1. Lean Advertising 101
Paid Acquisition for Startups
@clementdelangue from @Curioos

2. Why entrepreneurs don’t try it
(and why they’re wrong)?

3. “We focus on product development to reach
the Product Market Fit”
Paid
acquisi*on
will
allow
you
to
test
and
!
get
to
product
market
fit
!
much
faster.
!

4. “We don’t have a marketing budget”
How
much
of
the
founders
*me
(aka
big
money)
is
spent
on
!
growth?
With
paid
acquisi*on,
you
can
start
!
at
$5
a
day.

5. “We don’t have either the expertise or time.”
!
It
took
us
6
days
from
start
to
scaling
to
$10k/
month
budget
with
a
posi3ve
ROI
for
Curioos.
!

6. Ready to try?
3 steps to scale in a week

7. #1 Get your Analytics !
right!
!

8. Cover the user funnel as much as you can…
Ad#impression#
Website#visit#
Sign#up#
Conversion#
Reten5on#
#
At Curioos, we’ve added to our
Google Analytics setup:
!
* The e-commerce module to track
conversions.
!
* A spreadsheet to track all our
campaigns with url builder (courtesy of
@Jolg42 from 20 degrés à l’ombre.
!
PS. make sure it’s accurate by excluding
internal traffic.

9. …as largely as you can.
We’ve added the Demographics
and Interest Reports.

10. Focus on a few main metrics and proxy metrics
At Curioos, our main metric is
revenue.
!
!
Use proxy metrics if you need.
!
Ex: we’re also using bounce rate + time
on site + pages / visits as a proxy for
conversion to let us experiment with low
volumes (not perfect but better than
nothing).
Good metric
=
!
Relevant for your long-term
success
!
+
!
!
Easy to measure & follow
on a day-to-day basis

11. #2 Experiment, experiment, !
experiment
!

12. Choose your experiment channels
We’ve tried:
!
Adwords (mainstream)
Facebook (mainstream)
Twitter (mainstream)
Fancy (vertical)
Amazon Art (vertical)
Adroll (retargeting)
Good Paid Acquisition Mix
=
!
A mainstream channel
(Adwords/Facebook/Twitter/…)
!
+
!
!
A vertical channel to
diversify the risk.

13. $5 to $15/day per experiment
Analyze, compare all the steps of the funnel, from impression to
conversion, and iterate every 3 days.

14. Example of our first negative experiment

15. Example of our first positive experiment

16. #3 Iterate !
& Scale
!

17. Our scaling process to get to $10k/month
If A_ROI > 0 then A => M
M1A M1
M1B
Experiment
Main Branch
A B
If MIA_ROI and MIB_ROI < M1 then M2 => M1 x 2
M2A M2 M2B
If M2A_ROI > M1 >M2 then M2A => M3
M3A M3 M3B
…
…

18. Don’t make these mistakes (we did)

19. Don’t make these mistakes (1/3)
Optimizing for the wrong goal
If you’re doing CPC, optimize for conversion post-click.
!
If you’re doing CPM, optimize for Click-through-
!
Rate.

20. Don’t make these mistakes (2/3)
Trust esthetics rather than figures
<= performs
30% better
than ==>
!
Can you say why? (I can’t)

21. If the ROI is good, scale as fast as you
!
can (because it may not last forever)
!
!
Don’t make these mistakes (3/3)
Capping the budget

22. That’s all
(for the moment - still learning)
@clementdelangue from @Curioos