EC Growth Marketing

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Tips for managing growth across iOS updates

“I’ve seen startups spend thousands of dollars inefficiently as a result of not having optimal signal in their paid acquisition campaigns. I’ve also spent millions at companies such as Postmates refining our signal to the best possible state,” says growth marketer Jonathan Martinez in a guest column for Extra Crunch this week. “I’d like every startup to avoid the painful mistake of not having this set up correctly, instead making the most of every important ad dollar.”

The TechCrunch team has been busy this past week, especially with Disrupt next week and the iOS 15 release date quickly approaching. If you haven’t already registered for Disrupt, it’s not too late to get a ticket. We’re excited for all of the sessions, including “The Subtle Challenges of Assessing Product-Market Fit” on Tuesday, September 21 from 2:05 PM – 2:45 PM EDT the Extra Crunch stage. The marketing world was full steam ahead this past week, Martinez covered how to optimize signal and Miranda Halpern spoke with Vivek Sharma, CEO of Movable Ink about the impact that iOS 15 will have on email marketers. We also had guest posts from Bryan Dsouza of Grammarly and Xiaoyun TU of Brightpearl. More details below.

Help TechCrunch find the best growth marketers for startups.

Provide a recommendation in this quick survey and we’ll share the results with everybody.

If you didn’t already hear, we’re giving away one free ticket to Disrupt, through the Experts survey. Check out the schedule for Disrupt, and read on to learn about the giveaway details:

  • Have you already submitted a recommendation? That’s great — we’re counting all previous survey submissions as an entry for the Disrupt ticket.
  • We’ll also enter the next 100 survey submissions into the giveaway.
  • Do you want to submit 10 recommendations to increase your chance at winning? We love the enthusiasm, but we ask that you only submit one recommendation for each marketer that you’ve worked with.
  • Don’t know what to say in your recommendation? Start with what traits they had, what they did to help your company, how their work affected your business and go from there!
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  • The survey will stay open, but we won’t be counting submissions as entries to this giveaway after Sunday, September 19, 11:59 pm PT.

Marketer: Andrew Race, Juice
Recommended by: Orin Singh, Merchant Industry
Testimonial: “We were referred to Juice by a family friend of my company’s owner and as a personal courtesy they said they were giving us their best guy. Naturally we thought that is what everyone says but they were not kidding. Andrew was singularly leagues above our previous marketing company. Having someone so knowledgeable and willing to learn a new industry proved to be the turning point for us.”

In growth marketing, signal determines success: Martinez learned from his mistakes, and share the lessons learned with us. From selecting the signal, to how to enhance it, Martinez covers key aspects including how to take advantage of iOS 14. He says, “So how do you stay ahead and continue moving the needle on your growth marketing campaigns? First and foremost, constantly question the events you’re optimizing for. And second, leave no stone unturned.”

Marketers should plan for more DIY metrics as iOS 15 nears: The release of iOS 15 will change that playing field for marketers. They’ll have to rely on metrics that use zero and first-party data rather than relying on email open rates as the main metric. Miranda spoke with Sharma about how this release will impact the industry and what marketers should focus on. One tip from Sharma is, “Focus on down funnel metrics like clicks and conversions — that’s what it really comes down to and that’s the truest indicator of engagement.”

(Extra Crunch) Demand Curve: How to get social proof that grows your startup: Nick Costelloe, head of content at Demand Curve, dives into social proof and how startups can use it to their advantage. On social proof, Costelloe says, “Have you ever stopped to check out a restaurant because it had a large lineup out front? That wasn’t by chance. It’s common for restaurants to limit the size of their reception area. This forces people to wait outside, and the line signals to people walking past that the restaurant is so good it’s worth waiting for.”

(Extra Crunch) 5 things you need to win your first customer: Dsouza, product marketing lead at Grammarly, walks us through how to win your first customer. He includes explanations, how-tos, and practice use cases. Dsouza says,” . . .ask any founder what really proves their startup has taken off, and they will almost instantly say it’s when they win their first customer.”

(Extra Crunch) 4 ways to leverage ROAS to triple lead generation: TU, global director of demand generation at Brightpearl, walks us through ways to use return on advertising spending (ROAS). She says, “When you choose a return metric, you need to make sure it matches your company goal without taking ages to get the data.”

Tell us who your favorite startup growth marketing expert to work with is by filling out our survey.

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Demand Curve: How to get social proof that grows your startup

When people are uncertain, they look to others for behavioral guidance. This is called social proof, which is a physiological effect that influences your decisions every day, whether you know it or not.

At Demand Curve and through our agency Bell Curve, we’ve helped over 1,000 startups improve their ability to convert cold traffic into repeat customers. We’ve found that effectively using social proof can lead to up to 400% improvement in conversion.

This post shares exactly how to collect and use social proof to help grow your SaaS, e-commerce, or B2B startup.

Surprisingly, we’ve actually seen negative reviews help improve conversion rates. Why? Because they help set customer expectations.

