (current)!
!
Selected blog posts:!
http://yongfook.com/negotiation.html!
http://yongfook.com/enterprise.html!
http://yongfook.com/your-craft.html
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook
Fuck starbucks.!
Bootstrappers drink their
coffee from plastic bags

6. This is a not a Growth Curve
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

7. This is a Growth Curve
Periods of strategic,
sustainable growth
Rapid, unsustainable*
tactical growth
*perhaps a temporary paid partnership, exploiting some growth
vector that shuts itself off after a while, or a landing page
optimization that inexplicably and suddenly stops working magic
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

8. The 3 Commandments
Of Growth Hacking
Knoweth What Thy Customer Wants
!
Knoweth Where Thy Customer Resideth
!
Knoweth The Language Of Thy Customer
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

9. Think About & TEST:!
What’s the language potential customers use to articulate their problem?
How can I save time?!
How can I produce better results?!
How can I look great in front of my peers?!
How can I never have to do this myself again?!
How can I earn more money?
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

10. ...and always asketh...
How Can We
Automate This?
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

11. Organic Search
• AUTOMATE: For every model in your
database, think about how it can be
turned into automatic public-facing
content. !
• Remember to put an obvious CTA!!
• AUTOMATE: Make sure sitemap.xml is
being generated programmatically and is
submitted properly to google / bing etc.
Automatic / Template
Editorial
Ex
There’s a page like this for every country on DirectRooms
1
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

12. Organic Search
• AUTOMATE: Use RICH SNIPPETS.
Seriously. Not everyone is yet, you have
the advantage right now.
1
(which one would YOU click)
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

13. • Create shareable content!
• Top 10 Lists!
• Useful stuff!
• PICTURES! (e.g. Boston.com)!
• Think about content that is useful to your
customers.!
• Don’t talk about yourself too much.!
• AUTOMATE: you can’t automate content
creation but can you automate idea
generation? Use google trends / social
searching to hack yourself a weekly list
of topics to cover.
Mr Porter
Excellent, authoritative and shareable blog content.!
Their business is e-commerce.
Ex
2 Blog Blog Blog
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

14. 3 Guest Post Elsewhere
• Tech blogs are always looking out for
good new content. Don’t be afraid to
reach out if there’s market overlap.!
• Be proactive - write first, then offer it to a
blog. If they decline, offer another blog.
And so on - worst case? Put it on your
own blog.!
• SEO value + direct leads!
• AUTOMATE: same as blogging, cannot
automate this but can automate idea
generation.
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

15. 4 Share Your Content
• Get your content out there - don’t expect
people to come to it!!
• Find relevant Subreddits and self
promote!!
• Put something awesome on SlideShare!
• Same goes for Quora, forums, comment
feeds of related blog posts on other
blogs - flirt with that line between being
spammy and being useful.!
• Master the art of Hacker News!!
• AUTOMATE: get everyone on the team
to sign up for buffer and buffer the hell
out your content each time you post.
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

16. 5 Landing Page Tests
• AUTOMATE: use tools for this.
obviously. Google Content Experiments
(lame) or Visual Website Optimizer
(quite awesome).!
• Don’t fuck around testing your design
too much. Test your language / value
proposition and CTA.!
• Preserve Scent!
• Get Their Email Address (it’s really all
you actually need)!
• Don’t let them LEAVE your signup page
without signing up.!
• Be ready to test AGAIN in another few
months - optimizations don’t last forever.
Groupon
Ex
Different graphic assets depending on entry keyword!
to preserve scent: this search was for “spa coupon”
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

17. 6 Built-in Sharing
Allow your users to share / like / recommend / EMBED your content!
AUTOMATE: BUILD SHARING INTO the user journey

18. 7 Distribution Automation
• AUTOMATE: Retrofit other large
markets to work with your site in a way
beneficial to users.!
• AirBNB / Craigslist!
• Craigslist actively prohibits this sort of
thing now but I bet there’s some
regional incumbent that will be slow
in closing any loophole you exploit!!
• Big companies can’t get away with
this. Do this before you get big.
Air BNB
Famously created a “Post to Craigslist” feature
despite there not being an official API, in order to
gain initial traction
Ex
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

