Today’s post comes from guest author Lauralynn Stubler, a growth marketer who’s been helping out 500 Startups’ brand new Batch 17 survive our Accelerator program’s (in)famous Marketing Hell Week.

Batch 17 Marketing Hell Week is over, but the learnings from our startup resources have just begun….

Today we’re sharing some key takeaways on how to grow a startup from our recent Marketing Hell Week roster of speakers.

HOW TO GROW A STARTUP – THE QUICK TIPS

“Start with running A/A tests to test your tools.”

— Hiten Shah on A/B Testing

Click-to-tweet: http://ctt.ec/hK6zd

A/A testing is often overlooked but it’s an excellent method of double-checking the effectiveness of your A/B testing software. A/A testing is the tactic of using A/B testing to test identical versions of a page against each other. In an A/A test, the tool should report no difference in conversions between the control and variation after enough conversions have been logged.

“Optimize ad spend for power users to maximize ROI with a limited budget.”

(Daniel Riaz on Customer Segmentation)

Click-to-tweet: http://ctt.ec/16N6t

By identifying and understanding your power users, you can optimize your marketing spend by targeting those who match their profile.

YOU ARE YOUR COMPANY’S BEST GROWTH HACKER

“Growing users without having those users complete the core action is the empty calories of growth. It feels good but it’s not good for you.”

— Sarah Tavel on B2C Engagement Hierarchy

Click-to-tweet: http://ctt.ec/ySc2c

If they nibble it doesn’t mean they are hooked. It’s not enough to drive traffic to your website, you actually need your users to take a specific action. And not just any action, but the ones that are in line with your objectives.

“The most important part of your dashboard is the janitorial work. The janitor updates the data every day and keeps the data clean. If you are going to build a dashboard and not keep it clean, don’t build a dashboard.”

— Susan Coelius on Remarketing

Click-to-tweet: http://ctt.ec/hyQeC

Pretty dashboards that tell all-the-things are great, if you need to know all-the-things. If not, it becomes a bloated daily chore that you begin to de-prioritize. Which makes the data, at worse, useless. And at best, something you need to spend time updating before you can see the whole picture. Keep it simple so you can update it on a regular basis.

INSIGHTS ON COMMON STARTUP RESOURCES

“People don’t go to FB to make decisions, they go to FB to avoid making decisions. Educating customers/generating leads is a better use of FB ads – give them value to build relationships instead of being aggressive and trying to make a sale.”

— Armando Biondi on Facebook Ads for Startups

Click-to-tweet: http://ctt.ec/H66d2

While our ultimate goal with paid acquisition is to land the deal, it’s a truth that most consumers need more than one touch before making a decision. Providing valuable content to your Facebook audience, rather than pushing a product, is a great way to nudge them through your activation funnel quicker.

“Avoid money in Referrals: Bringing up money changes context for users from social norms to market norms.”

— Ivan Kirgin on Referral Marketing

Click-to-tweet: http://ctt.ec/xVaNf

If you’re unclear about social vs market norms, consider this from a different angle. What would happen if you asked your dinner guests to bring a specific cash donation instead of a bottle of wine?

So, in other words, by offering money your referral incentive goes from “I share because I’m a caring person” to “Is this worth taking advantage of my network?” Figure out the best motivation for your customers to share your product, and capitalize on that thing. Sharing is actually a pretty big ask, and not everyone cares about a couple of bucks off.

“Case in point: Twitter. If you don’t fix retention, you’ll run out of Internet to acquire.”

— Casey Winters on Retention

Click-to-tweet: http://ctt.ec/inwH7

There has been a shift in focus recently from acquiring new users to retaining existing users. It’s more costly to convince a new lead to become a user, and it’s downright agonizing to reactivate a churned user. Keep your customers, find out what makes them happy about your product. Then you can focus on acquiring new users who will undoubtedly stick around longer.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be publicly releasing all our Marketing Hell Week videos.

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How to Grow a Startup, Marketing Hell Week Edition