How businesses use social proof

Have you ever stopped to check out a restaurant because it had a large line of people out front? That wasn’t by chance.

It’s common for restaurants to limit the size of their reception area. This forces people to wait outside, and the line signals to people walking past that the restaurant is so good it’s worth waiting for.

But for Internet-based businesses, social proof looks a bit different. Instead of people lining up outside your storefront, you’re going to need to create social proof that resonates with your target customers — they’ll be looking for different clues to signal whether doing business with your company is “normal” or “acceptable” behavior.

Social proof for B2B

People love to compare themselves to others, and this is especially true when it comes to the customers of B2B businesses. If your competitor is able to get a contract with a company that you’ve been nurturing for months, you’d be upset (and want to know how they did it).

Therefore, B2B social proof is most effective when you display the logos of companies you do business with. This signals to people checking out your website that other businesses trust you to deliver on your offer. The more noteworthy or respected the logos on your site, the stronger the influence will be.

Social proof for SaaS

Depending on the type of SaaS product or service you’re selling, you’ll either be selling to an individual or to a business. The strategy remains the same, but the channels will vary slightly.

The most effective way to generate social proof for SaaS products is through positive reviews from trusted sources. For consumer SaaS, that will be through influential bloggers and YouTubers speaking highly of your product. For B2B SaaS, it will be through positive ratings on review sites like G2 or Capterra. Proudly display these testimonials on your site.

Social proof for e-commerce brands

E-commerce brands will typically sell directly to an individual through ads, but because anyone can purchase an ad, you’re going to need to signal trust in other ways. The most common way we see e-commerce brands building social proof is by nurturing an organic social media following on Instagram or TikTok.

This signals to new customers that you’ve gotten the seal of approval from others like them. Having an audience also allows you to showcase user-generated content from your existing customers.

How to collect social proof

There are five avenues startups can tap to collect social proof:

  1. Product reviews
  2. Testimonials
  3. Public relations and earned media
  4. Influencers
  5. Social media and community

Here are a few tactics we’ve used to help startups build social proof.

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Growth tactics that will jump-start your customer base

Five years ago, the playbook for launching a new company involved a tried-and-true list of to-dos. Once you built an awesome product with a catchy name, you’d try to get a feature article on TechCrunch, a front-page hit on Hacker News, hunted on ProductHunt and an AMA on Quora.

While all of these today remain impressive milestones, it’s never been harder to corral eyeballs and hit a breakout adoption trajectory.

In this new decade, it is possible to first out-market your competitor, and then raise lots of money, hire the best team and build, rather than the other way around (building first, then marketing).

Outbound marketing tools and company newsletters are useful, but they’re also a slow burn and offer low conversion in the new creator economy. So where does this leave us?

With audiences spread out over so many platforms, reaching cult status requires some level of hacking. Brand-building is no longer a one-hit game, but an exercise in repetition: It may take four or five times for a user to see your startup’s name or logo to recognize, remember or Google it.

Below are some growth tactics that I hope will help jump-start the effort to building an engaged user base.

Laying the groundwork for user-generated content

Before users are evangelists, they are observers. Consider creating a bot to alert you of any product mentions on Twitter, or surface subject-matter discussions on Reddit (“Best tools to manage AWS costs?” or “Which marketplace do you resell your old electronics on?”), which you can then respond to with thoughtful commentary.

Join relevant communities on Discord, infiltrate Slack groups of relevant conferences (including past iterations of a conference  —  chances are those groups are still alive with activity), follow forums on StackOverflow and engage in the discussions on all these channels.

The more often you post, the better your posts convert. The more your handle appears on newsfeeds, the more likely it will be included on widely quoted “listicles.”

Most “user-generated content” in the early innings should be generated by you, from both personal accounts and company accounts.

Build in public …

Building in public is scary given the speed at which ideas can be copied, but competition will always exist, since new ideas are not born in vacuums. Companies like Railway and Replit post to Twitter every time they post a new changelog. Stir brands its feature releases as “drops,” similar to streetwear drops.

Building in public can also lend opportunities for virality, which requires drama, comedy or both. Hey.com’s launch was buoyed by Basecamp’s public fight against Apple over existing App Store take rates.

Mmhmm, the virtual camera app that adds TV-presenter flair to video meetings, launched with a viral video that hit over 1.5 million views. The company continues to release entertaining YouTube demos to showcase new use cases.

Help TechCrunch find the best growth marketers for startups.

Provide a recommendation in this quick survey and we’ll share the results with everybody.

… or build in private

Like an artist teasing an upcoming album, some companies are able to drum up substantial anticipation ahead of exiting stealth mode. When two ex-Apple execs founded Humane, they crafted beautiful social media pages full of sophisticated photography without revealing a single hint of what they set out to build.

