Sankara Narayanan
Now, that we all have an idea of how to start a startup, our next move would be turning our Startup into an Unicorn and it’s no easy job; growth is one key aspect that we’re supposed to look into. We have Alex Schultz one of the premiers in Growth Strategy, who has played a key role in Facebook’s popularity as the Vice President of Growth. Before the start of the session (the video here), read the title again.
What do you think matters most for Growth?
As you’re brainstorming what matters most, try to brainstorm more on the importance of customer retention and what happens if the customer retention rate falls in line with the asymptote and how do we solve this problem? It’s time to get back to the basics, how many of you still remember the fundamentals of startup? If you don’t a quick recap would be the four key points Idea, Product, Team, Execution and if you need to execute well (growth) then you need to ensure your product is great.
Different verticals need to have different terminal retention rates, for them to have successful businesses.
How do you determine retention rate? If you’re into marketing and sales (not just digital marketing) you must’ve come across the term market ratio and the emperical formula to calculate that, now apply the same and do some basic math on the differences you obtain then you’ll be able to figure out your retention rate.
You’ve got a good retention rate, now when do you decide it is time to scale and who takes care of the growth operations? For startups, it is essential that every individual operating considers themselves as the growth team including the CEO. Just like the retention rates, the targets or in his own words The North Star can be different for different companies, but the team has to operate in the direction for north star.
Think about what is the “Magical Moment” for your product and get people connected to it as fast as possible.
Every site you’ve registered so far was able to retain its customers because it created that magical moment for you, technically it was able to deliver the “unstated customer needs”. If you can deliver that magical moment for your customers, then they’ll stick to your site for a longer duration and eventually you’ll have a higher retention rate. It is not just the new users, but also optimising the growth for churning and resurrecting users. Lot of metrices are going to be correlated, and you need to pick the best one that aligns with your mission and vision as your guiding north star.
Marketing plays a key role in driving more users to your product.
All throughout the lecture you would’ve observed problems being referenced to solutions from companies that faced similar scenarios, but facebook needing a marketing team for growth? That might sound incredible, but their marketing tactics are proven lessons for many other startups.
Check out the video to know more on the growth and marketing tactics
There was one connection that was left out while plunging deep into the basics, how do you build a product that users love? Keep building until next week !
Image Credits: dominonline.it