Do not mask strategic laziness with tactical diligence for growth. If growth is just A/B experiment, I wonder how many Airbnbs and Dropboxes there will be. The real growth is: the big picture and strategic awareness before the experiment, and the perfect execution of the experiment.
Most of what we read about growth is actionable, like you need to run experiments to improve growth. But why adopt this strategy? What should you think about before implementing? This requires us to have the big picture of growth.
When thinking about growth, most people optimize conversion rates from AARRR down, which exposes the problem that we don’t understand what the real power of growth is.
Sometimes we have to admit that retreating is a good strategy. To solve the growth problem, take a step back and think strategically about growth. So what is a growth strategy? How do I create it? What are the challenges?
Process first?
Put strategy ahead of the growth process and identify areas where you can have the greatest impact with limited resources.
The biggest problem when you start with processes is that you start to mentally impact every aspect of your business.
You might think of ways to attract more users (acquisition), ways to get them to use your product (activation), etc.
Then, start experimenting with the ideas that may have the most impact.
Result: Lack of focus and stagnation.
Due to the lack of focus, client size may increase, but the effort will not be very productive. In fact, you could have done better!
To solve this problem, a growth strategy needs to be devised in advance to identify the most important areas.
strategic
Strategy is the cornerstone of growth. The purpose of strategy is to create a growth focus and roadmap within the growth team.
The strategy mainly includes:
High impact area
The roadmap
OKR (Objective and Key Results)
In other words, identify the areas of focus and the main results to be expected.
Once a strategy is established, the next step is to try out the growth process in the high-impact area.
With real strategy, you’ll be better able to brainstorm and prioritize. If you focus on retention, you can continue experimenting with other parts of the traffic funnel.
Strategies need to be written so that they can be used across the business, while avoiding arbitrary shifts in focus.
Strategic preparation doesn’t take long, you want to improve significantly without consuming too much time, and the limited time you have is enough to find where you can have the biggest impact.
Instead of a 10-page document, 1-2 pages or 2-3 powerpoint slides will suffice. Spend enough time thinking, but make sure everyone can see the results.
Strategic preparation is the first step to successful growth, setting the focus and direction of the team and ensuring that your efforts are not wasted.
How to define strategy?
Collect insights
To define an effective strategy, you need to gather insights about your product and your customers.
You need to collect two different kinds of insights:
Be qualitative – Be qualitative by talking to your customers and prospects
Quantitative – Quantitative through metrics and surveys of user groups
In the basic growth equation, we define sustainable growth as the product of effective traffic (traffic * conversion rate), Magic Moment and core product value.
On the basis of understanding the equations above, we define the growth model, and by understanding the transformation funnel (such as AARRR) and the indicators for each step, we discover and consider the key questions: why is it ineffective, and how can we make it better?
Here’s an example: You find retention issues: most users lose after 120 days
Then let’s improve retention!
What if the user has actually finished their work after 120 days? Then you still have retention issues.
By the end of this section, you should be able to understand your conversion funnel and know the real reason behind each problem. Is it in traffic conversion? Still can’t find the Magic Moment? Or does the product itself have no core value?
Identify high impact areas
You should now be able to clearly identify your weaknesses and strengths.
List each step of the funnel along with key metrics. The AARRR framework can be used with the following template:
Once you understand each step and its metrics, it’s easy to know where and where users are likely to have an impact.
That’s when the problem becomes obvious:
Is it that most people leave before they even see the product?
Do visitors come back after their first visit?
Once the problems are identified, you can realize which of them are affecting the business and how they are affecting it.
If only 5% of your users start using your product, and 90% of those 5% convert to paying users, you know where to focus…
By designing a clear OKR that defines success and failure, you can help you reevaluate the results after each iteration.
The roadmap
After identifying the areas with the greatest impact, plot the progress for the next 6 months.
“We’ll start by focusing on retention and then move on to activation.”
Plan iterations for 60-90 days so you can re-evaluate what you did each month and at the end of each iteration.
Note that only metric goals are included here, and you need to define larger OKR for each iteration.
This roadmap is just to make sure you have a clear mind that you need to re-evaluate the entire strategy if you don’t reach your goals at the end of the iteration.
Rewards: Map to growth
Knowing the points and metrics you want to improve, you can map and predict future growth.
Growth projections are very useful for showing your leadership and what you are trying to achieve and what you are doing.
You may notice that the model I used is very simple, mainly because you shouldn’t spend too much time planning.
Your numbers may be wrong and other parts of the channel may fluctuate.
consistent
You need to make sure your growth strategy is aligned with the rest of the strategy within the company.
If the product team wants to take out a part of the product, it doesn’t need to be considered.
If the CEO decides to increase user size, but you want to focus on retention, then you have to speak up!
To do this, talk to everyone involved and present your strategy to the entire company. Everyone should participate in your growth.
The purpose of this article is to show you what really happens in growth teams: they don’t just blindly experiment. This paper compiled from: https://www.pierrelechelle.com/growth-hacking-strategy#
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