7 Times 7 Ways - Rule of Marketing

Marketing's Rule of 7 states that a prospect needs to hear the advertiser’s message at least 7 times before they’ll take action to buy that product or service.

Marketing's 7 x 7 Rule means sharing the message 7 times in 7 different ways.

Using various media helps to ensure people have heard, understood and implemented the message. Different people notice different things every time they see or hear a message, which makes this rule necessary.

It’s a marketing maxim developed by the movie industry in the 1930s.
Studio bosses discovered that a certain amount of advertising and promotion was required to compel someone to see one of their movies.

But, today, without a clearly-defined marketing strategy to map out how you’ll touch that prospect at least 7 times, your odds of success are pretty slim.
In fact, today you might need more than those 7 times just to be heard above all the clutter that’s in people’s Newsfeeds or fields of vision.

Credit:

KruseControlInc.com/rule-of-7-how-social-media-crushes-old-school-marketing/

Quora.com/What-is-the-7-times-7-rule-in-marketing

Implementation-Hub.com/articles/3X3_Rule_Plus_7x7_Rule.pdf

evaluating the various types of Attribution Modeling done for Marketing Analytics

Digital marketing today is scattered - People access from multiple devices, clear cookies, or use multiple browsers, which makes it difficult to track their entire journey.

To understand this, consider below example:
On Monday, a visitor sees your post on Instagram, clicks it, visits your site, and leaves.
On Wednesday, s/he clicks on your ad in IMDb.com, visits your site, and leaves.
On Friday, s/he clicks on a Google Search result, visits your site, and leaves.
On Saturday, s/he types your website's URL in a browser, visit your site, and makes a purchase.

Now, which channel (Insta, IMDb, Google Search, Direct) will you attribute your purchase to?

Attribution Modeling is a framework for analyzing which touchpoint(s) or channel(s) or interaction(s) receive the credit for a conversion.

***** Attribution Models types *****

1.

Last Interaction Attribution or Last-Click or Last-Touch

Though many of the interactions prior to the last-click are important, this model simply ignores them and gives 100% credit to the last interaction of your user before s/he converts on your site/app.

Default attribution model in most platforms, including Google Analytics.

In the case of our example, this model attributes the purchase to direct traffic.

Most accurate.

Simple & Straightforward - Easiest to evaluate.

Fit for those who have a short buying cycle.

It gives a good idea of the strongest channel.

Used if the sales funnel is wide at the top, but narrow at the bottom.

2.
First Interaction Attribution or First-Click

Exactly opposite of Last-click, it gives 100% credit to the first interaction.

In the case of our example, this model attributes the purchase to Insta.

Most accurate.

Simple & Straightforward - Easiest to evaluate.

Fit for those who have a short buying cycle.

If there is a tendency to convert customers immediately, then their first touchpoint is especially important.

Used if the business goal is bringing in new top-of-the-funnel customers.

3. 
Last Non-Direct Click

Exactly the same as Last-click, except that it eliminates any 'direct' interactions that occur right before the conversion.

In the case of our example, this model attributes the purchase to Google Search.

By eliminating the direct traffic, this model assigns value purely to the marketing strategy that led to the conversion.

4. 
Linear Attribution

Splits credit equally between all the interactions.

In the case of our example, this model attributes the purchase equally (25%) to Insta, IMDb, Google Search, Direct.

5. 
Time Decay Attribution

Exactly the same as Linear attribution, except that it also takes into consideration when the touchpoint occurred.
Interactions that occur closer to the time of purchase have more value attributed to them.
The first interaction gets less credit, while the last interaction will get the most.

Fit for those who have a long sales cycle (such as for expensive B2B purchases).

6. 
Position-based Attribution or U-shaped attribution

Exactly the same as Linear attribution, except that 40% weightage is given to 1st interaction, 40% weightage is given to last interaction, and the remaining 20% is equally split between the remaining ones.

In the case of our example, this model attributes the purchase - 40% to Insta, 10% to IMDb, 10% to Google Search, and 40% to Direct.

Fit for businesses that have multiple touchpoints prior to a conversion.

7.
Custom Attribution Models

Google Analytics lets you create these.

Obviously, gives deeper insights.

Difficult to create.

Requires a lot of data.

Used for businesses having long buying cycle and plenty of data.

Credits:

Kaushik.net/avinash/multi-channel-attribution-modeling-good-bad-ugly-models/

NeilPatel.com/blog/best-analytics-attribution-model/
Support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033861

Support.Google.com/analytics/answer/1033861

Support.google.com/analytics/answer/1665189

Support.google.com/analytics/answer/1662518

Support.google.com/analytics/answer/2909452

Support.google.com/analytics/topic/3180362

AgencyAnalytics.com/blog/marketing-attribution-models

Rdio - Music Streaming Product - 2015 Growth Failure story

In this post we will study "Rdio", which was a popular Music Streaming Product that failed miserably.

******* Choronology *******

2010 Aug
Rdio; the first modern music streaming service; was launched by Skype's founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis.
It had to compete with services such as Deezer, MOG, Napster, Rhapsody, and Spotify.
It offered a $5 web-only streaming plan (on the assumption you might not have a mobile device) and a BlackBerry app (in case you had a bad one).
Its catalog was limited to 7M songs, well short of the 30M tracks that it and its rivals now provide.

2013 Sep
Rdio added a music recommendations feature that delivered personalized albums, stations, and playlists.

2014 Jan
Rdio introduced some free streaming options, supported by audio advertisements.

2015 Nov
Rdio filed for bankruptcy.
Reached a deal to sell certain assets and intellectual property to a competitor, Pandora, for $75M.

2015 Dec
Rdio service was discontinued.

******* Experience *******

Using Rdio felt like the future.

Though, securing label deals took so long that the app was in development for two years before it launched, and it showed in the polished product delivered by its team.

Its blue-and-white design was calming.

Its simple grid of album artwork was a powerful rebuttal to iTunes’ nightmare spreadsheets.

It had innovative social features, showing you what your friends were streaming in real time.

It had a "heavy rotation" playlist that highlighted albums based on how many friends had listened to them.

"Social from the ground up — it sounds like marketing speak, but it was legit," said Chris Becherer, Rdio’s head of product. "The founding premise was the best music recommendations come from the people you know. That was the whole idea."

It got music people to explore and listen to more new+old music than they ever had before.
It always surfaced things people didn’t yet know they should be listening to.

Overall an excellent product.

******* Growth & Marketing *******

Early as it was to the United States, Rdio was born in the shadow of Spotify, a cunning and well-financed competitor that excelled at generating buzz — and using that buzz to acquire paid subscribers.

As streaming music became a playground for giants, Rdio turned to a terrestrial radio company in a last-ditch effort to grow the user base.

