We found 6 startups that are growing way faster than everyone else.

We figured out their unconventional growth tactics.

This thread walks you through how to repeat them for yourself.

THREAD: 10 significant lies you've been told about marketing:

On email marketing, ads, and referrals.

"Send a welcome email immediately after signup"

Don't. People will reflexively discard it as spam.

Instead, delay your welcome email by 15-45 mins.

The delay removes the subscriber's mental connection between signup —> your email, bypassing the reflex to ignore.

More opens.

"Only highlight your best product reviews"

Imperfect reviews can generate MORE sales than 5-star ones.

When a review weighs cons versus pros yet concludes the product was worth purchasing anyway, people see it's authentic & REAL.

So don't bury slightly negative reviews.

"You have to send a newsletter every week"

Most newsletters shouldn't be sent weekly.

High cadences force newsletter writers to rush and publish lower quality information.

Instead, consider only sending when you truly have value to add.

"Your startup needs a great referral program"

The referral programs that grew Airbnb & Dropbox don't work for most companies.

Instead, find your *social loop*:

E.g. An eCom pet store should get dog owners to post photos of their dogs on IG w/ you tagged.

THREAD: How to get users to use your app 👇

Most SaaS apps lose 95% of new users within 90 days. That's insane.

They tend to lose those users during onboarding—when a first impression is made.

Here's how to avoid this.

After reading this thread, you'll know how to welcome users into your product in a way that motivates them into being lifelong customers.

Here's the 80/20 on onboarding:

Start by visualizing your user's journey toward experiencing value from your product—this is the reason users sought you out.

Then:

• Identify the obstacles that come up along the way
• Address those obstacles in your onboarding flow

How to identify obstacles:

Some obstacles will be known to you. They're onboarding steps that:

• Require a lot of work
• Are boring

Record these.

Other obstacles are hidden. To find them, observe users using your product:

• For SaaS apps: Record users' in-app activity using Hotjar
• For physical goods: Run a study. Watch customers use your product

User behavior reveals the NONobvious broken paths taken in onboarding

Here’s how to double conversion on your startup’s homepage.

(From rewriting over 1,000 websites.)

A thread 👇

1/ Your "above the fold" (ATF) section is the part of your site that's immediately visible before scrolling.

When visitors see this, they decide to either keep scrolling or bounce.

In seconds, they attempt to assess:

• What you do.
• Whether you're a fit for them.

2/ If your ATF is confusing or uninteresting, visitors bounce.

This happens because of:

1. Weak messaging: Your product's purpose is unclear, uninteresting, or irrelevant.

2. Weak design: Your design is unprofessional or outdated.

3/ There are 3 things you can change on your ATF.

1. Header
2. Subheader
3. Design

Let's dive into each.

4/ Headers need to:

1. Identify how users get value from your product.

2. Include a hook—to get them to keep reading.

3. Speak directly to your customer personas.

THREAD: How to grow your startup through referrals, and word of mouth.

(Actionable tactics from working with 400+ startups)

Here's the truth: Your startup most likely won't make a video and go viral like Dollar Shave Club.

So instead of trying to "go viral," focus on acquiring customers through fans who already love your product.

There are 3 ways to grow through your current customers:

1. Product-led growth: Your product is built for sharing.

2. Word of mouth: Users proactively recommend your product to friends.

3. Referrals: You create an incentivized reward program.

Let's dive into each 👇

Product-led growth.

It's powerful: You don't have to artificially incentivize users to refer—you simply empower them & get out of their way.

E.g. To pay someone with PayPal, the payment recipient needs to first join PayPal—they're incentivized to sign up to receive their cash.

Product-led growth is possible when ppl use your app to:

• Transact or collaborate w/ others (PayPal, Dropbox, Zoom, Slack). These products are only effective when others use them with you.

• Create content intended to be shared w/ others (Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Cameo)

THREAD: How to improve your startup's conversion rate through A/B testing.

We've consolidated learnings from running 1000s of A/B tests for companies like Segment, Microsoft, and Tovala.

A/B testing = the science of testing changes to see if they improve conversion.

This thread covers:

1. Deciding what to A/B test
2. Prioritizing valuable tests
3. Tracking and recording your results

Testing makes or breaks growth.

We've worked with companies that were failing to convert their traffic.

But after three months of landing page A/B testing, they got traction.

The key: They continuously made their messaging more clear and their offer more compelling

Every day of the year, a test should be running—or you're letting traffic go to waste.

A/B testing isn't about striving for perfection with each variant. It's about iteration.

