• It's always a team effort.
• Retention is key to growth.
• It's rare a product grows without marketing.
Okay, let's go:
I helped a startup grow from $3M to $24M in 8 months.
The secret? Be a little delusional.
Here are 14 lessons I learned about growing a rocketship:
• It's always a team effort.
• Retention is key to growth.
• It's rare a product grows without marketing.
Okay, let's go:
Wedge: It is simply a strategy to win a large market by initially capturing (1) a tiny part of a larger market or (2) a large part of a small adjacent market.
Our wedge was our unique point-of-view.
Our POV gave the AHA! moment.
You need 3 kinds of players: a visionary, executor and processor.
I was the executor, my boss a visionary & my other two key teammates were amazing at processing and making it work.
Lesson:Find a great combination that feels like magic.
Our product created its category and innovated its field.
It was a unique sub-category & take on learning.
The timing was right in this case.
Category drives POV & growth.
Products are built to fit with channels. Channels do not mold to products.
I grew the product with solely two channels i.e. Google Ads & Facebook ads.
Then, I found Tiktok working for us -- we found a new channel fit.
Instead of selling our point of view only, we sold transformation.
Our customers saw a huge difference in 6 months after using the product.
We made them heroes. We told their stories. We showed their transformation.
Because the founder was an authority in the space.
We exploited the story because it scroll stopped and made people pay attention.
Our niche: wealthy homeschooling and gifted kids' parents.
I just doubled down on the messaging that resonated with them.
It worked like a charm. What's a sub-niche you can try?
My motivation was to work for the vision but my boss's unrealistic goal pushed me even further.
We wanted to grow $3Mn to $10Mn within 3 months. I thought my boss was BS-ing.
Somehow we believed in it, and it worked.
In my first month, I lost the company $40,000 on Google ads.
I spent $150K on influencer marketing, the ROAS was abysmal.
Failing is growth. Failing is part of figuring out
I've worked for 3 cost-effective brands, and 2 high-priced products. I have high- priced products grow faster.
Our product was expensive so it disqualified a lot of bad customers.
Our CAC to LTV ratio was 1:10.
My Google ads were working fine but I hired a specialist.
At scale, hire a specialist to do their job or at least some dedicated.
Below were the changes we made to our Google ads:
Most orgs are experimenting but not documenting.
When you don't document, the new folks will make the same mistakes.
We tested weekly what messaging resonated on our homepage.
This gave us deeper insights.
We were getting 10-15% leads on our home but we didn't convert them enough.
After talking to customers, I learned that people had nuanced questions and wanted to get closer to the founding team.
We added: Educational & orientation webinars
If your product has a demand but not enough conversions.
You might have too much friction to pay.
Our sign-up flow took 2-3 days for someone to pay. We made it 5mins by adding Typeform (40% conversion lead to paid).
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