How to create a growth playbook that works with Sujan Patel

Sujan Patel, founder of Mailshake and the agency Web Profits

If you’ve ever run or worked at a startup, you know that growth is a messy process. There are a million “hacks” to try and only so many resources at any given time. So is there a proven strategy for taking the overwhelm out of growth?

There is, and our friend and Crowdcast customer Sujan Patel joined us on Talks the other week to share with us just this. Having successfully grown his own SaaS companies, helped Fortune 500 businesses like LinkedIn and Zillow, and assisted other companies through his agency, Web Profits, Sujan has gained a reputation for being one of the leading digital marketers out there today with over 13 years of experience under his belt.

So what’s his growth framework? Here are the steps Sujan has successfully used to help big brands and startups alike grow online.

A growth process that works

1. Understand your funnel. What are the steps of your funnel? What are your conversion rates? Where are people dropping off?
2. Understand user personas. Who are your customers? What are their biggest problems — both involving your product and in their lives in general? What are their biggest goals and challenges?
3. Define your metrics. What are your most important metrics? Pick them early on in your business. Use Dave McClure’s famous (but simple) AARRR metrics as a starting point.
4. Stick to a growth process. Define what really moves the needle, focus, and execute. Be sure to track rigorously along the way with a system that’s simple but useful.
5. Use the right “hacktics” — but sparingly. These can range from using NPS or Qualaroo for product feedback to putting $5 into Facebook ads to drive A/B testing traffic. Use hacks only in support of your high-level growth strategies.

More essential tips from Sujan

Here are some more of Sujan’s tried & true growth principles to go from 0 to scale.

1. Work on one growth channel at a time. This is also what Neil Patel recommends. Pick one growth strategy, work on it with unrelenting focus until it works, automate it, and move onto the next channel or technique.
2. If you get awareness and loyalty right, the rest will take care of itself. Every business begins with building awareness and ends with loyalty, or how much people recommend you to their friends. As long as the beginning and end of your funnel are optimized, the rest becomes easier.
3. Don’t prioritize and ideate at the same time. They use different parts of your brain, and are better separated out into designated time for coming up with growth ideas and for prioritizing which to focus on first. Otherwise you’ll take on too much and do too little.
4. For startups, 40% of your time should be spent on growing traffic. Another 40% should be spent on removing bottlenecks to your funnel. And the remaining 20% (and no more) should be spent “throwing things at the wall” to see what sticks.
5. Only spend time creating 10x content. If it’s not 10x, don’t bother. How do you make 10x content? Make it visual. Write stuff that helps your customer become smarter at their job. Use a unique voice that’s true to you. However you do it, make sure you know how it’ll be “10x” quality first. Then create. One epic piece of content per quarter is better than 1 “okay” piece a week or even a month.

Above all, Sujan emphasizes an overlooked insight:

There are no silver bullets to growth.

What gets real results isn’t the trendy new tactic that makes headlines but a deep understanding of your users and sales funnel so you can be focused and smart in your approach to growth.

Want Sujan’s full growth framework? Download the PDF here or watch the replay here.

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