The Growth Framework ⏫

The three-part growth framework.

October 26, 2022

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Welcome to "note to self" #9 focused on marketing and growth in web3. 💻

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Today we're discussing the growth framework. Let's dig in 🍽

Growth Framework - an overview

Growth is fundamental to any business, and among many things, understanding growth is definitely about two things.

  1. A fundamental understanding of your product. Why do people use your product?

  2. A simple framework for your growth work ( great things are simple ). A simple framework allows teams to prioritise work, build products, and design effective data-driven experiments to iterate on their product(s).

Growth should progress on the basis of hard data, through data-driven experimented growth and qualitative data gathered from talking to customers/users, rather than assumptions regarding your product and what you think customers want. As Chamath Palihapitiya ( who led the first Facebook growth team ) states “invalidate lore…. & pursue growth backed by empirical evidence”

A large part of growth is about building virality into products, and virality has provided incredible success for many companies ( think Dropbox, Loom, PayPal ), but this should only be considered once the product has been confirmed a must-have for your customer. You must focus on building a great product before instrumenting virality, and focus on whether it’s a must-have or not, why it’s a must-have, and to whom it is a must-have.

Three-part growth framework:

Before we dive in, even though I'm not discussing web3-centric methods to growth, the following are fundamental to any business that wants to achieve growth, whether your OpenSea or OpenTable.

I think that there are three fundamental aspects of growth that consumer products should deal with, before even thinking about referrals and product virality, and companies should pursue these aspects of growth.

1. Getting people in the front door

The first part of the growth framework is getting people in the front door, or using your product.

Whether it’s done through an organic, paid, or WOM channel, these channels should be experimented with and optimised to acquire customers and keep acquisition efforts as cost-effective as possible. Through experimentation and iteration, the most cost-effective acquisition methods should be identified, and these methods should be optimised to ultimately drive growth.

2. Getting people to the a-ha moment

The second part of the growth framework is getting people to the a-ha moment as quickly as possible (and working out what the a-ha moment is ). The a-ha moment is when the utility of your product clicks for users and they realise the value of it.

If it takes too long for people to get to this point, they will likely give up on your product and not come back, so getting them to the lightbulb moment as quickly as possible is imperative. As ex-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said “An a-ha experience is a necessary ingredient of sustainable growth because it is one that is simply too remarkable not to value, to return to often, and to share”

Think of the first time you used a great product, like Facebook. You instantly saw photos and updates from friends and could share what you were up to. For many people this was the “ah this is cool” moment or the a-ha moment.

3. Delivering core product value

The third part of the growth framework is delivering core product value to customers as often as possible.

This fundamentally relies on providing customers with a great product that continually addresses a need they have, or simply excites them and one they consider a must-have. It’s not hard to understand, if you can deliver consistent value to your customers on a regular basis, they will be more likely to use your product again.

Ensuring that your product always performs its core function well and by layering on additional features and functionality that keep people engaged can prove to be effective. Your product should be designed to meet the needs of your customers.

Growth Case Study: Facebook

Facebook is a great example of a company that went through these core growth steps in its early days. Facebook was able to get users in the front door, provide them with a simple a-ha moment as quickly as possible, and deliver core product value as often as possible. Keep in mind that Facebook's north star metric, set by Mark Zuckerberg, was MAUs ( Monthly Active Users ), not registered user numbers or the number of sign-ups. This kept the whole organisation aligned with its ultimate goal.

In other news: 📰

-> Blog/Pod/Video of the week: All-in pod episode 101.

Next time: ⏭️

Next week I will discuss AI-generated content, the future of AI in marketing, and what it means for the future of marketing.

Have a great week!