Ultimately, executives decided that Rdio’s only future lay in becoming part of an internet-based platform, even if it meant disassembling the service they had been building for more than five years.

Even in late 2010, when it began to spread among design-savvy early adopters in San Francisco, people were already talking about the coming launch of Spotify.
The Swedish streaming service wouldn’t launch in America for several months, but it quickly came to define online music in the popular imagination.
Its secret: free on-demand streaming, supported by advertising.
By contrast, Rdio required a paid subscription.

Rdio eventually developed a free tier, but it came long after Spotify launched in the United States.
More pressingly, the company struggled to make the case for its own unique service.

Rdio never had a dedicated marketing chief for more than a few months at a time.
Early on, the company contracted with West, a San Francisco-based agency run by Allison Johnson, Apple’s former head of marketing.
But many people inside the company blamed the lack of in-house marketers on its lack of traction. Later, Mark Ruxin, who joined Rdio after it acquired his app Tastemaker, served in the role.
But he only served in it for a few months before leaving.

By 2013, Spotify had rocketed to 24 million users, 6 million of whom paid.

Struggling to stand out, Rdio turned to Cumulus Media, which operated 525 terrestrial radio stations.

Cumulus took a large equity stake in the company; in return, its sales force began selling ads for Rdio, which enabled the company to finally offer the free, ad-supported version of the service that Spotify had been offering in various forms since 2008.

Cumulus also promised to promote Rdio on its popular stations.

But the resulting signups were apparently nothing to brag about.

******* Feature Prioritization *******

Rdio sometimes focused on the wrong things.

It invested many product cycles in refining its queue — a place to collect things you want to listen to later.

Every other music streaming service offers a queue that’s a simple list of tracks.

But if you dragged an album or a playlist into Rdio’s queue, Rdio would recognize it as a distinct object, so you could drag and drop an album above a track, or a full playlist below an album.

"That was not a major differentiating factor," says Wilson Miner (Design Head) "If we hadn’t had something like that, nobody would have noticed and it would have been fine. I still wish we could have solved it, but it was more of a personal quest than a brutally honest assessment of priorities."

******* Leadership & Radio-focus *******

Jun 2013, just before the Cumulus deal was announced, Rdio CEO Drew Larner announced he was stepping down.

Former employees say Larner was never totally comfortable being CEO; his expertise was in dealmaking, and he thought the company needed a leader whose talents lay in product and user growth.

Malthe Sigurdsson, its head of product and the person who oversaw its innovative design efforts, quit a month after Larner.

In Nov, Rdio laid off a third of its staff.

And while development on the core product continued, it increasingly felt radio-focused.

In August it added live radio stations to the app, a move designed to capitalize on the success of iHeartRadio, an app developed by the company formerly known as Clear Channel.

Earlier this month, Cumulus wrote down its investment in Rdio by $19 million.

******* Economics of Music *******

The economics of streaming music are brutal. Record labels have nearly all the leverage, and take most of the gross revenue from streaming services.

The only way to win is to achieve a massive scale — which is why Spotify has raised more than $1 billion, spending heavily to add subscribers in hopes they will lead to a sustainable business.

Rdio realized this only belatedly.

"Rdio, I guess, made the mistake of trying to be sustainable too early," Wilson Miner says. "That classic startup mistake of worrying about being profitable and having a business that makes any sense before you’ve reached this astronomical growth curve. Which is partly the trap of the business model itself. Because of the content licensing deals, the margins for the business were so incredibly thin. No matter what we did, the labels made the lion’s share of the revenue. You have to make it up with extreme volume, which is why you see Spotify going after every human being in the world."

And yet even with more than 75 million users and 20 million paid users, Spotify still isn’t profitable. It remains to be seen whether Apple or Google can turn their own streaming offerings into viable businesses — or whether they will simply use music as a loss leader to draw consumers further into their respective ecosystems, making the money back on hardware sales or other services.

******* Cause of Death *******

Multiple!
Marketing failure, Growth failure, and Leadership failure.

Niklas Zennström

Credits:

Linkedin.com/in/drew-larner-5b51bb34/
Linkedin.com/in/wilsonminer/
Linkedin.com/in/becherer/
Linkedin.com/in/malthe/
Linkedin.com/in/niklaszennstrom/
En.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Rdio
TheVerge.com/2015/11/17/9750890/rdio-shutdown-pandora

Contrast Climate Pricing - Sales & Marketing strategy - Micro-Economics at play

I this post I would like to discuss a Sales Strategy that I recently gathered from Peter Thomson's video...

Before you quote the price to the consumer, create a contrast; aka climate; for the same, because otherwise, the price will either look too cheap or too expensive to the user, basis their prior experience.

Setting up the climate means to inform the user of the monetary value of:

[a]
Advantages that s/he would get by using your product

[b]
Effort or Cost that went into preparing the given product/service

or, in the worst case the monetary value of:
[c]
Disadvantages that s/he would get by not using your product

******************

So, for example, Peter himself uses this strategy while sales-pitching his seminars to his TG.

Instead of saying:
The ticket price for my seminar on <skill name> is $50."

He says:
"I've spent over $100k
learning this <skill name>
by buying online courses, video programs, audio podcasts, books, attending seminars, paying for coachings, etc.
I've also tested all that knowledge in the real market.
And, now, I would like to share
the same knowledge; that I have put in one place; with you in my seminar -
The ticket price for which is $50 only."

Credits:

Amazon.com/Sales-Letters-Sizzle-Herschell-Gordon/dp/0844235474

Linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6467700251707957248

YouTube.com/watch?v=RXc3K-4Wsf0

Loss Leader - Pricing & Marketing strategy - Micro-Economics at play

A Loss leader is a marketing & pricing strategy.

Here, a product or service that is offered at a price that is not profitable.

Usually the product is priced lower than its production cost.

It is also called Penetration pricing as the manufacturer attempts to penetrate the market by pricing its products low.

The loss leader is usually a product that customers purchase frequently, and thus they are aware that its unusually low price is a bargain.

Purpose:

1.

To attract new customers.

2.

To sell additional products and services to those customers.

3.

To force competitors out of business.

4.

Hope is that once the customer buys the product from the store/website/brand, s/he will buy other products and become loyal to the store/website/brand.

5.

Some retailers place loss leaders at the back of their stores so consumers will have to walk by other, more expensive products to get to them.

6.

Introductory pricing can also be a loss leader, where company offers a low introductory rate to entice clients to use a product. Then, after snagging the client, the company raises its prices.

Examples:

1.

Gillette gives their razor units away for free knowing that customers must buy their replacement blades, which is where the company makes its profit.

2.

Microsoft's Xbox One video game console.

It was sold at a low margin per unit, as Microsoft knew that there was potential to profit from the sale of video games with higher margins and subscriptions to the company's Xbox Live service.

