How to get to 500,000 users. Employ various methods from the cheap to the scalable-cost, to the expensive.

1. Growth Hacking 101
Your First 500,000 Users
@yongfook

2. Disclaimer!
Based on first hand experience growing !
a user-base of 500,000 (1.5 years) at previous company!
and doing customer acquisition consulting!
!
Focus is on users with an explicit ARPU!!
e.g. SaaS, E-commerce, Gaming...!
Zero-revenue services may not be applicable!
!
YMMV etc.
Growth Hacking 101 by @yongfook

3. Background
Director!
#2 Luxury Flash-Sales Site in Japan!
US$XX million per year sales!
Joined at 0, left at ~500,000
I lived in Japan for about 10 years before moving to Singapore!
Above company is still going strong and has expanded into China!
I’m founder of 2 SaaS startups (one active, one not) !
a user-generated content recipe site (acquired)!
and a quirky viral game!
!
Currently working on another e-commerce site targeting South East Asia
Growth Hacking 101 by @yongfook

4. www.growthhackinghandbook.com
Now Buy The Book!!
A handy guide of 100 online
marketing tactics for your startup, !
from quick wins to complex hacks.
Buy the Book Now

5. cheap
Trivia: The artist Michelangelo was
famously cheap and lived in poor
conditions, despite being very wealthy

6. Organic Search
• Always be creating searchable
content!
• Mix of template / basic editorial!
• Have clear CTAs on your public
content!
• sitemap.xml!
• Previous company = all brands we sold
had a permanent public page (50%
algorithmic and 50% editorial), we
ranked on Google 1st page for some of
the lesser-known brands. Long Tail.!
• Hackers! implement your content
generation strategy early on so you can
set and somewhat forget.!
• Spend some time making a few
Automatic / Template
“superstar” pieces of content i.e.
Infographics Editorial
Ex
There’s a page like this for every country on DirectRooms
Growth Hacking 101 by @yongfook

7. Blog
• Create shareable content!
• Top 10 Lists!
• Interviews!
• Op-Ed!
• PICTURES! (e.g. Boston.com)!
• Create fans who will turn into influencers
and evangelists for you.!
• Back-links are goood!
• Become recognized as an authority in
your vertical / niche!
• Don’t write shitty filler posts - the point of
the blog is to create an audience, not
just to add content to the site (see
previous slide for that)
Mr Porter
Excellent, authoritative and shareable blog content.!
Their business is e-commerce.
Ex
Growth Hacking 101 by @yongfook

8. Landing Page
• Hackers! test like crazy.!
• Don’t fuck around testing your design
too much. Test your incentive / value
proposition and CTA.!
• Preserve Scent!
• Get Their Email Address (it’s really all
you actually need)!
• Completing the process is the only way
to leave the landing page.
Groupon
Ex
Different graphic assets depending on entry keyword!
to preserve scent: this search was for “spa coupon”
Growth Hacking 101 by @yongfook

9. Share &
Embed
1) Create Something Worth Sharing.!
2) Empower your users to share/like/recommend content.!
3) More Users!

10. Massive APIs
• Connect with Facebook / Twitter!
• Reduce friction to entry / sharing!
• Hackers! Retrofit other large markets to
work with your site in a way beneficial to
users.!
• AirBNB / Craigslist!
• Don’t forget language APIs - you too can
be Big In Japan
Air BNB
Famously created a “Post to Craigslist” feature
despite there not being an official API, in order to
gain initial traction
Growth Hacking 101 by @yongfook
Ex

11. Social Campaign
• “Retweet this to Win!”!
• Is this really social? No.!
• Can’t do it more than once. Boy Who
Cried Wolf syndrome.!
• Hackers! There’s A Better Way!
• Leverage vanity and curiosity!
• Give User A some dynamic content
specific to them (e.g. a horoscope)
and encourage User A to tweet it. !
• User B learns about your company
via learning something funny about
User A (their friend).!
• Alternatively!
• Create content that is innately
shareable e.g. Will It Blend!
• Hook into a recent event / topic
Klout
Ex
Some (most?) of Klout’s growth is driven through!
leveraging user vanity and curiosity:!
1) Vanity of users sharing their high score!
2) Curiosity of user’s friends to find out their own score
Growth Hacking 101 by @yongfook