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Growth marketing roundup: TechCrunch Experts, creative testing and how to nail your narrative

“It’s about focusing on the metric that directly reflects the value that your company and products bring to your customers,” growth marketer Maya Moufarek told us in an interview for one of our most popular marketing articles of the week. “For Airbnb, that may be the number of nights booked; for Spotify, minutes listened to. It’s all about simplifying your strategy into something that is digestible, memorable and applicable.”

In the interview, Moufarek speaks about the importance of Sean Ellis’ North Star metric, how she audits her clients, brand building and more.

Help TechCrunch find the best growth marketers for startups.

Provide a recommendation in this quick survey and we’ll share the results with everybody.

Marketing Cube founder Maya Moufarek’s lessons for customer-focused startups: Founder of growth consultancy Marketing Cube Maya Moufarek joins Miranda Halpern for an interview as part of the TechCrunch Experts series. Moufarek shares her advice for startups and explains why there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to marketing.

In growth marketing, creative is the critical X factor: Self-proclaimed “growth marketing nerd” and current Uber growth team member Jonathan Martinez breaks down how to be successful with creative testing. Martinez discusses how to do this when faced with the current privacy restrictions.

(Extra Crunch) Susan Su on how to approach growth as your startup raises each round: Managing Editor Eric Eldon recaps growth marketing expert Susan Su’s talk from TechCrunch Early Stage: Marketing & Fundraising. Su goes through a sample qualitative growth model and the importance of always having a growth team.

(Extra Crunch) Silicon Valley comms expert Caryn Marooney shares how to nail the narrative: Senior Editor Matt Burns recaps Caryn Marooney’s talk from TechCrunch Early Stage: Marketing & Fundraising. Marooney, current VC and former communications expert, touches on her RIBS method — read the article to find out what it stands for and how to apply it to your own narrative.

(Extra Crunch) Greylock’s Mike Duboe explains how to define growth and build your team: Editor Lucas Matney breaks down the TechCrunch Early Stage: Marketing & Fundraising presentation from early-stage speaker Mike Duboe, partner at Greylock. This talk is split into 10 key points about growth, including tips on prioritizing retention, hiring for growth and more.


If you haven’t already, please fill out our ongoing growth marketing survey. We’re using these recommendations of top-tier growth marketers around the world to shape our editorial coverage.

Marketer: Illia Termeno, founder of Extrabrains

Recommended by: Anonymous

Testimonial: “T-shaped expertise with focus on strategy and long-term ROI.”

Marketer: Adam DuVander, EveryDeveloper

Recommended by: Karl Hughes, Draft.dev

Testimonial: “In addition to writing a book on developer marketing, Adam draws from deep experience as a developer and developer advocate to make sure his clients set a winning strategy in motion.”

Marketer: Jonathan Metrick, Portage Ventures

Recommended by: Matt Byrd

Testimonial: “Jonathan was truly transformative at Policygenius. Prior to his arrival, we were running a smart but disjointed marketing effort. Our messaging was inconsistent, and our approach to understanding channel efficacy was weaker than it could have been. Jonathan brought a growth mindset to the team, and built a hypereffective org in a short amount of time.”

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Susan Su on how to approach growth as your startup raises each round

Your startup might rely on clever growth tactics to get off the ground, but you need more than spreadsheets if you want to turn viral spikes into a real business. You need a qualitative growth model to guide the strategy that you can use to tell your story to your team and investors.

Growth marketing expert Susan Su sat down with us at TechCrunch Early Stage: Marketing and Fundraising this month to share pointers for young companies that are trying to raise money after initial market traction. In the presentation below, she maps out a growth strategy from seed through Series A and B rounds and details how your milestones, budgets, investor updates and other measures change as you advance.

The not-so-secret secret here is that the key to great retention is really simple. It is building a product that solves a real and especially persistent problem for people.

Throughout the process, “a qualitative model tells the story of growth that you can use at early stages and really all throughout your company life cycle,” she explains.A quantitative model or quantitative growth accounting charts the numerical course for how you actually deliver against that narrative and becomes more relevant at later stages when you actually have real numbers.

Formerly a strategic growth adviser to companies at Sound Ventures, a growth marketing lead focused on startups at Stripe, and the first hire and head of growth at Reforge, Su just became a partner investing in climate tech for early-stage fund Toba Capital. She also writes a popular newsletter on climate investing and runs a six-week course for other investors on the topic.

Here’s more about growth, and how to talk about it with investors, from her presentation:

So here’s a sample qualitative growth model that I built for one of our portfolio companies with some modifications for anonymity. At the bottom, we have our linear inputs that form the foundation of awareness — in other words, traffic or leads that feed into our growth machine.

Once those leads come in, we have our acquisition loops, working to turn that non-repeatable spiky linear traffic (aka TechCrunch traffic, if you get so lucky as to be written up in TechCrunch) into scalable, repeatable acquisition. You cannot repeat the TechCrunch effect.

For this sample business, I happened to spec out five different acquisition loops — I was really ambitious. Many companies will struggle to identify this many. But the key to being able to scale is to have multiple viable acquisition loops, not just one single thing that works.

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