Growth

The Marketing Genius of Harry Dry

One of my favorite newsletters is MarketingExamples by Harry Dry. The simple format with lots of image examples make it easy to read and always provides many actionable ideas. His newsletter has just passed 27,500 subscribers and is growing at more than 100 per day.

Harry got a lot of buzz by promoting a dating site for Kanye West fans and renting billboards asking Kanye to call him. He has since been featured in The Hustle’s Trends community and mentioned by Noah Kagan in his recent networking video.

Harry is active on IndieHackers and does a great job with his Twitter threads, but I’m most impressed with the quality of his MarketingExamples posts. It’s clear that a lot of work goes into every issue.

Business Lessons: The publicity stunt was interesting and got some press, but I think the real lesson is that good ideas, executed well, win. The MarketingExamples newsletter has a great name, simple format and the content is very actionable. That is a winning formula. I definitely need to work on clarifying my focus for this IdeaEconomy newsletter.

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VEED.io – Zero to $1m ARR in 12 Months Bootstrapped

https://www.veed.io/blog/0-1m-arr-12-months/

Video editing SaaS, VEED.io shares their lessons learned growing the company to $83k per month from nothing. Three key ideas are: 1. start with the simplest MVP, 2. validate your ideas fast to make sure there is a market for the product, 3. charge for the product early on.

Here is another good article from VEED on how they grew to 50,000 users with no budget.

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Get Customers for any Business Idea in Under 15 Minutes

Noah Kagan shows you how to get customers for your new business to test if there is market demand. It’s a follow up to his Start a million dollar business this weekend video.

This is a good look at how to really simplify the market validation process. Don’t worry about your website, logo, businesss name, etc. Just see if you can find 3 customers in the next 48 hours.

He covers:
1. Work from home office consultant
2. Masks for Dogs
3. Airpod Wind Covers
4. Keto Taco Shells
5. Spice Rack + Keurig

I don’t think these are great business ideas, but there is a lot to learn from his process.

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I Passed Up an Opportunity to Make $200K in revenue. Want to Know Why?

AppSumo is a platform started by NoahKagan that sells discounted online apps. It can be a great way to generate awareness and get early customers, but it comes at a cost. AppSumo takes 75% of the already heavily discounted price.

Here is a short Twitter thread explaining why this startup founder decided against promoting his app on the site.

“A few days back, I was asked by AppSumo for SimpleOps to be featured on their platform, but I ended up saying no.”

While giving up 75% percent of revenue sounds expensive, AppSumo does have a massive reach and can generate thousands of new customers.

Business Opportunity: I think there are opportunities to create AppSumo types of companies for different niches. Where is the AppSumo for marketing agencies, no code websites, or remote work? Building an audience around a particular niche could lead to a lot of opportunities.

twitter.com

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The System Every Creator Needs To Figure Out To Build A Successful Career

“Every successful creator’s system contains the same three elements: Discovery, connection, and monetization mechanisms.”

Simple frameworks like this can be very helpful in prioritizing your key tasks.

Discovery
‘If you don’t have something designed to attract the attention of new people on a consistent basis, your discovery mechanism needs some work.”

Connection
“Turning that person into an email subscriber is typically the most powerful connection you can have, but your connection mechanism could also be to get them to follow you on social media.”

Monetization
“If you don’t have a specific path to eventual monetization, you won’t be able to build a sustainable creative career and will wind up a creative hobbyist instead of a creative pro.”

joshspector.com

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From Unknown Title to Viral Game: 12 Growth Lessons From Spellbreak

This video is about the launch of a video game, but there are lessons for all startups.

“Proletariat CEO Seth Sivak reveals how he and his team grew Spellbreak from an unknown title into a viral game. From embracing memes to enabling early evangelists, here are 12 tactics to drive growth in a product’s early stages.”

Some interesting marketing tactics were:

– You can still go viral on platforms like Imgur, 9gag, and Reddit without needing a base to build from.
– People who joined their Discord server got faster access. Great way to build a community.
– Encouraged their community to create game highlight videos by promising to share the best ones on the company’s YouTube channel. This led to lots of great content created.
– Meme channel became some of their best marketing.

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Let’s Talk About ‘Growth Hacking’

“When you’re building a company, it can feel like you’re just one brilliant idea away from having things really take off.”

“For most startups, it’s not about finding magic. It’s about building a model that works and doing it over and over again.”

“Growth hacking is about taking a system that already works and finding ways to make it work even better. It’s about iteration and experimentation. If your conversion rate is 1%, it’s about finding a way to turn it into 2%. Then, repeat that–over and over again–until it’s 10%, 20%, or 50%.”

via stackedmarketer

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Getting to 50,000 YouTube Subscribers in Less than a Year

Florin Pop recently passed 52k subscribers on YouTube for his coding videos. He published 105 videos in the last 10 months.

It shows there is a big demand for technical how-to content.

The last 20k subscribers came in about 2 weeks because of 3 videos and a shoutout. It goes to show that it gets easier to acquire followers and customers over time. We just have to put in the work up front.

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How a Gig Economy Website Hit 100,000 Monthly Visitors in 6 Months

Learn how Growth Machine built a content site about the gig economy from scratch — and grew the site to 100,000 monthly visitors in six months.

It can be difficult to create dozens of pieces of content without any immediate return. However, if you are doing effective optimization, that content will begin to pay off over time.

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From Zero to IPO: How Growth Needs to Evolve at Every Startup Stage

“There’s no one-size-fits-all growth advice. Brian Rothenberg, former VP of Growth at Eventbrite, breaks down the three broad phases of the startup lifecycle. For each phase, he identifies key targets that startups should aim for to kick their growth strategy.”

via foundersgrid

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How These 10 Indian Startups Got Their Early Users

“This week we wanted to go beyond Silicon Valley and explore the burgeoning startup world in India. To do just that, I am glad to have invited Harkirat Singh to write a guest post on how 10 different Indian companies got their first 1000 customers.”

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Content Marketing: Why You Should Focus on Bottom of The Funnel First

This is a good article on why you should focus on content that will attract customers ready to buy, not general articles targeted to a broader audience.

For example, a SEO agency should have a comprehensive article focused on the keyword “SEO agency” or “SEO services” rather than general “SEO” content. Companies searching for “SEO agency” are much more likely to purchase.

“Most SaaS businesses sell to advanced customers — people who have been in their industry for years. They’re not starting from a knowledge level of zero. And therefore, most top of the funnel content (which usually covers introductory level ‘why this is important’or “’ultimate guide to this niche’ topics) is below their knowledge level — they already know all that stuff.”