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MenuWhat does your growth team look like? I'm starting to think through our strategy and would love to hear from other fast growing startups.
1) How many a growthhackers already in your team? and what is base salary and bonuses for them?
2) What tools you use to optimize and analyze benchmarks and targets?
3) What amount of tools so far have used for usability and user testing? can you give a short list of them?
4) Do you know of any websites/sources with recommendations for web/saas application?
Answers
1) The whole team is growth focused, but I'm the only who helps guide and lead the strategy but for the most part, we know our core metrics and we have a development process for reviewing / assessing / testing / adjusting, etc. So I guess that's me.
2) We have many tools, and all depends on the metric, funnels, etc. As a general rule of thumb we use Google Analytics for all external traffic converting to sign-up, Mixpanel as a data warehouse for all events & funnels, A LOT of custom reports and tools we've built in house required when MixPanel or Google Analytics falls short.
3) We actually use Clarity (whole team) for conducting usability testing with members & experts on specific topics. We create clickeable prototypes and use Clarity to schedule a call & www.join.me to share the prototype for feedback. We also use www.usertesting.com for odering weekly baseline videos on our mobile app. It's not a "tool" but we use the Jobs-to-be-Done framework for conducting interviews when trying to understand intent.
4) Dave Skok has written the bible in my mind when it comes to SaaS metrics http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-metrics/
Hope that helps, feel free to request a call to discuss further.
To be entirely honest at small startups you don't always have a big team, you don't always have a lot of resources, you simply have a few people who get to know the product really really well and figure out the best ways for user acquisition. What you really need is an awesome marketer who can craft an incredible content strategy and get your site in front of people, you need to then pair this person with a growth developer who can focus on helping the marketer with ab testing, site optimization things and marketing initiatives. Each role plays a separate but important part. Would love to know more about what you're trying to do and your current market. I'm a big fan of MOZ products and optimizely. Let me know if you want to talk strategy
I'm the director of customer acquisition at Ambassador, one of the top (if not the top) referral marketing automation SaaS. Our sales team relies entirely on inbound leads, so it is up to me to bring them in. Furthermore as a SaaS, it's important to mentally shift the conversion funnel as far down as possible. I'm not just satisfied with leads. Quality leads close more, and integrating product reduces churn. It costs way less to keep a customer for a month than to get a new one.
1) At Ambassador we stay pretty nimble, I am the only dedicated "growth hacker," however I can't do my job without the sales team's amazing job of nurturing the leads and closing deals, customer service's incredible support, and of course our product team creating a product that is a joy to use and serves its purpose. "Growth" is a mentality that everyone needs to own, and its my job to make sure that growth is constantly top of mind.
2) I use a variety of tools, but analytics are the most important. What is the cost to acquire a new customer, what about cost by channel? Do customers acquired by SEO have a higher CLTV than CPC customers? Inside CPC do certain keywords generate higher quality leads? If customers stay in the top of the funnel are they less likely to churn later on?
3) - A/B testing tools are great for usability and testing, I recommend optimizely.
- Providing help at the moment of hurt is important too. Tools like intercom.io and mixpanel can help send emails if some event doesnt happen.
- You need to measure those events and keep all your tools syncronized and organized. Segment.io is invaluable.
- You need to understand how your customers interact with your site. Google Analytics is invaluable for this. Get below the surface and measure conversion events. Build funnels. Add custom dimensions and segment your visitors. Learn their demographics, what else are they interested in?
- Once you start collecting data you need to manipulate it in a meaningful way. Use the advanced features of Google Analytics to slurp in data from multiple sources.
- You will need to prototype things before bringing them to product to integrate. Zapier is vital for this. (new leads --> spreadsheet row)
4) I am not sure that I understand the question?
If you'd like to schedule a time to chat and discuss the best way to optimize your SaaS for growth let me know. I'd be happy to help you strip away metrics that dont matter so that you can focus on the key indicators that will help you sculpt your product into a work of art that people will love to engage with and wont stop talking about.
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