Double Your Business – Drew Sanocki – MicroConf Europe 2016

The MicroConf Europe 2016 Talk Recaps can be found on the central hub page.

Website: NerdMarketing.com
Twitter: @DrewSanocki
Slides: http://Nerdmarketing.com/microconf

  • When I came on board KL, they had tried a number of ways to grow
    • Adwords
    • Social
    • Blog outreach
    • traditional PR
    • affiliate programs
  • Nothing worked, until we changed one thing:
    • Going from acquisition to retention focus
  • Key insights
    • Most businesses eek by when they could be growing lots faster
    • possible to 2x without 2x the work
  • Bootstrapped, grew, and sold DesignPublic.com in 2003
  • Since then:
    • Fanprint
    • Karmaloop
    • Old time pottery
    • Discountmugs
    • Fab
    • Teamwork.com
    • and others…
  • Strategic perspective
    • Michael Porter’s “Five Forces”
    • Jim Collins’ “Good to Great”
    • not relevant enough to bootstrapped startups
  • Tactical perspective
    • “846 conversion rate optimization tips”
    • ended up overwhelmed and not doing anything
  • Multiplier perspective
    • only three ways to grow revenue:
      • increase AOV / ARPU
      • increase frequency of purchase / churn
      • increase number of customers
    • Improving one is great, but they are multiplicative, so growing all three is killer
    • Teamwork.com
      • ARPU $53
      • Frequency: 40 months
      • Customers: 13,700
      • Total LTV: $29.6M
    • How to grow
      • Bucket all ideas by Multiplier
      • Within Multiplier prioritize by speed and impact
      • Work back to front Churn > ARPU > # Customers
        • Focus on Multipliers 1 and 2 first (maximize THEN multiply)
        • Do you need more traffic? Or revenue?
      • More info: http://nerdmarketing.com/20
      • Customer churn is expensive and time-consuming
    • Reactivation / win-back campaigns
      • Reactivate lapsed customers
      • X months after defection, win-’em back
      • Teamwork: Sent 50k, re-engaged 300
    • Anti-defection campaigns
      • Predict churn before it happens
      • develop signals: start with Recency
      • Highest ROI campaigns you will run:
        • DesignPublic: $250K in a day
        • KarmaLoop: 500% ROMI on anti-defection offers
      • MOre pro-tips:
        • Ladder your promos give away the farm gradually
          • 10 days w/o login, Offer 1
          • 20 days w/o login, Offer 2
          • 30 days w/o login, Offer 3
        • Sync with FB custom audiences
    • #3 Improve the product
      • Better product, lower churn
      • Delighted app, Qualaroo, Hotjar
      • Gotta communicate it (e.g. weekly feature newsletter)
  • Increasing ARPU
    • #1 increase prices
      • most companies underestimate inelasticity of demand
      • introduce annual pre-pay
      • reduce choices (if more than 3 tiers)
      • reverse order (highest first)
    • #2 Cross-sell & upsell
      • Amazon reported 35% of revenue from cross-sell
      • Boosts ARPU
      • Enhances experience (think: email + landing pages)
      • Differentiates offering
      • Expands margin, efficiencies
      • Bounce-back campaign
      • Affiliate marketing?
    • #3 Bundling
      • Think Microsoft Office
  • #1 CRO
    • Might not have traffic problem, might have conversion rate problem
    • Run a pop-up with opt-in offer
    • Add content upgrades to your top blog posts
  • #2 Content Marketing
    • Honeypot strategy (Buffer, KISSmetrics)
    • Who are your best customers?
    • Target a community and where it hangs out
    • E-Z content marketing
      • Record a video
      • Transcribe (Rev.com)
      • Create article or — better — upgrade
      • Pivot to Slideshare
      • Assemble into eBook
      • Total cost: $20 + 30 min
  • #3 Paid acquisition
    • FB Live to landing pages
    • Webinar-like effect
    • Flip to a FB ad
    • Retarget based on engagement
    • Alerts via Pushcrew on site
    • Arb new channel – low CAC
  • #4 Acquire the right customers
    • there are good customers and there are shit customers

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About Christoph

Christoph lives in Munich, Germany and is bootstrapping his own SaaS application as a part-time entrepreneur.

He likes to write on this blog about anything of relevance to single-founder bootstrapped software startups.

Trackbacks

  1. […] Drew Sanocki: Double Your Business – The Approach I Used to Create $10M in Value in 10 Months at Karmaloop […]

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