Flipkart selling essential goods at Rupee 1

Risks & Failures:

1.

Loss leader pricing fails for those some consumers who leave without buying other products or subscribing to the brand. This consumer practice of jumping from shop to shop and picking up loss leader items is called Cherry Picking.

2.

Considered a controversial strategy, loss leading is banned in 50% of U.S. states and some European countries.

3.

Usually the small-business competitors (biz owners) are hit most badly when a large corp. decides to go loss-leading way for some of its products.

4.

Even the suppliers to companies who follow a loss leader strategy experience pressure to keep their own prices low so that the company using a loss leader strategy can continue to do so.

5.
Customers can stockpile the loss leaders.
or
Even the small businesses can stockpile the loss leaders.
To counter such risks the loss leaders should be provided with limits.

Credits:

Investopedia.com/terms/l/lossleader.asp

En.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader

New Coke - the epic 1985 Product failure of Coca-Cola (lecture 2 of 2)

in this post, we will try to do the RCA-postmortem to understand why did the 'New-Coke' fail.

You can read the failure-story here:
New Coke - the epic 1985 Product failure of Coca-Cola - part 1 of 2

Following are some of the failure reasons, that I've gathered from multiple sources:

1.
The Coca-Cola Company's apparently sudden reversal on New Coke also led to conspiracy theories, including this one: The company intentionally changed the formula, hoping consumers would be upset with the company, and demand the original formula to return, which in turn would cause sales to spike. Keough answered this speculation by saying "We're not that dumb, and we're not that smart."

2.
Later research, however, suggested that it was not the return of Coca-Cola Classic, but instead the nearly unnoticed introduction of Cherry Coke, which appeared almost simultaneously with New Coke, that can be credited with the company's success in 1985.

3.
The Coca-Cola Company concluded that it had underestimated the public reaction of the portion of the customer base that would be alienated by the switch. The company failed to consider the public's attachment to the idea of what Coke's old formula represented.

4.
Brands are more than a list of individual physical characteristics and so it is highly dangerous to focus on a single product attribute (e.g. taste). Our brains respond to implicit/psychological goals such as reassurance and conformism that we associate with a brand. These implicit goals help differentiate brands that may be very similar to each other in terms of physical characteristics. Coca-Cola had been telling consumers that Coke was “it” and “the real thing” for many years and now New Coke completely undermined this strategy by changing the formula and discontinuing old Coke. Little thought appeared to have been given to the attitudes of customers and that they might prefer tradition and stability over novelty. In the USA in-particular, Coca-Cola has a strong symbolic meaning and is seen as a cultural icon by some consumers. This contributed to the sense of loss when old Coke was discontinued.

5.
People are motivated to buy brands by implicit/psychological goals that conventional market research struggles to identify. Conventional market research relies on responses from the conscious mind & hence, usually fails to trace the implicit/psychological goals, because it relies on direct questioning which generates a response from our slow, rational mind - However, our attention is largely activated by our quick, intuitive brain. People don’t have full access to their psychological motivations and instead post-rationalize decisions when asked to explain a choice.

6.
The blind taste test completely ignored the influence of brand perception as participants weren’t informed of the brand until after they had stated their preference. Indeed, a 2003 study using the implicit research technique fMRI found that the results of the Pepsi Challenge were reversed when respondents were shown the packaging of the product they were drinking.

7.
Psychological research has repeatedly shown that people are more concerned about avoiding a loss than making a gain. By withdrawing old Coke customers felt an emotional loss of a brand they had probably consumed since childhood and scarcity magnified this loss. When old Coke was withdrawn there were stories of people going around and buying up old stock and selling it on for up to three times the normal price.

8.
Coca-Cola was such an established and well-known brand that many loyal customers saw it as part of their identity. Conforming to your tribe or in-group is an important motivator of behavior.  The market research ignored the importance of identification and herd-instinct with relation to brand loyalty.

9.
The mere-exposure effect means that people associate familiarity with safety. Coca-Cola was such a familiar brand to so many people that New Coke was always going to struggle to replace such a strong brand. People perceived them to be separate brands as old Coke was so entrenched in their psyche.

a 1930s print-advertisement of Coca-Cola

Credit:

Coca-colacompany.com/news/the-story-of-one-of-the-most-memorable-marketing-blunders-ever

Motherjones.com/food/2019/07/what-if-weve-all-been-wrong-about-what-killed-new-coke/

Vox.com/2015/4/23/8472539/new-coke-cola-wars

Alistapart.com/article/what-the-failure-of-new-coke-can-teach-us-about-user-research-and-design/

Conversion-uplift.co.uk/new-coke-market-research-fail/

New Coke - the epic 1985 Product failure of Coca-Cola (lecture 1 of 2)

In order to understand why the New Coke introduced by the Coca-cola company in 1985 failed miserably; even when the launch of a new drink is as logical today as it was back then for the company, given the acute market competition; we need to understand the chronology of the events...

1945 onward

Coca-cola was the #1 brand in the soft-drinks market with a 60% market share.

1961

Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by PepsiCo. Originally created and developed in 1893 by Caleb Bradham and introduced as Brad's Drink, it was renamed as Pepsi-Cola in 1898, and then shortened to Pepsi in 1961.

1963

TaB; 1st diet cola soft drink; was launched by The Coca-Cola Company, introduced in 1963 - Tab was notably popular throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and several variations were made, including a number of fruit-flavored, root beer, caffeine-free, and ginger ale versions.

The Coca-Cola Company had a long-standing policy to not use the Coca-Cola name on any product other than the flagship cola - That's why the name didn't have Cola in its name.

Following studies in the early 1970s that linked saccharin, TaB's main sweetener, with bladder cancer in rats, the United States Congress mandated warning labels on products containing the sweetener. The label requirement was later repealed when no plausibility was found for saccharin causing cancer in humans.

 1964

Diet-Pepsi premiered into the cola market.

1970

Pepsi introduced the Pepsi Challenge - a blind taste test which showed most Americans preferred Pepsi to Coke by a margin of 53% to 47% (because Pepsi was sweeter than Coke as it contained more sugar).

1980

The overall market for colas steadily declined in the early 1980s, as consumers increasingly purchased diet and non-cola soft drinks, many of which were sold by Coca-Cola themselves. This trend eroded Coca-Cola's market share.

1982

Diet-Cola premiered into the cola market (It was the 1st brand since 1886 to use the Coca-Cola trademark - It was after the long-term success of Diet Pepsi became clear to Coca-Cola that it decided to launch this sugar-free brand under the Coca-Cola name, which could be marketed more easily than TaB) - Diet Coke did not use a modified form of the Coca-Cola recipe, but instead an entirely different formula based on the TaB formula.

It quickly overtook TaB, in sales.

1983

Coca-cola was still the #1 brand, but only with a 24% market share - largely because of competition from Pepsi-Cola.

