In-Depth Insights and Guides
About Customer Acquistion And Growth

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How I Design My Day To Maximize Mental Energy

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Over the past 5 years I have read countless books, tried numerous supplements, experimented with different diets, and changed my routine to try and maximize my mental energy.  The following is a summary of what has helped me improve my mental energy by leaps and bounds. 

3 Ways To Grow Faster Than Your Competition

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Scalable customer acquisition channels are crowded.  Competing for the mindshare of consumers and businesses is tough and not getting any easier.  No matter what growth channel or tactic you are using, you will always be surrounded by others competing for that same attention.  A large part of the growth process is figuring out how to gain a customer acquisition advantage.

Native Ads - A Growth Tactic You Need To Follow

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21X higher CTR, 79% lower CPC, and 77% lower CPA.  These are just a few reasons why native advertising is one of the top growth channels and tactics I am keeping my eye on. More specifically, native ads within mobile.

From 0 to 2 Million Daily Active Users: A Guide To Growing via Partnerships

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A lot of  startups have a hard time acquiring users from scratch.  One channel is to access the distribution of others through integrated partnerships.  The initial thinking always seems simple: "Partner XYZ has tens of millions of users!  If we can capture only [enter some really small percentage] that would be huge for us!" It all sounds great, but there are many hidden traps.

How New User Acquisition Channels Drive Change

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Over the history of the internet we have seen new distribution and user acquisition channels emerge.  With each new channel comes a storm of change in the consumer internet eco-system.  Each storm, while it may seem chaotic,  follows a similar pattern and cycle.   Understanding that cycle, and where your company is within it, can help guide you through the chaos.  

5 Steps To Choose Your Customer Acquisition Channel

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SEO, SEM, Facebook Ads, content marketing, affiliates, partnerships, email marketing, app stores…the list goes on. With so many marketing channels to choose from, a common question is “where do I start?” or “what channel should we use next?”  I get it.  The information is overwhelming but there is a better way than picking pieces of paper out of a hat.  Here is a step by step guide that should help you go through the exercise of comparing, contrasting, and choosing the right marketing channel for your company. 

How We Got Through The Trough Of Sorrow

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Spring 2009 is a time period that I hope to never experience again, yet it yielded some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in my professional career.  Those were the early days in the launch of the iOS platform and social gaming on Facebook. Viximo, the virtual goods and social gaming company I had co-founded, was right in the middle of this craze.  

Achieving The Network Effect: Solving The Chicken or The Egg

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One of the most defensible positions for a startup is if you can achieve the network effect. The network effect is so strong that it has kept large companies in business for a long time, despite bad products and numerous competitors. Craigslist is a perfect example. It is only recently that a new wave of startups like AirBNB, TaskRabbit, and RentJuice have started to chip away at the Craigslist stronghold, but it took over 10 years.  Achieving the network effect is no easy feat. It comes with a huge hurdle: The chicken or the egg.

5 Quick Tips To Find Scalable Customer Acquisition

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Stories about the growth of "hot" startups such as Facebook, Instagram, AirBNB, and others have created a belief that if you build the right product, customer acquisition will be easy. Don't be fooled. These stories are the exception, not the rule, and don't tell the entire story of the immense effort it took to grow their customer bases.  Finding scalable acquisition channels is a time consuming and strategic effort.

The One Process Every Startup Should Have

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Most young entrepreneurs have an allergic reaction to anything with the word “process” in it. So before you break out in hives and curl up in ball with cold sweats, take a Benadryl and hear me out.  There is one area that every startup, no matter what stage you are at, should have a process for...