Ex-Google Tech Lead shares his experience in growing a business from 0 to millions of users fast, and his top tips for you to get going too.
All too often, we focus too much on the product we're building, without thinking about the marketing problem. But it turns out that marketing is one of the larger (if not the largest) challenge in starting a business.
What if, when considering a business opportunity, we were to focus more on the challenge of gaining customers, rather than the challenge of the product?
A business may have hundreds of products, half of which will fail, and most of which will be discontinued within a few years. For many businesses, it is not about the product, but about the brand marketing power that generates revenue allowing re-investment into improving a mediocre product over time until it becomes good. Many excellent products fail, and many bad products succeed.
Don't underestimate marketing, make it part of your business plan.
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Video Transcript
(Note: This transcript was auto-generated by YouTube and may not be 100% correct.)
00:00
hey template here and welcome to another
00:01
episode now what we're going to be
00:03
talking about today is how to grow your
00:05
next business into a million users now I
00:09
wanted to remind you guys that I am an
00:10
ex-googler
00:12
lead and I have built a number of
00:14
successful apps that have been able to
00:16
get to millions of users we can take a
00:19
look at the dashboard here you can see
00:21
here that this was one of my apps with
00:23
3.6 million users had another app pure
00:26
iPhone app 25 thousand users another one
00:28
with 15,000 users 40,000 users let's see
00:31
and this was another app with 500,000
00:33
users and I have grown all of these as
00:36
well as having worked for larger
00:38
companies in which there were apps with
00:39
many many more millions of users so I
00:42
would like to think that I know a thing
00:43
or two about how to grow a business from
00:45
zero to millions of users and I'm here
00:47
to give you my top 5 tips on how you too
00:50
can do that as well this video by the
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changed my perspective was one time I
02:39
was building this dating website and I
02:41
started researching this and I realized
02:43
that dating websites are actually
02:46
extremely easy to build and they faced a
02:49
certain class of problem known as the
02:50
chicken and the egg problem in which the
02:53
success of a dating website depends
02:55
purely on how many people you can get on
02:57
there that's it it's a marketing problem
02:59
it's not a technical problem at all so
03:02
that made me realize that there are
03:03
certain classes of businesses that sound
03:06
great at a million users but that don't
03:09
really sound good at 10 users or 100
03:11
users right and so the first thing you
03:14
need to understand is that you need to
03:15
come up with a path that gets your
03:17
business from 0 users to 10 users to 100
03:20
users a thousand users and a million and
03:22
so if you think about like a dating
03:24
website it's really not much fun with
03:26
only 10 users or a hundred users or a
03:28
thousand users but once you can get like
03:31
10 million users on there it starts to
03:32
sound pretty fun and this is something
03:34
that anybody can do but it just costs
03:37
huge amounts of investments in marketing
03:39
and advertising to get that going and
03:41
the challenge the trick is how do you
03:44
grow it to that size and this is really
03:46
not a trivial thing so you have to have
03:48
a good marketing plan in place for your
03:50
product so that's the first thing is to
03:52
understand that marketing is a very
03:54
interesting problem and for some
03:55
businesses it is actually the core
03:57
problem for the business itself I
03:59
remember one time I had collaborated
04:01
with a team member to build this
04:03
framework you know when we were building
04:04
that I said well we got to make this
04:06
really cool landing page and sell it to
04:08
the developers and tried to get a lot of
04:10
people using this stuff and then that
04:12
other developer just didn't seem to care
04:13
and all he did was he put up like a
04:15
readme file like just a plain readme
04:17
text file and then he just launched it
04:19
and said oh an email
04:21
marketing campaign and guess how many
04:23
people actually adopted this product it
04:25
was like 1 or 2 almost nobody was
04:27
interested in using this framework and
04:29
essentially that just tanked the whole
04:31
project so even though this was simply a
04:34
piece of code oftentimes the impact of a
04:36
developer especially if you're working
04:38
and say infra is how many people are
04:40
actually using your code how many people
04:42
are adopting that piece of technology
04:44
that you wrote so in more places that
04:46
you may imagine and actually in all
04:48
aspects of life from say your dating
04:50