Pepsi had begun to outsell Coke in supermarkets.

Coke maintained its edge only through soda vending machines and fountain sales in fast-food restaurants, concessions, and sports venues where Coca-Cola had purchased the 'pouring rights'.

1984

Coca-cola was still the #1 brand.

Pepsi had used aggressive celebrity endorsements from the likes of Michael Jackson and hip advertising music to position itself as The choice of the new generation - It was this time that the phrase Pepsi Generation became popular - This helped Pepsi’s market share to gradually increase with a rate that and could have overtaken Coke by 1990.

Coca-Cola decided to conduct market research to better understand consumers’ preferences. This indicated that “taste” was the main reason for the decline in Coke’s popularity.

Coca-Cola's senior executives commissioned a secret research project dubbed Project Kansas headed by marketing VP Sergio Zyman and Coca-Cola USA president Brian Dyson to create a new flavor for Coke. Coca-cola CEO decided to develop a new formula; named New Coke; which would have more sugar than old-Coke and Pepsi. They then conducted over 200k blind taste tests, surveys, and focus groups to confirm that people preferred the new/sweet Coke over both old-Coke and Pepsi - and the results were overwhelmingly positive - Thought only about ~12% of testers felt angry and alienated at the thought, and said they might stop drinking Coke altogether.

23 April 1985

New Coke was launched - It used a version of the Diet Coke recipe that contained high fructose corn syrup and had a slightly different balance of ingredients.
Old Coke was discontinued - Production of the original formulation was ended (because coca-cola didn’t want to have two competing products at the same time).

In many areas, New Coke was initially introduced in old-Coke packaging - Bottlers used up remaining cans, cartons and labels before new packaging was widely available - Old cans containing New Coke were identified by their gold-colored tops, while glass and plastic bottles had red caps instead of silver and white, respectively. Bright yellow stickers indicating the change were placed on the cartons of can multi-packs.

The press conference at New York City to introduce the new formula did not go well - Reporters had already been fed questions by Pepsi, which was worried that New Coke would erase its gains - Goizueta, Coca-Cola's CEO, described the new flavor as bolder, rounder, and more harmonious, and defended the change by saying that the drink's secret formula was not sacrosanct and inviolable - A reporter asked whether Diet Coke would also be reformulated assuming is a success, to which Goizueta curtly replied: "No. And I didn't assume that this is a success. This is a success."

Coca-cola's stock went up on the announcement.

Coke's sales were up 8% over the same period as the year before.

Most Coke drinkers resumed buying the new Coke at much the same level as they had the old one.

Surveys indicated that the majority of old-Coke drinkers liked the new-Coke.

3/4th of the survey respondents said they would buy New Coke again.

Despite New Coke's acceptance with a large number of Coca-Cola drinkers, many more resented the change in formula and were not shy about making that known - Many of these drinkers were Southerners (where Coke was first bottled and tasted), some of whom considered Coca-Cola a fundamental part of their regional identity. They viewed the company's decision to change the formula through the prism of the Civil War, as another surrender to the Yankees.

Coca-Cola headquarters began receiving (40k) letters and telephone calls expressing anger or deep disappointment - One letter, delivered to Goizueta, was addressed to "Chief Dodo, The Coca-Cola Company" - Another letter asked for his autograph, as the signature of "one of the dumbest executives in American business history" - Their hotline, 1-800-GET-COKE, received over 1.5k calls a day compared to around 400 before - A psychiatrist whom Coke had hired to listen in on calls told executives that some people sounded as if they were discussing the death of a family member.

Columnists also ridiculed the new flavor and damned the Coke's executives for having changed it. Comedians and talk show hosts made regular jokes mocking the switch. Ads for New Coke were booed heavily when they appeared on the scoreboard. Even Fidel Castro, a longtime Coca-Cola drinker called New Coke a sign of American capitalist decadence. Goizueta's father expressed similar misgivings to his son.

Gay Mullins, a Seattle retiree looking to start a public relations firm with $120k of borrowed money, formed the organization Old Cola Drinkers of America on May 28 to lobby Coca-Cola to either reintroduce the old formula or sell it to someone else - His organization eventually received over 60,000 phone calls - He also filed a class-action lawsuit against the company (which was quickly dismissed by a judge because, in two informal blind taste tests, Mullins failed to distinguish New Coke from old or expressed a preference for New Coke).

Despite ongoing resistance in the South, New Coke continued to do well in the rest of the country.

Now, the Coca-cola executives were uncertain of how international markets would react, and when the executives met with international Coke bottlers in Monaco they were not interested in selling New Coke.

Pepsi-Cola took advantage of the situation, running ads in which a first-time Pepsi drinker exclaimed, "Now I know why Coke did it!". Pepsi took out a full-page ad in The New York Times proclaiming that Pepsi had won the long-running "Cola Wars".

But Pepsi actually gained very few long-term converts, despite a 14% sales increase over the same month the previous year, the largest sales growth in the company's history.

Coca-Cola's director, Carlton Curtis, realized that consumers were more upset about the withdrawal of the old formula than the taste of the new one. 

mid-June 1985

When soft drink sales usually start to rise, the new Coke's numbers were flat.

Coca-Cola's chemists also quietly reduced the acidity level of the new formula, hoping to assuage complaints about the flavor and allow its sweetness to be better perceived.

Couple of bottlers were also suing Coca-Cola which had argued in its defense that the formula's uniqueness and difference from Diet Coke justified different pricing policies from the latter – but if the new formula was simply an HFCS-sweetened Diet Coke, Coca-Cola could not argue the formula was unique.

The bottlers also saw great difficulty having to promote and sell a drink that had long been marketed as "The Real Thing", constant and unchanging, now that it had been changed.

Bottlers and their acquaintances/friends/relatives, particularly in the South, were also tired of facing personal opprobrium & ostracization over the change.

23 June 1985

Several of the bottlers took these complaints to Coca-Cola executives in a private meeting.

Talks about reintroducing the old formula moved from if to when.

the Coca-Cola board decided to bring back the old-Coke - Company president Donald Keough revealed years later, that they realized this was the only right thing to do when they visited a small restaurant in Monaco and the owner proudly said they served the real thing, it's a real Coke, offering them a chilled 6 and 1/2 oz. glass bottle of original/old Coca-Cola.

11 July 1985

Coca-Cola executives announced the return of the original formula, 79 days after New Coke's introduction.

The company hotline received 31.6k calls in the two days after the announcement.

The new-Coke continued to be marketed/sold as Coke until 1992, when it was renamed Coke II.

The old-coke was named Coca-Cola Classic, and for a short time it was referred to by the public as Old Coke.