The A/B testing process

1. Decide on and prioritize high-leverage changes
2. Show some % of your visitors the change
3. Run it until you reach a statistically significant sample size
4. Implement changes that improve conversion
5. Log design/results to inform future tests

🔥 I got 2000 new subscribers from my Product Hunt launch

THREAD...

Last week I launched Marketing Examples to Product Hunt.

✔️ 1,500+ upvotes
✔️ Product of the Week
✔️ Email list grew from 1,300 to 3,300

This is the step by step account of how I did it

Step 1 - Don't launch straight away

23rd May 2019 Marketing Examples v1.0 went live. The site had a few case studies, several bugs, and an email box which didn’t convert well.

The old version of me would have thrown it on Product Hunt straight away. But I decided to wait.

Why?

1) I didn’t want to waste my “turn” with the very first iteration of my site.

2) I didn’t want to launch in a vacuum. Product Hunt multiplies current momentum. Having a small following of “fans” on launch day goes a long way.

So I set myself a target.

✔️ 1000 email subscribers
✔️ 1000 twitter followers

And then I would launch. 70 days later I hit my target.

It was showtime.

If folks aren’t already buying what you’re thinking of selling, don’t start that business!

There should be be evidence that folks are already spending money in the space you’re thinking of entering.

Before AirBnB, folks paid money to stay at hotels, B&Bs, cottages, vacation homes, and hostels.

Annually, people spend $570 BILLION on travel accommodation.

Entrepreneurs need to follow the money:

“Where is it already being spent, and how can I get a piece of it?”

Don’t look for “problems that need solving.”

Look for categories where people/businesses are already spending money.

From an entrepreneur’s POV, if folks are willing to spend money on it, it’s a problem worth solving.

Apple has consistently followed this approach.

They didn’t make the first:

- PC
- Laptop
- MP3 player
- Smart phone

They saw the existing demand, and built on it.

1. The major problem most startups face is marketing and the ability to carve out a niche, find and retain paying customers.

Even with a stellar developer team and a stellar product, your startup may not grow or survive without a great marketing and sales teams.

2. Start growing your audience before you’ve a product or an idea.

You should start promoting yourself and building your audience before you have a finished product or even before you have a great idea that you want to build.

3. Don’t wait to start building your audience after you’ve launched a product.

Most first-time developers actually ignore marketing.

They’re oblivious to the challenge of attracting people to take a look at something they’ve created.

4. At least until they see their first project crash and burn within hours of the launch.

There are so many times that I have seen developers spend countless hours building something, releasing it with no fanfare...

5. and only then trying to figure out how to promote it by asking marketing questions on Indie Hackers, Quora or Hacker News. Don’t make that mistake.

“Every time you write a new code, you should do so reluctantly, under duress, because you completely exhausted all your other options.” - Jeff Atwood @codinghorror

Hence the growing popularity of the no-code software.

A quick thread 👇

1/

NO-CODE IS EATING THE WORLD

The concept isn't new (remember Microsoft FrontPage?) but the capabilities that the no-code and low-code tools offer today change the way individuals and businesses approach building digital products.

WHY IT'S INTERESTING? 👇

2/

No-code tools let you build things without writing code. Websites, mobile apps, online stores – all that (and a lot more!) can be built without any prior coding experience.

3/

Even though the “no-code” label is often an oversell (many platforms are "just" low-code and still require some low programming effort), the capabilities offered are game-changing, especially at the first stages of product development.

4/

Key no-code platforms:

•@Shopify: e-commerce
•@canva: design
•@airtable: databases
•@webflow: web development
•@zapier: process automation
•@bubble: mobile app development

At Udemy, we were 3 first-time entrepreneurs trying to raise seed capital. We made every mistake in the book.

We got 200+ no’s and wasted 12 months fundraising.

We eventually pulled through, just barely. 😅

This thread shares our mistakes as lessons for founders.

**Read On**

We built an impressive product, but we were nobodies.

We thought: we need money to build our vision, so let’s go talk to some investors.

WRONG.

Nobody gave a fuck that we needed money. We needed to prove we deserved their money.

We met some associates and intermediaries who might introduce us to investors.

Few decision-makers wanted to meet with us.

We should’ve stopped there.

If getting meetings is hard, it will take you forever to raise.

Instead, spend your time building product + getting traction.

I was frustrated with investors: treated them as adversaries who asked dumb questions. My derision turned them off.

Learn to understand and appreciate investors. Follow them on Twitter, listen to podcasts from @HarryStebbings or @eriktorenberg.

An investor's job isn't easy.

They kiss a ton of frogs just to find one deal that may make them money 10 years from now.

They only win if you become a billion dollar company.

Don’t kid yourself - if you aren’t the right fit, bootstrap.

Risk-adjusted, bootstrapping can make you happier and more successful.