Marketing Examples - Marketing Examples #045

#045 - Growth Loops

(Growth Loops • 3 mins • Read on website)

Before we get into any marketing I want to say my thoughts are with America, black people especially, right now. RIP George Floyd.

* * *

Ask a marketer, ”How does my product grow?” They'll reply:

Ads, affiliates, sales, social, yada yada yada

They're describing top-down growth. Your classic funnel. Pour more in. Get more out. Here's the problem.

• Acquiring new customers from scratch is hard

• Funnels flow in one direction

• Growth is linear

The best marketers think less about funnels. More about loops.

Loops feed themselves. The actions of one user create an output which create a new user.

Let's look at some examples.

1) Personal viral loop

Some products improve with more users. So there's a personal incentive to invite new users.

e.g. Fantasy football, Slack, Trello

2) Financial viral loop

Some products have financial incentives to invite new users.

e.g. Dropbox, PayPal, Tesla

3) Social viral loop

Some products are so good, people just like talking about them.

e.g. DoubleTree, Stripe, Game of Thrones

4) User generated content loop

Some products leverage users content to grow their own organic traffic.

e.g. Quora, Reddit, Stack Overflow

5) Physical content loop

Some products attract new users simply by being noticeable. Lime's bright green is not a coincidence.

e.g. Lime, Square, ChargedUp

6) Supply-side content loop

Some products incentivise users to promote their content for them.

e.g. Meetup, ProductHunt, Typeform, SurveyMonkey

7) Embedded loop

Some products grow by embedding themselves on other platforms.

e.g. Trustpulse, Intercom, Algolia

* * *

Most people think you build the product then you market it. Thinking in loops means you build the marketing into the product.

The product doesn't precede the marketing. The product is the marketing

Big credit to Brian Balfour and Casey Newton. They've written some great stuff on Growth Loops. This newsletter was my summary.

Thanks for reading, Harry

Sent from my iPhone ;)

Stuff worth reading

No sponsor this week. Instead, I want to share 3 articles I really like from black marketers and founders.

1) The Psychology of Design — Dan Benoni

2) How to brainstorm business ideas — Courtland Allen

3) 0-50,000 with no marketing budget — Sabba Keynejad

The moment you've all been waiting for...

Big thanks to everyone who entered the competition last week.

We have a winner. Congratulations Harit. The books are on their way!

If you enjoyed the newsletter please show some love on Twitter or forward to your friends. It really does help :)

Anyone who got forwarded this. Welcome aboard. More articles here. Or you can subscribe here :)

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Marketing Examples - Marketing Examples #045

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