Some who tasted the reintroduced formula were not convinced that the first batches really were the same formula that had supposedly been retired that spring. This was true for a few regions, because Coca-Cola Classic differed from the original formula in that all bottlers who hadn't already done so were using high fructose corn syrup instead of cane sugar to sweeten the drink, though most had by this time.

"There is a twist to this story which will please every humanist and will probably keep Harvard professors puzzled for years," said Keough at a press conference. "The simple fact is that all the time and money and skill poured into consumer research on the new Coca-Cola could not measure or reveal the deep and abiding emotional attachment to original Coca-Cola felt by so many people."

end of 1985

Coca-Cola Classic was substantially outselling both New Coke and Pepsi.

Six months after the rollout, Coke's sales had increased at more than twice the rate of Pepsi's.

New Coke's sales dwindled to a three percent share of the market, although it was selling quite well in Los Angeles and some other key markets.

1987

The Wall Street Journal surveyed 100 randomly selected cola drinkers, the majority of whom indicated a preference for Pepsi, with Classic Coke accounting for the remainder save two New Coke loyalists. When this group was given a chance to try all three in a blind test, New Coke slightly edged out Pepsi, but many drinkers reacted angrily to finding they had chosen a brand other than their favorite.

Credit:

En.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke
En.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi
Conversion-uplift.co.uk/new-coke-market-research-fail/

Brand Management lessons from Disney & its Marvel Cinematic Universe

When an actor signs on to the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe owned by 'Disney'), they have to adhere to some pretty strict rules aka protocols, which serve 2 purposes:
1. Data Security
2. Brand Management

Some of these rumored protocols are:

1. FAKE SCRIPTS AND WINDOWLESS ROOMS
To read a full movie script, each actor must individually go into a dark, windowless room without their cell phone and finish the reading in one sitting. Apparently, each script comes with fake items and endings to prevent actors from spoiling the movie.

2. EXTENSIVE BACKGROUND CHECKS CONDUCTED ON PROSPECTIVE ACTORS
Whenever Disney signs up an actor for an MCU role, no matter how seemingly small, extensive background checks are conducted in order to unearth any potential skeletons in their closet. They do background checks to ensure they weren't hiring someone with weird baggage or someone likely to leak things on social media.

3. NON–COMPETE CLAUSE
People might not understand the gravitas of the Marvel vs. DC feud. These two comic book entities have been fighting back and forth, jockeying for position for years now.

4. MUST ATTEND ANY AND ALL PRESS TOURS TO PROMOTE THE FILMS
Not long after the camera stops rolling, and the actors take off their costumes, they begin packing for a traveling caravan of interviews. These tours are extensive and can leave actors extremely exhausted and jet-lagged. Not only are these events lengthy, they're hosted at a variety of international venues.

5. ALL MCU ACTORS HAVE TO MAINTAIN THE DISNEY IMAGE
Disney has never hesitated to drop actors because of their public image or any negative publicity. This means that once the Avengers strip off their tights, they still have to remain a superhero in real life. Each MCU actor must maintain his/her public image by constantly being a person that children look up to. This means that they volunteer at children’s hospitals, partake in charities, and give back to the community.

Credit:

Quora.com/What-is-a-good-piece-of-trivia-about-the-Marvel-Cinematic-Universe-MCU/answer/Jason-Thibault

Brand Management glossary simplified - volume 1

Brand essence
It is the spiritual center - the central & timeless essence of the brand ie. the core value(s) that defines the brand and permeates all other aspects of the brand. It is most likely to remain constant as brand travels to new markets and products.

Brand identity
It is how the company presents the brand to the market & how the company wants its customers to view its brand.

Brand personality
It is a set of human characteristics that consumers attribute to a brand. The personality makes the brand more relatable in the eye of the consumer. A consistent set of traits that define this personality will appeal to a specific market segment, and increase brand equity and brand affinity. The personality is a qualitative value proposition for the brand, in addition to its more tangible, functional benefits. The theory behind brand personality states that humans feel more affinity to certain brands as the personality they embody matches that of the customer. There are five types of brand personality: sincerity, ruggedness, excitement, competence, sophistication. Within these categories are further associations. Excitement is associated with being carefree, daring and having a youthful attitude.

Brand positioning
Brand's positioning takes the brand's identity and positions it to a particular audience in a way that magnifies certain attributes of the brand while downplaying others. You’ll notice I say downplay; it must never contradict them. So when Apple, for example, sell to businesses, they position themselves a little differently from when they’re selling to consumers. Sure, the products are still beautiful and easy to use, but Apple know they need to give a little more detail to assist in what is a more rational decision process. They will talk about how apple products aid collaboration, improve efficiency, and increase security. Another example would be me on a night out. My intended brand identity would be a mature, sophisticated Ryan Gosling lookalike, and I’d likely be trying to position myself for the evening as still fun and cool and generally down with the kids, while the reality of my brand image would be that a short, greying man entering middle age who probably shouldn’t be hanging around student nights any more.

Brand experience
It refers to the subjective, internal customer responses (sensations, feelings, and cognitions) and behavioral responses evoked by brand-related stimuli that are part of a brand’s design and identity, packaging, communications, and environments. In other words, brand experience means the experiential aspects consisting of the sum of all points of contact with the brand. These shape how someone perceives your brand ie this shapes the brand's image.

Brand image
It is the set of perceptions that the customers have in mind about a particular brand. It signifies what the brand currently stands for, how it is viewed by the customers. The brand’s image really determines its position in the market, regardless of what the technical details may be.

Brand equity
It represents the value of your brand in the eyes of your customers. Unlike brand value, which is weighed against the market, this metric takes into account loyalty, trust, emotion, and perception. A positive brand value does not always equal positive brand equity, but a positive brand equity tends to equal a positive brand value.

Brand affinity
It describes the consumers who believe a particular brand shares common values with them. These shared values help build a relationship which tends to retain loyal customers for longer. All brand purchases are a mixture of an emotional, rational and behavioral decision. When a customer feels an affinity to a brand, the emotional aspect is more likely to play a part in the decision.

Brand loyalty
It is the tendency of consumers to continuously purchase one brand’s products over another. Someone can be loyal to a brand without feeling an affinity for that brand, simply because they believe it sells the best product. With brand loyalty, there is often no strong personal connection tying consumer to brand. The customer is loyal to the brand because they perceive the brand to provide them with some value. This perceived benefits of this value can keep customers loyal to the brand regardless of pricing or competitor actions. Consumers who are loyal to a brand remain loyal because they believe it offers the best experience and higher quality than the competition. It is a rational decision, rather than an emotional one. It can also be a behavioral decision, in that a customer might continue buying the same brand due to apathy, not loyalty. The difference between the two can be difficult for brands to understand. This habitual nature of a loyal purchase can be accentuated by so-called customer loyalty programs. Encouraging loyalty through special offers does not foster real customer loyalty. Brand affinity is the most valuable and enduring level of customer relationship, as there is a connection between brand and consumer, as well as product and consumer.

