Growth Hacking Lessons from Doublie’s Shane Walker
by: Marisa Lin
This past Friday, Shane Walker of Doublie gave the second in a series of workshops on Growth Hacking that are offered for StartX founders. A Fall 2014 alum of the program, Doublie discussed techniques to help founders expand their consumer base through social media.
What’s in a tagline? According to Walker, a company’s tagline has a lot to do with it’s growth. “If you don’t give a very clear, almost shocking message,” Walker said, “it’s not going to work.” Take the case of a social media app that went viral but was not growing as fast as expected. The problem, said Walker, was that by the time the product had reached the third round of users, its message became so unclear in that the features distinguishing the product from its competitors were lost on potential consumers. “To users, it was just another SnapChat.” Walker’s advice: rigorously test taglines, using tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Consumer Panels to gauge the effectiveness of your message.
Hand-in-hand with refining a tagline is knowing your users. Facebook Audience Insights can offer crucial information about the demographics, personalities, and likes of your current audience. Using this feature, Walker showed how Yik Yak, an anonymous social media posting app, was popular among people who like the Stanford University Facebook page, reflecting the popularity of the app among college students. In other words, knowing what’s popular with users can yield insights about how to market a product.
Marketing a product, however, means understanding the motivations users have to share a particular product with friends. Viral proposition testing, which involves polling them against each other, is a great way to tease out what motivates users to share. This enables you to gather a “series of solid tactics” to focus on.
Other strategies Walker talked about involve creating custom audiences and lookalikes to retain current users and identify potential new ones through Facebook. Custom audiences enable companies to keep current users captivated by re-engaging them wherever they go on Facebook. Lookalikes allow companies to expand their audience by finding new potential users based the behavior of their most valuable users.
Finally, Walker talked about Facebook video ads, Unity Applifier ads, and attribution of users who click on a link and download a particular app. The moral of the story? There’s tons of tools for measurement, but for gaining real insights that can help you grow, it’s a great asset to have expertise on your side.
Walker’s next workshop will be held on April 17 at StartX.
