The last part of the 3-part series on frameworks and models for startup marketing. If you haven't checked out the first two parts, here they are: Part 1, Part 2.
Three models for the third part
- Find AHA moment for your startup
- Understand the Hook Model
- Shape yourself like a T
Find the AHA Moment for your startup
What is an AHA! moment?
The AHA! moment (or the magic moment) is the exact point in time where your target user understands exactly why your product is of value to them. It is the moment when your users realize they "get it".
They understand:
- How your product works
- How the product is going to help them
- How their money/time is being translated into a benefit
For me as a user, no other product was as immediately clear as Transferwise's. I knew the value as soon as I landed on their page.
How does this affect startup growth?
Startup growth is directly correlated to the number of users that have the aha! moments and the time they take to reach this moment. It depends on how startups find simple metrics that correlate well with customers getting value out of their product. For example, for Facebook, enabling users to add "7 friends in 10 days" was the magic number. For Slack, it was 2000 messages sent between the team.
How do you do this for your startup?
Step 1: Let's say users you retain for a month are likely getting value out of your product. You need to find out what actions correlate with 1-month retention. It could be the number of times they log in, the number of friends they invite or the number of messages they send in their first week.
Step 2: Once you find what best correlates with retention, start making changes to your product that encourage users to take that behavior. If you can increase how many people take the action and retention doesn't increase, then the correlation wasn't causal and you should try another action that was well correlated with retention. If retention does increase, then you've found your aha moment.
Step 3: Now that you have your metric (that measures the action in Step 1) and the data from your analytics, you can run a regression and build your own model.
Resources:
- Andrew Chen has a nice post on Quora where he answers "How do you find insights like Facebook's '7 friends in 10 days' to grow your product faster?"
- Modeanalytics has written a great article on how Facebook marketed its AHA! moment and how you can use it to find your startup's AHA moment.
Understand the Hook Model
The Hook Model was introduced by Nir Eyal in his book Hooked - How to Build Habit-Forming Products.
The model consists of four phases:
1. Trigger
The trigger is where the behavior sparks. They can be either internal or external. Successful habit-forming companies start by sending users external triggers like an email, a link on a website, or the app on a phone.
As Nir Eyal puts it:
By cycling continuously through these hooks, users begin to form associations with internal triggers, which become attached to existing behaviors and emotions. Soon users are internally triggered every time they feel a certain way. The internal trigger becomes part of their routine behavior and the habit is formed.
2. Action
The next step is the action. Here, companies leverage two core levers of human behavior - ability and motivation, by increasing the odds of a user taking the intended action.
Also see Fogg's Behavioral Model.
3. Variable Rewards
Variable schedules and quantity of reward are one of the most powerful tools that companies use to hook users by creating wanting in the user. Introducing variability increases the effect and activates the parts associated with wanting and desire, directly resulting in surges of dopamine in your brain.
4. Investment
In the last phase, the company tries to increase investment from the user. What kind of investment? First, increasing the odds that the user will make another loop when confronted with the next external or internal trigger. Second, pay up (not just monetary).
As Nir Eyal says:
The investment generally comes in the form of asking the user to give some combination of time, data, effort, social capital or money.
Shape yourself like a T
To end this series, here's the last one. It isn't related to startup growth but rather a framework for growth marketers to improve their skills.
Brian Balfour notes in his fantastic blog post on how to become a customer acquisition expert. He goes on to list the resources (articles, books, courses, people to follow) to become good at customer acquisition.
The T-shaped marketer concept means:
- The horizontal bar of the T represents breadth of knowledge across many areas
- The vertical bar represents deep expertise in one or two areas
Brian Balfour's post on becoming a customer acquisition expert →
Hope you found this series informative!