Brand value
It is the financial worth or market value of your brand, should you choose to sell it. If someone were to buy your brand, how much would they be willing to pay?

Credit:

Brandwatch.com/blog/brand-affinity

Boss-digital.co.uk/blog/difference-brand-identity-image-positioning

Quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-brand-value-and-brand-equity

Quora.com/What-are-the-differences-between-brand-image-and-brand-equity

Quora.com/What-are-the-differences-between-brand-identity-and-brand-image

Quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-brand-identity-and-brand-personality

Quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-brand-essence-and-brand-positioning

Medium.com/@sillysampi/cutting-through-the-jargon-brand-positioning-brand-essence-brand-equity-and-brand-idea-4020d64f22f3

44 Famous & Memorable Indian Advertisements hidden in 1 picture - Can you solve this Puzzle ?

Beat your memory drums and use your razor sharp eyes for finding the minutest details...

For answers drop me a mail at:

iAmSaurabhKautilyaGupta@gmail.com

click to enlarge (size: 2048x1536)

Want Hints?

Click here

Marketing vs Sales - What is the Difference?

the Universe of Marketing - basic Keywords - for newbies

Marketing: Business process of creating relationships with and satisfying customers.

Needs: Something necessary for people to live a healthy, stable and safe life. When needs remain unfulfilled, there is a clear adverse outcome: a dysfunction or death. Needs can be objective and physical, such as the need for food, water, and shelter; or subjective and psychological, such as the need to belong to a family or social group and the need for self-esteem.

Wants: Something that is desired, wished for or aspired to. Wants are not essential for basic survival and are often shaped by culture or peer-groups.

Demands: When needs and wants are backed by the ability to pay, they have the potential to become economic demands.

Marketing mix aka the 4 Ps model (product, price, place, and promotion): are the set of marketing tools that the firm uses to pursue its marketing objectives in the target market.

Product: Refers to an item that satisfies the consumer's needs or wants. Products may be tangible (goods) or intangible (services, ideas or experiences). The product aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual goods or services, and how it relates to the end-user's needs and wants. The product element consists of product design, new product innovation, branding, packaging, labeling. The scope of a product generally includes supporting elements such as warranties, guarantees, and support.

Price: Refers to the amount a customer pays for a product. Price is the only variable that has implications for revenue. Price also includes considerations of customer perceived value or simply Value. Pricing refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts. The price need not be monetary; it can simply be what is exchanged for the product or services, e.g. time, energy, or attention or any sacrifices consumers make in order to acquire a product or service.

Value: Is the difference between a prospective customer's evaluation of the benefits and costs of one product when compared with others. Value may also be expressed as a straightforward relationship between perceived benefits and perceived costs: Value = Benefits / Cost.

Place: Refers to how the product gets to the customer; the distribution channels and intermediaries such as wholesalers and retailers who enable customers to access products or services in a convenient manner. It also refers to the channel by which a product or service is sold (e.g. online vs. retail), which geographic region or industry, to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc. also referring to how the environment in which the product is sold in can affect sales.

Promotion: Includes all aspects of marketing communications; advertising, sales promotion, including promotional education, public relations, personal selling, product placement, branded entertainment, event marketing, trade shows and exhibitions. It is focused on providing a message to get a response from consumers that is designed to persuade or tell a story to create awareness.

7 Ps model: Comprises of the original 4 Ps plus process, people and physical evidence, as being more applicable for services marketing.

People: Human actors who participate in service delivery, Service personnel who represent the company's values to customers, Interactions between customers, Interactions between employees and customers.

Marketing decisions that are taken around this P:

Staff recruitment and training, Uniforms, Scripting Queuing systems, managing waits, Handling complaints, service failures, Managing social interactions.

Process: The procedures, mechanisms and flow of activities by which service is delivered. 

Marketing decisions that are taken around this P:

Process design, Blueprinting (i.e. flowcharting) service processes, Standardization vs customization decisions, Diagnosing fail-points critical-incidents and system-failures, Monitoring and tracking service performance, Analysis of resource requirements and allocation, Creation and measurement of key performance indicators (KPIs), Alignment with Best Practices, Preparation of operations manuals.

Physical evidence: Refers to the non-human elements of the service encounter, including equipment, furniture and facilities. It may also refer to the more abstract components of the environment in which the service encounter occurs including interior design, colour schemes and layout. Some aspects of physical evidence provide lasting proof that the service has occurred, such as souvenirs, mementos, invoices and other livery of artifacts. Thus this P includes: the environment in which service occurs, The space where customers and service personnel interact, Tangible commodities (e.g. equipment, furniture) that facilitate service performance, Artifacts that remind customers of a service performance.

Marketing decisions that are taken around this P:

Facilities (e.g. furniture, equipment, access), Spatial layout (e.g. functionality, efficiency), Signage (e.g. directional signage, symbols, other signage), Interior design (e.g. furniture, color schemes), Ambient conditions (e.g. noise, air, temperature), Design of livery (e.g. stationery, brochures, menus, etc.), Artifacts: (e.g. souvenirs, mementos, etc.)

7 Cs model: Comprises of the 4Cs (Commodity, Cost, Channel, Communication) that map to the original 4 Ps plus Corporation, Consumer, Circumstances.

Corporation: Factors in the competitors, organization, stakeholder, compliance, accountability - within the corporation.

Consumer: The factors related to consumers can be remembered by the compass NEWS directions:
N = Needs, E = Education: (consumer education), W = Wants, S = Security

Circumstances: In addition to the consumer, there are various uncontrollable external environmental factors encircling the companies which also can be remembered by the compass NEWS directions:
N = National and International (Political, legal and ethical) environment, E = Economic, W = Weather, S = Social and cultural

Credit:

Wikipedia.org

Image Credit:

Self.com/story/6-incredibly-impressive-women-share-their-best-tips-on-giving-a-big-presentation

44 Famous & Memorable Indian Advertisements hidden in 1 picture - Can you solve this Puzzle ?

Beat your memory drums and use your razor sharp eyes for finding the minutest details...

For answers drop me a mail at:

iAmSaurabhKautilyaGupta@gmail.com

click to enlarge (size: 2048x1536)

Sell Me this Pen - attempt 2

You: Sir are you left handed or right handed?

Customer: I am right handed.

Take out a 2000 Rupees note from the pocket and keep it on the table.

You: If you could write your name with the left hand with this pen, those 2000 Rs are yours.

Customer: Okay give me the pen.

You: That would cost you 2010 Rupees sir.