life to your personal branding to pieces
04:53
of code that you write to how you
04:54
negotiate and to the businesses that you
04:56
grow marketing has a huge impact on
04:59
anything that you do marketing is very
05:00
important and so you just have to make
05:02
that a priority I know we all just want
05:04
to start building the product and that's
05:06
the most interesting and fun part about
05:07
it but marketing is something that
05:09
cannot be ignored you have to take it
05:11
seriously
05:11
whenever I start on a new project
05:13
actually it is usually spurred by a new
05:16
marketing opportunity so if there's a
05:18
new app platform that opens up say
05:20
Facebook apps open up or iPhone apps
05:23
open up that is a brand new marketing
05:25
opportunity it's not so much the
05:27
technology the technology may be
05:29
interesting and cool too but it is that
05:31
distribution part that actually
05:32
motivates me to jump in and start
05:34
building something
05:35
I won't take on the project if I don't
05:37
have a clear idea about how I'm going to
05:39
get the first hundred users when I
05:41
started the panel apps which is my
05:43
time-lapse photography software
05:44
I had already pre identified a small
05:46
community of photographers who are very
05:49
interested in time-lapse tricks getting
05:51
sliders and motion and all of that stuff
05:53
so I knew right away that if I were to
05:55
build a piece of software I could
05:57
advertise straight to that community of
05:59
people and they would be interested so
06:01
you want to look for niches small sub
06:03
communities like subreddits Facebook
06:05
groups in which you'll be able to talk
06:06
and people will listen if you try to
06:09
talk to everybody you speak to nobody
06:11
now the second tip I have for you is to
06:13
write the current trends in distribution
06:16
and there's always a trend going on
06:17
somewhere these days is quite
06:19
interesting I would say that the trend
06:21
is in influencer marketing you can go
06:23
find youtubers Instagram influencers
06:25
people much like myself and you go as
06:28
them to promote your product so the key
06:31
difference here is that I would say we
06:33
are in an air
06:34
of influencers in the past technology
06:36
had largely been driven by platforms you
06:39
had platforms like Twitter Facebook
06:41
Google+ and essentially it would be
06:43
grassroots campaigns in which you would
06:45
brought has a post that post would be
06:47
shared by many friends and then that
06:48
post would eventually go viral it may go
06:51
Varro around hashtags on Twitter so in
06:54
the old days it was scattered friends
06:55
who would share news and then you would
06:57
say things like oh well you got to go to
06:58
Facebook or Twitter and you would talk
07:00
about these large platforms today the
07:03
difference is that we have gelled into
07:05
communities centered around influencers
07:07
and there's not so much the platform but
07:10
it is the influencer who you should be
07:12
talking to that is the person you
07:14
advertise with there used to be
07:16
something called bloggers and you would
07:18
go to these bloggers who ran their own
07:20
little independent websites and you ask
07:22
them to write about your stuff but
07:24
bloggers have kind of faded out these
07:26
days to be replaced by the influencers
07:28
that's who you need to go to that's the
07:30
trend these days and so overall I would
07:31
recommend you check out YouTube Twitter
07:33
Instagram maybe read it find out who the
07:35
influencers are in your specific niche
07:37
and go ask them to promote your stuff
07:40
maybe pay them a little money or
07:41
something like that get that all set up
07:43
for you not the third tip I have for you
07:45
about how you can grow your business is
07:46
to be genuine being genuine is trending
07:51
these days I would say you know in the
07:53
old days used to be all corporate speak
07:55
people hid behind this bill and
07:57
customers seem to appreciate that they
07:59
thought it sounded professional but
08:01
these days there's been sort of a
08:03
backlash against corporatism so this is
08:06
about building a natural relationship
08:08
with your customers your audience your
08:10
viewers how are you guys doing over
08:12
there say hi to your mom for me I want
08:15
to show you lose something that kind of
08:16
surprised me when I first saw this but
08:18
there's something called the style and
08:20
tone guide for large companies and we
08:24
take a look at what Google has here they
08:26
say that even for them officially they
08:28
want you to aim for a conversational
08:30
tone rather than a formal one be human
08:33
let your personality show be memorable
08:36
you can even be a little funny now in
08:38
then they say aim for a voice in tone as
08:40
conversational friendly and respectful a
08:43
voice that's casual and that
08:45
and approachable and you can see that
08:47
this is actually reflected in other
08:48
documentation as well if you check out