19. 8 Social Campaigns
• “Retweet this to Win!”!
• Is this really social? not reeeally.!
• AUTOMATE:!
• Leverage vanity / curiosity!
• Give User A some dynamic content
specific to them (e.g. a horoscope)
and encourage User A to tweet it. !
• User B learns about your company
via learning something funny about
User A (their friend).
Klout
Ex
Some (most?) of Klout’s growth is driven through!
leveraging user vanity and curiosity:!
1) Vanity of users sharing their high score!
2) Curiosity of user’s friends to find out their own score
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

20. 9 Seed Supply
• “Fake it till you make it”!
• If you’re a marketplace or UGC site,
seed it with as much content as
possible. Nobody will stay loyal to an
empty site.!
• What content can you use? Creative-commons
licensed. Fair-use from
other sites (think: excerpt + link back
a la Pinterest). Reddit famously
created fake profiles in the early
days.!
• Don’t be shy! Seed Supply.!
• But uh, don’t keep doing it - real
customers pay much better than fake
customers.
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/reddit-founders-made-
hundreds-of-fake-profiles-so-site-looked-popular/
So the founders made a small addition to the
submission page, visible only to themselves: in
addition to the "URL" and "title," there was a "user"
field. Ohanian and Huffman could make up a login
in the "user" field, and if it wasn't already registered
by an actual person, the link would be submitted
under the ghost profile. "That did two things," said
Huffman. "It set the tone… and it made the site feel
alive."
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

21. 10 Forced Virality...
!
In 2010 I made a game that at a certain point you !
had to invite another person in order to progress!
...it worked incredibly well and it didn’t piss!
as many people off as I thought it would.!
At that middle point in the game, most users were!
happy to spread the word. 10,000+ users in 2 days.

22. 11 CRM Automation
• ENGAGEMENT / LOYALTY!!
• AUTOMATE: add a drip-campaign or
autoresponder to each user after signup.
Encourage them to make that first
interaction / upload / etc.!
• AUTOMATE: add other email triggers to
encourage other behaviors:!
• abandoned cart - remind them!!
• dormant - poke them!!
• successfully used your product - get
their feedback!
Jeff didn’t reeeeeeeeally send this mail himself
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

23. 12 Influencers
Recruited over 30 trend-setting (non-celebrity) bloggers!
and incentivised blog coverage via VIP events and coupons!
AUTOMATE: Sweeten the relationship with widgets for their blogs
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

24. • A reliable portion of our monthly
growth came from paid search!
• It took me months to learn how to stop
bleeding money in adsense. There’s a
learning curve.!
• AUTOMATE: use the Keyword Tool and
use the Ad Group Ideas feature - it’s
bloody useful and saves lots of time.
Quickly test various keyword groups to
see which convert the best = learning
the language of your customers.
“Singapore Hotels”
A search for “Singapore Hotels” on Google shows!
many companies with deep pockets: Agoda,
booking.com, expedia.com - startups trying to
compete head to head with these companies in Paid
Search will simply run out of cash
Ex
13 Paid Search
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

25. 14 Remarketing!
• Advertise to people who’ve visited your
site already.!
• CTR can be better, and it makes you
look like a massive company.!
• AUTOMATE: stick the remarketing tag
across your whole site from the very
beginning! Build the audience so that
you can advertise to them later.
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

26. • “Refer a friend and get a $25 coupon!”!
• Japanese users seemed less
motivated to refer for cash!
• Test the incentive, for example “Refer
5 friends and get free shipping for 3
months!”!
• Some incentives work better at
different stages of the customer
journey e.g. a newly-activated user / a
long-term user!
• AUTOMATE: Remember to test the
crap out of the HTML email design /
message itself. Optimize and improve
your conversion rates.
Gilt
All group-buying and private e-commerce sites!
have an MGM mechanic. It’s a scalable way of !
acquiring pre-qualified users - costs will rise!
linearly with new users acquired
Ex
15 Member Get Member
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