This was the 2nd strategy. Click here to read the 1st strategy

Marketing vs Branding vs Advertising vs PR vs UX Design

Sell Me this Pen - attempt 1

[Wrong way]
You- Do you need a pen?
Interviewer- No, I don’t.
[Sale Fail]

[Wrong way]
You have a normal, cheap pen to sell (Let’s say 045 Reynolds)
You- Can I know, what kind of pen you use?
Interviewer- Yes, I use good pens. But I don’t use craps like yours.
[Sale Fail]

[Correct way]
You- Sir, this is 045 Reynolds fine carbure, normally runs 15 days smoothly for an average sales guy.

(You just provided general information and told the interviewer that your target market is salesmen. As we know your interviewer is also in sales. And this pen is specially designed for salespersons.)

You- 70% of the salesmen found it useful as per our survey.

Interviewer- What happened to the other 30%?

(Now you are controlling the subconscious of the interviewer, he is asking the questions you want. It will make your process easier)

You- Rest 30% don’t use it [humour].

(You just told him your pen is the best selling pen and favorite among the salesmen. At the same time you respected other companies and showed honesty by not saying 100%)

Interviewer- So what? My pen is working perfectly for me and I think I’m among the rest 30%.

You- Sir, it is more than a normal pen. Its ink doesn’t get spilled in high temperature as normal pens. Spilling of ink might cost you a fortune. Your costly suit might get dirty. It might cost you a sales call and you might lose your job.

(You just told him the biggest problem and scared him)

Interviewer- So what? My pen doesn’t get spilled.

You- Sir, your pen is unique (He gets happy). But, this pen costs only 6 Rupee and is easily available in every store in your city. If you lose this pen, don’t worry, you can have it easily.

(You just showed your pen’s availability. People use products which are easily available to them. Will you buy a cell phone, which doesn’t have a service center? Pen is something, people get used to it. If you are using a particular pen, you will need the same pen when you lose it.) 

You have just processed his mind to buy your product. Before he says anything, say this-

You- It has a white body and a blue cover. White stands for clean, purity, honesty and blue stands for reliability. It will definitely create positive aura around you and your customer/ prospect during a sales presentation and it might lead to a sale.

Interviewer- Okay. I will think about it. (Objection- 1)

(Someone is going to think means he is not going to buy your product)

So, It’s time for CTA (Call To Action)

You- Sir, this amazing pen normally costs 6 Rupee but if you buy it today, I will give you for 5 Rupee.

(You just created an emergency. Let’s see how he responds.)

Interviewer- Well, I will buy it tomorrow then. Today, I don’t have money/ change. (Objection-2)

You- Sir, I won’t mind if you pay me tomorrow. But I want to see you getting benefitted from today. So, please have the pen. Pay to me tomorrow.

(What will he say, now? No, I don’t want to get benefitted from today?)

He will buy the pen.

Credit:

This answer is copied from Barun's answer to the same question on quora.

https://me.me/i/brad-sell-me-this-pen-do-me-a-favor-write-21680695

Netflix's Pricing experiment for Indian audience

Indians love to buy 'Less', and buy 'More Often' - is a well-researched-and-acknowledged fact - This is the reason that sachets of shampoo / tea / hair-oil / etc. are the hottest selling commodities in India. the BIG NEWS is that even the World’s largest OTT platform; with 140M users worldwide; 'Netflix' is experimenting with this fact in India.

OTT = Over-the-Top media services.
Over the top is a term used to refer to content providers that distribute streaming media as a standalone product directly to viewers over the Internet, bypassing telecommunications, multichannel television, and broadcast television platforms that traditionally act as a controller or distributor of such content.

Netflix is to introduce Rs 65/week plan in India (This plan will allow access of Netflix only on mobile phones).

Netflix is the costliest OTT platform in India - Netflix’s actual plans start from Rs 500/month, and goes upto Rs 800/month, depending on the access of screens, and quality of videos.

India’s #1 player 'Hotstar' charges Rs 199/month
India's #2 player 'Voot' charges Rs 199/month
'Amazon Prime' charges Rs 129/month
'Zee5' charges Rs 99/month
'AltBalaji' is cheapest with Rs 100/3-months

No other country has a weekly plan as of now, except for India - And if this experiment works, it can change the entire dynamics of OTT in India.

Last question:
Should Netflix further lower their plans for India?

I think 'YES'. But, some experts believe otherwise:
Netflix isn’t interested in getting into price wars at all - It is going for a premium pricing strategy backed by good content. Dropping prices may get Netflix market share but it will be a one-way street and they will never be able to increase prices if they start dropping prices in response to competition. Also, at Rs 500/month their plans may be a less competitive rate when compared to other streaming platforms, but it’s still less than the price of two tickets at a multiplex - Moreover, it would be an over-generalisation and simplification to call all Indians price-sensitive. The market which the likes of Netflix caters to isn’t necessarily reflective of broader India and therefore isn’t that price conscious and this group is now hooked to Netflix and will take a membership even if the pricing goes up.

Credit:

Trak.in/tags/business/2019/04/06/netflix-launches-rs-65-plan-for-india-is-this-a-sachet-experiment-for-netflix/
En.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-top_media_services
Qz.com/india/1525269/amazon-prime-hotstar-rival-netflix-didnt-raise-prices-in-india/
Impawards.com/

what on earth is Growth Hacking and why is it so important for internet companies

A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth.

– Sean Ellis
(Founder/CEO of Qualaroo and ordained Godfather of Growth Hacking,)

Isn't a GH a Marketer?
Isn't a GH a Product guy?
No!

A Growth hacker is a hybrid of Marketer, Product Manager, IT/CS Engineer, and an Analytics guy who based on data and endless tests, uses different marketing and product approaches to grow his business rapidly.

Unlike a Marketer who comes in the product show around the time when the product is launch-ready, the Growth guy on-boards the product journey as soon as it starts to get ideated - Growth Hacker focuses on understanding users and how they will discover, adopt, and engage with the product, and then builds features accordingly. If a startup is pre-product/market fit, growth hackers can make sure virality is embedded at the core of a product. After product/market fit, they can help run up the score on what’s already working.

Before the Growth Hack era, the discipline of marketing relied on the only communication channels that could reach 10s of millions of people – newspaper, TV, conferences, and channels like retail stores. To talk to these communication channels, you used people – advertising agencies, PR, keynote speeches, and business development. Today, when the traditional communication channels are fragmented and passe, the fastest way to spread your product is by distributing it on a platform using APIs (Business development is now API-centric, not people-centric).

Whereas the web in 1995 consisted of a mere 16 million users on dialup, today over 2 billion people access the internet. Now it’s possible for new products to go from zero to 10s of Millions users in just a few years. New products with incredible traction emerge every week. These products, with millions of users, are built on top of new, open super-viral communication platforms; which give you direct access to a bigger market that allows you to grow at super-sonic speed; that in turn have hundreds of millions of users – Facebook and Apple and Google in particular.

