7 must-read articles for every growth marketer [week of Sep. 19 ‘16]
This list was originally shared as part of the growth marketing weekly digest, shared with my private email list. To get the full list of must-read articles every week click here.
1. The Five Types of Virality
Estimated reading time: 10mins
This article illustrates very clearly the 5 types of virality that can be applied to any product: Word of Mouth (Google), Incentivized word-of-mouth virality (Dropbox, Paypal), Demonstration virality (Uber, Prisma, Instagram), Infectious virality (Snapchat, Facebook, LinkedIn), Outbreak virality (PokemonGO).
Favorite quote:
“..at the end of the day, there’s only one metric that really matters: How many people are actually using your product. Not downloading it, not clicking on it, not trying it for a day. Actually using it. So your viral techniques all need to be aligned toward the goal of increasing the number of actual users.”
Read more:
If you’re interested in discussions on virality and looking to get deeper into the science of making things go viral you should read Jonah Berger’s Contagious. You won’t be disappointed!
2. How Two Companies Hooked Customers On Products They Rarely Use
Estimated reading time: 9mins
Super interesting article on the 2 ways to keep users engaged through content and community, even if your product is, by its nature, infrequently used.
Favorite quote:
“Rather than trying to make the product into a habit, infrequently used products should build habits around the product.”
Read more:
Nir Eyal brilliantly uncovered the science behind creating habit-forming products that keep users engaged. If you haven’t already, his book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products is a must-read for any product manager, marketer or entrepreneur.
3. How to Supercharge Growth and Overcome Competition with Added Value
Estimated reading time: 14mins
This article discusses some ways for differentiating your product from your competitors. All by leveraging specific points of interaction between your product and your users. The article reference to success stories of companies who managed to create noticeable differentiation and as a result supercharge their growth. For example amazing customer service (Zappos) and loyalty programs (Macy’s).
Favorite quote:
“Literally every aspect of your business can serve as a way to bring additional value to potential and existing customers.”
Read more:
Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, which is the classic startup success story of Zappos.
4. Growth Hacking Case Study — 92,600 Visitors In 7 Days: How We Crashed Our Client’s Servers Riding The Pokemon Go Superwave
Estimated reading time: 9mins
Interesting case-study that showcase how real-time marketing can help you piggyback on the success of other apps. In this case study, the growth team took advantage of the growing interest in Pokemon GO to get more traffic to their client’s site. The case study is missing an important success metric of the total number of subscribers they got thanks to the promotion , which seems more important to me than traffic.
No favorite quote or additional reading with this one. Just a nice case-study that shows once again the benefits of real-time marketing.
5. A Guide to Proven Customer Retention Strategies
Estimated reading time: 6mins
The most interesting part in the article is the massive amount of valuable links included in it. Great and thorough read for getting started with customer retention. The article offers a few steps for improving customer retention, offers a formula and framework for measuring customer retention rates and
Favorite quote:
“Customer retention can be a bit like dating. You don’t treat your significant other the same on your first date as you do on date 50 or date 250. In order to improve retention and make your relationship with your customers last, it is important to address the problems specific to each customer along their journey.”
Read more:
This article offers an amazing list of links for further reading. Read them. You won’t be sorry.
6. Don’t Make These 10 Common Chatbot Marketing Mistakes
Estimated reading time: 6mins
This article covers the basics of chatbots marketing. The article includes possible reasons many chatbots fail to get people to use them (most reasons are true for any product marketing).
Favorite quote:
“Trying to do too much with a bot usually leads to confused users, lack of adoption, and ultimately poorer results for your business and brand”
Read more:
If you’re still new to the bots marketing hype here are a few ones you should read: Here Come the Marketing Bots (by Tom Simonite for MIT Technology review), The Unexpected Ways Chat Bots Could Change Marketing (Adweek) and a great post on bot ethics we should all take in consideration: Hard questions about bot ethics (by Amir Shevat for TechCrunch).
7. The killer feature of messaging no one’s talking about
Estimated reading time: 9mins
The writer of this articles predicts in this article the next phase of purchasing experience through messenger apps, as affected by the chatbots hype. The article suggests a new and improved communication flow and a few examples to bring this whole prediction to life.
Favorite quote:
“Context, not content, is actually king”
Read more:
See more in the previously recommended article.