27. 16 Get on Hacker News!
• It’s not a must-have but it’s certainly a
nice-to-have. HN / Reddit drive a lot of
traffic.!
• Write great content for geeks!
• or create something open source!
• or ask for genuine feedback:!
• Show HN: what do you think of our
startup?
http://pitchpigeon.com/blog/10-lessons-learned-from-a-successful-hacker-news-launch.html
Signups for a paid software product!
launched on Hacker News
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

28. • An incentivised partner sending you
targeted prospects is supremely
valuable!
• High quality users!
• Try to negotiate a revenue-share, but be
prepared for other costs like a revenue
guarantee or an up-front payment.!
• In addition to rev-share offer them
something they can’t already get easily
e.g. build something for them for free,
give them data.!
• AUTOMATE: We put a whole store
on their site that earned a rev-share,
that they never had to manage and
that seamlessly-integrated with the
rest of their site.
Ex
We partnered with a popular fashion destination and
got banner space, a dedicated page (we put an
inline-frame store on it), EDMs and more.
17 Partner Up
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

29. 18 Endorsement
• Bit of a gamble but can be highly
effective at getting users!
• Depends on the size of the blog
ecosystem but in Japan: 10,000++
new users from a single post!
• User quality varies!
• Can result in re-blogs, conversations!
• Real Example: Celebrity A (paid)
wrote about us, then Celebrity B
(unpaid) checked us out and wrote
about us organically and
enthusiastically as we were selling a
brand that she loves. We ended up
getting more users via Celebrity B
than Celebrity A.!
• Best to do it in a regulated environment
where there are guidelines.
Ex
Famous bloggers such as Xiaxue are no stranger to
advertorials. Pick your audience wisely however.
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

30. 19 Be Fast
• FACT: Loading time affects your
conversion rate A LOT
http://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/!
• Don’t forget to optimize one of the most
basic parameters out there - site speed!
• AUTOMATE: your deployment process
should be combining all your assets into
as few files as possible, minifying them,
and serving them from a CDN (with gzip)
your framework should be doing this for
you already.!
• There are more quick wins to be had
concentrating on static asset serving
speed than db/code optimization
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

31. 20 Tell The Press
• The press want / need to know what
you’re up to!!
• There’s (about) 10 different occasions
where you might want to talk to a
journalist about your startup:
http://pitchpigeon.com/blog/the-10-types-of-
startup-press-release.html!
• AUTOMATE: news wire services have
some SEO benefit, but you are better off
sending emails to journalists /
publishers. Oh there’s an app for that!
http://pitchpigeon.com
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

32. 21 Find the AHA! Moment
• Figure out what the AHA! Moment is for
your service / app!
• Twitter: found that when users follow
30+ people, they suddenly “get it” and
engagement increases!
• Optimize around getting users to reach
that goal - make decisions for them, or
make it as seamless as possible, or
keep bugging them to do stuff! !
• AUTOMATE: Your app *needs* an
onboarding process (tutorial / wizard
etc) but don’t just blindly build one - the
onboarding process should have one
goal: get users to reach or as near as
possible to the AHA! Moment as fast and
with doing as little as possible. Data is
your friend!
Twitter now tries very hard during onboarding to get
people to follow others - using an algorithm to
increase relevance
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

33. Horizontal Growth
Shiny !
Report!
Tool
Shiny !
Report!
Tool!
in Japanese
Shiny !
Report!
Tool!
in Chinese
Shiny !
Report!
Tool!
for Moms
Shiny !
Report!
Tool!
for Dogs
You get to do it all over again for different markets
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

34. Vertical Growth
Shiny !
Invoicing!
Tool
Shiny !
Email!
Tool
Shiny !
Scheduling!
Tool
Shiny !
Report!
Tool
Or across different verticals!
“Spaceballs the Flamethrower!”
Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics by @yongfook

35. www.growthhackinghandbook.com
Now Buy The Book!!
A handy guide of 100 online
marketing tactics for your startup, !
from quick wins to complex hacks.
Buy the Book Now