12. Viral Scumbag Mechanics?!
!
In 2010 I made a game that at a certain point you !
had to invite another person in order to progress!
...it worked incredibly well and it didn’t piss!
as many people off as I thought it would.!
At that middle point in the game, most users were!
happy to spread the word. 10,000+ users in 2 days.

13. scalable
Trivia: Mount Fuji in Japan is actually a
volcano and has been dormant since 1708

14. Influencers
Recruited over 30 trend-setting (non-celebrity) bloggers!
and incentivised blog coverage via VIP events and coupons!
Hackers! Sweeten the relationship with widgets for their blogs
Growth Hacking 101 by @yongfook

15. Member Get Member
• “Refer a friend and get a $25 coupon!”!
• Japanese users seemed less
motivated to refer for cash!
• Test the incentive, for example “Refer
5 friends and get free shipping for 3
months!”!
• Some incentives work better at
different stages of the customer
journey e.g. a newly-activated user / a
long-term user!
• Hackers! Remember to test the crap
out of the HTML email design /
message itself. Make it beautiful and
personal.
Gilt
All group-buying and private e-commerce sites!
have an MGM mechanic. It’s a scalable way of !
acquiring pre-qualified users - costs will rise!
linearly with new users acquired
Ex
Growth Hacking 101 by @yongfook

16. Paid Search
• A reliable portion of our monthly
growth came from paid search!
• You need an adwords virtuoso if you
want to do well in paid search!
• Doubly so for competitive spaces like
travel / hotels!
• Not super-viable for startups without
much funding: it takes time, it’s
expensive and needs to be constantly
tweaked.!
• Really handy for ad-hoc testing
though.
“Singapore Hotels”
A search for “Singapore Hotels” on Google shows!
many companies with deep pockets: Agoda,
booking.com, expedia.com - startups trying to
compete head to head with these companies in Paid
Search will simply run out of cash
Ex
Growth Hacking 101 by @yongfook

17. expensive
Trivia: Archimedes discovered buoyancy, was one of the best
mathematicians of his time and also built giant, mechanical war machines

18. Celebrity Blog
• Bit of a gamble but can be highly
effective at getting users!
• Depends on the size of the blog
ecosystem but in Japan: 10,000++
new users from a single post!
• User quality varies!
• Can result in re-blogs, conversations!
• Real Example: Celebrity A (paid)
wrote about us, then Celebrity B
(unpaid) checked us out and wrote
about us organically and
enthusiastically as we were selling a
brand that she loves. We ended up
getting more users via Celebrity B
than Celebrity A.!
• Best to do it in a regulated environment
where there are guidelines.
Ex
Famous bloggers such as Xiaxue are no stranger to
advertorials. Pick your audience wisely however.
Growth Hacking 101 by @yongfook

19. Partnerships
• An incentivised partner sending you
targeted prospects is supremely
valuable!
• High quality users!
• Try to negotiate a revenue-share, but be
prepared for other costs like a revenue
guarantee or an up-front payment.!
• In addition to rev-share offer them
something they can’t already get easily
e.g. build something for them for free,
give them data.!
• Hackers! Offer something innovative.
We put a whole store on their site
that earned a rev-share, that they
never had to manage and that
seamlessly-integrated with the rest of
their site.
Ex
We partnered with a popular fashion destination and
got banner space, a dedicated page (we put an
inline-frame store on it), EDMs and more.
Growth Hacking 101 by @yongfook

20. www.growthhackinghandbook.com
Now Buy The Book!!
A handy guide of 100 online
marketing tactics for your startup, !
from quick wins to complex hacks.
Buy the Book Now

21. thanks!
@yongfook!
http://yongfook.com