08:50
MailChimp at mail chip we've walked in
08:53
our customers shoes using offbeat humor
08:55
and the conversational voice we play
08:57
with language to bring joy to work we
08:59
don't take ourselves too seriously
09:01
we are plain spoken we are genuine so if
09:04
the way you are communicating with your
09:05
customer is very formal and you think
09:07
that's professional it's actually not
09:09
you're actually damaging your brand and
09:11
you are distancing yourself from your
09:13
customer and you're just being very
09:15
corporate faceless non-genuine entity
09:19
and you lose that chance to develop a
09:21
more human personal relationship with
09:23
your customer which your competitors
09:26
probably are doing so that's the current
09:28
trend these days if you're trying to act
09:30
out corporate and professional then just
09:31
stop that right now now my fourth tip
09:33
for you is the optimize your conversion
09:35
funnel so maybe you set up this
09:37
beautiful landing web page you want to
09:39
make sure that as people are entering
09:40
your website you aren't losing them and
09:42
this is something that you have to
09:43
really be mindful of about I want to
09:46
show you some interesting landing pages
09:47
here actually if you take a look at the
09:49
landing page for Amazon it's quite
09:51
interesting actually that when you get
09:53
towards the purchase flow you'll find
09:55
that nothing on the page becomes
09:56
clickable anymore except the continue
09:58
button in which you can continue to buy
10:00
stuff the Amazon logo that banner you
10:02
can't click on it they just remove that
10:04
so you don't keep going backwards
10:06
even this learn more button if you ever
10:08
tap on that it just opens a brand new
10:10
window in the pop-up but it doesn't
10:12
actually redirect me from this site once
10:14
I get into this portion it just follows
10:16
me straight into the portion where I
10:18
have to place an order you want to
10:20
minimize the number of clicks that your
10:22
user has to make if you check out my
10:23
website here I don't even have a cart I
10:25
just asked for your credit card number
10:27
and then there's a Buy Now button right
10:29
there which completes the whole
10:30
purchasing process for you it's one
10:32
click by essentially accessibility is
10:34
something that I think a lot of people
10:36
underestimate and what you want to make
10:38
sure that your site is easy and simple
10:41
to access for anybody and you want to be
10:43
thinking about people like your mom for
10:45
instance with someone like that be able
10:47
to navigate your app your business your
10:49
website and really understand it and go
10:52
through the whole flow for example if I
10:54
were to build a website many
10:55
so I would just use a standard button
10:57
I'm not going to try to customize it and
10:59
make it look all cool and shiny and
11:00
round it because then it doesn't really
11:02
look like a button anymore right and
11:04
people may not know that that's
11:05
clickable and that whole entry should be
11:08
fun simple clean and understandable now
11:10
the fifth point here is you want to
11:12
consider what people like to call the
11:14
viral loop right which is the flow in
11:17
which when the user gets into your app
11:19
or your business or whatever it is how
11:21
are they going to spread that through
11:22
word-of-mouth and you want to make it as
11:25
easy as possible for people to share
11:27
your stuff so don't underestimate
11:28
building out this referral process in
11:30
which you can give people some goodies
11:33
and bonuses in exchange for them sharing
11:36
your service with their friends their
11:37
family you know I have spent tens of
11:40
thousands of dollars on advertising a
11:42
lot of that stuff doesn't really work
11:44
like I'm not sure if I've ever gotten
11:46
any payoff that felt really tangible to
11:49
me for advertising whereas if a product
11:52
is really good then it will be able to
11:54
grow on its own and that is really how
11:56
you get massive amounts of growth right
11:58
if your goal is to get like say five
12:01
hundred thousand users you're not going
12:03
to get to that amount by paying for
12:04
every single user it's just going to
12:06
cost way too much so you have to make
12:08
sure that there's a way for your
12:09
business to grow in sort of a viral way
12:12
exponential way without you having to
12:14
pay for each single person so for a lot
12:16
of the apps and games I make I always
12:18
take into consideration the time to
12:20
build some sort of referral process in
12:22
which people can have a special link if
12:24
they were to share that they would get
12:25
some in-app goodies some virtual items
12:27
virtual goods something that would just
12:29
incentivize people to help grow that
12:31
product let me know what your top tips
12:33
are on growing a business if you like
12:35
the video give the like and subscribe
12:36
and I will see you next time bye