Both Digital Marketing & Growth Hacking have 3 core principles: experimentation, creativity, & measurement. Both also share the same 3 core metrics: increased engagement, increased conversion, increased retention. 

The only difference between a Digital Marketer & a Growth Hacker  is that the former one can have broad goals like Brand-Awareness while the later one only has 1 specific goal of Growth. ” but answers it using A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph - And on top of this, they use the fundamentals of direct marketing, with its emphasis on quantitative measurement, scenario modeling via spreadsheets, and a lot of database queries.

___________________________________________________

Following are few notable examples of growth hacking in the Product industry:

1. Hotmail‘s “Get Free Email” Signature Link
Hotmail added phrases like “Get Free Email with Hotmail” to the bottom of every email sent through their service. This was a move recommended by the company’s very first investor, and it wound up igniting word of mouth around the product at a time when email and the Internet were just gaining widespread commercial recognition.

2. YouTube‘s Embed Feature
One of the reasons why YouTube was able to spread around the web so quickly was its embed feature introduced in 2005, which has gone down as one of the most popular growth hacks of all time. This simple hack made it possible for users to embed any YouTube video onto any web page with a few clicks and a simple copy and paste of an automatically generated embed code.

3. Spotify‘s Facebook Integration
In 2011, Spotify pulled a landmark growth hack by partnering with Facebook to become the social megasite’s default music service. The company has since attracted more than 50 million users, more than 25 percent of whom are paying for the premium version of the service.

4. LinkedIn‘s Public Profile Feature
LinkedIn was able to become the most popular professional social networking site by using the concept of peer pressure and transparency to coerce users into inviting and interacting with their coworkers, former employers, and clients in order to have a more complete and convincing public profile.

5. Dropbox Gives Extra Storage for Referrals
After determining that paid advertising was costing more than the value of each new customer, Dropbox hacked growth by offering 500MB of free storage for every referral. As a result, the company went from having about 100,000 users to having more than 4 million in about 15 months.

6. Facebook‘s Initial Exclusivity
While Facebook has been the platform of choice for many growth hackers, it is worth noting that the social site used a few nifty tricks of its own to get ahead in the beginning, including starting out as a closed network that was only available to college students. This perceived exclusivity helped to generate a sizable following of students that desperately yearned to be “part of the club.”

7. Airbnb‘s Post to Craigslist Feature

In a brilliant move, Airbnb made it possible for users to post their rentals directly to Craigslist from the Airbnb website with a “Post to Craigslist” feature.

___________________________________________________

Some common Hacks

The Content Skyscraper Method
Some growth hacks don’t involve coding at all and are instead based on adjustments in content strategy. The content skyscraper technique revolves around the principle that “most people don’t want to know about the second-tallest skyscraper, they’re only interested in the tallest.” With this technique, you find an incredible piece of content (a guide, tutorial, resource) in your niche and treat it as the “skyscraper” you’re trying to outdo. Then simply expound and improve upon it to make your new skyscraper even taller, thus ensuring that your content piece is positioned to become the most authoritative on that topic.

YouTube Video Ads
You’re about to watch a video on YouTube when suddenly an ad starts playing and it sidetracks you because, surprisingly, it’s just as interesting as the video you were about to watch. Next thing you know you’ve discovered a whole new product, event, YouTube channel, or brand. This is a common scenario on YouTube and it’s one of the keys to the site’s success as an advertising platform.

Remarketing with Facebook Ads
Facebook ads are already a great way to appeal to targeted audiences based on a wide range of criteria. One way to further fine-tune your campaign and improve conversion rate is to remarket your Facebook ads to users who have already visited your website. Taking this follow-up based approach ensures that you’re making the most out of all potential leads who have previously expressed interest in your ad content.

Offer Something for Free
People love free, which is why giving something away to new users is a quick and easy way to increase your fan base. Take a business like Hotmail for example. When Hotmail launched its browser-based email service in 1996, it leveraged a free account to entice its existing 20,000 users to sign up. The company used the tagline “Get Your Free Email at Hotmail” at the end of each existing user’s outgoing mail to help spread the word, and soon after the campaign, Hotmail’s user base climbed to an astronomical 1 million users in the first six months.

Set Up a Referral Program
There are a handful of companies that take advantage of a referral program to grow their business, and for one reason: it works! Businesses ranging in form and function from local yoga classes to the online storage startup Dropbox have used referral programs in the past, and to much success. When Dropbox was in its earliest days, for example, it offered upgraded storage amounts to each referral party pending their sign up with the service. Once both users signed up for Dropbox, they received an extra 500MB of storage, free of charge. Just by offering this, Dropbox’s user base went from 100,000 to over 4 million in just 15 months.

Go with Exclusivity
People always want to feel like they’re a part of something that’s special, which is why exclusive invitations or offers work extraordinarily well as growth hacking strategy. Look at Pinterest, for example. When Pinterest was first getting started, it was invitation-only, but allowed users to request an invitation if they wanted to join. After requesting an invitation, Pinterest sent out an email to prospective users explaining that the waiting list was quite long, but that eventually, they would be accepted to join. This helped the budding social network generate buzz and made users feel like they needed to be a part of the brand. From August 2010 to October 2013, Pinterest grew from 100,00 users to over 70 million, proving that exclusivity is an incredibly effective way to drive growth.

Try Platform Hacking
Capitalizing on the success of another platform or business is a great way to grow your own. Try to find a way to work with other relevant platforms, businesses, products, or services. That’s one way that YouTube got so big, so quickly. In 2005, YouTube looked to “platform hack” MySpace and tap into their growing user base and gain more views and users for themselves and guess what; it worked. At the time, MySpace had 25 million unique users and was at the top of the social media totem pole, but sharing videos was a huge pain point, both for their users and their advertisers. So, YouTube set out to solve that problem by allowing MySpace to embed their videos without having to pay for the service. YouTube took on the costs of hosting in exchange for increased brand recognition and ended up winning out. Today, YouTube enjoys traffic from over one billion users and is without a doubt one of the largest, most successful startups of our time.

___________________________________________________

Growth hacking process in steps:

1. Generating ideas (everything that can help to increase growth),
2. Organizing (estimating potential impact and resources required),
3. Testing (working in quick iterations, testing everything they can),
4. Analyzing (comparing results to hypothesis and asking “why”),
5. Optimizing (using learnings to correct processes),
6. Repeat.

Andrew Chen - One of the best Growth guys in the Industry

Credit:

Blog.upgrowth.in/growth-hacking-tools-strategies-process-and-case-studies

Andrewchen.co/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an-airbnbcraigslist-case-study

Hackisition.com/the-100-golden-nuggets-of-growthhacker-tv

Hackisition.com/the-must-reads

Medium.com/thiken/why-is-growth-hacking-important-for-a-startup-9f2abeff0f73