We are nearing the year end and that probably means many teams are finalizing their growth goals for next year. Just the thought of the planning process is probably jacking up your stress levels. After all, setting yearly growth goals in fast changing environments feels like shooting darts blindfolded. While there a lot of goal-setting frameworks out there, no matter which one you use, I have a few recommendations to make the process better.
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How To Predict Your Weekly or Monthly Usage Metrics
An easy way to predict your weekly or monthly usage metrics so that you can respond to changes in patterns more quickly.
The 2015 Posts I Wish I Had Written
Jeremy Crane (VP Product @ HubSpot) sent me the Bloomberg Business Jealously List 2015. It is the list of pieces that Bloomberg’s staff wish they had written. I loved the idea so much I decided to do my own version around growth. Here are the four pieces of content in 2015 that I liked so much I wish I had written them myself.
Growth Is Optional: 10 Reasons Why Companies Fail At Growth
The wrong mantras have been pushed. Product is everything. You growth hack your way to success. The way to find growth is to try every channel possible. Paid acquisition is for companies with bad products. They are all simply wrong. The concepts behind growth are much simpler than most people think. As with most things, it is executing that is the tough part. Here are 10 things I’ve seen companies fail at executing that prevent them from growing.
The First Step To Building A Growth Machine
When I meet new companies to advise them on growth, the number one question I get is “what tactic should I use to grow my business?” At first I would try to give an answer. But it never felt right. After all, I just met this person and knew next to nothing about their business. Even more important though I started to realize that the question typically stemmed from the search for a secret, hack, or tip about a growth tactic that was going to unlock all of their growth problems.
Strategize, Test, Measure: The Bullseye Framework
The following is a guest post by Justin Mares, Co-Author of Traction: A Startup Guide To Getting Customers. Choosing how to get traction can be an overwhelming process. The Bullseye framework helps organize all the options and drive toward a decision.
What Blackjack Strategy Teaches Us About Growth
I was recently in my home state of Michigan for a wedding with all of my college buddies. One night we went to the casino downtown Detroit. I’m a sucker for playing Blackjack. Unfortunately I did not win. But while playing Blackjack and “earning” my free drinks my nerd brain started to churn and I realized that Blackjack strategy and Growth strategy have something in common.
The Never Ending Road To Product Market Fit
There are key differences between the traction phase and the growth phase of a company. Understanding what stage you are at, helps you focus on the right goals, metrics, channels, and team structure. But how do you know when you are ready to transition from one phase to the other?
Traction vs Growth
The goals, metrics, channels, focus, team structure, everything evolves and changes as you move through these the three phases of growth. Knowing where you are in this path helps you understand what you should be spending your time on. Focusing on the right tactics at the right time helps move you through this path efficiently and successfully.
Adapt Or Be Left Behind - How The Marketing World Is Changing
It is massive, enormous, monumental, maybe even the second coming. Whatever you want to call it, we are currently experiencing more change in the marketing ecosystem then we have in the past 10 years (maybe ever). Are you paying attention?