Optimize Your Funnel: The Ultimate Guide

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO
FUNNEL OPTIMIZATION
sean johnson @intentionally
http://www.sean-johnson.com

Partner at Digital Intent
Adjunct Professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg school of Management
Runs the Chicago Growth Hacker Meetup
Former VP Creative Director at EducationDynamics

Help companies like Groupon, Sittercity, Follett, etc. build and grow
new digital businesses.
Product strategy, UI/UX, web and mobile development, traction
www.digintent.com

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO FUNNEL OPTIMIZATION

“Most startups don't fail at building a product.
They fail at acquiring customers.”

gabriel weinberg
http://intly.me/XFf69t


“Growth is about taking your product and optimizing it to produce
compound interest. There are very few (if any) silver bullets when it
comes to growth. But there are many micro optimizations.”

andy johns
http://intly.me/WNGdDF


DON’T WORRY ABOUT

YOUR FUNNEL YET.


Your ﬁrst thousand users are an extension of
customer development. Focus on learning and
getting to product/market ﬁt.

hiten shah
http://intly.me/W0kpAJ


Your goal is a simple product that does 1 or 2 things
really well in a fundamentally different way that solves
a big problem for a large pre-existing market.

andrew chen
http://intly.me/15kBIDA


You don’t need more features. Spend 80% of
your time on reﬁning existing features, and
only 20% on new development.

dave mcclure
http://intly.me/XWdGcF


Make a list of all your friends, with their follower count.
Send people cookies. Take them to breakfast. Reach
them one at a time. Don’t worry if it isn’t scalable yet.

noah kagan
http://intly.me/Xe6s4q


Create a landing page using Unbounce or something similar.
Use it to test headlines, positioning, calls to action, etc. Drive
limited trafﬁc there using AdWords.
http://intly.me/W0kpAJ


Dig your well before your thirsty.
Identify bloggers that ﬁt your niche. Sort by number of
followers, PR, etc. Establish relationships with them before
you need anything from them. Write guest posts.

When the time comes, ask them review your service. Give
them invite codes or giveaways to share with their audience.


Create YouTube videos targeted to speciﬁc
individuals and wait for them to Google themselves.
http://intly.me/12SKJUB


If you have the budget, buy targeted display ads
driving to your landing page. CrazyEgg collected over
20k emails by targeting CSS gallery sites.

neil patel
http://intly.me/12SKJUB


Post an ad on Craigslist asking for market
feedback. Ask that they sign up and kick the
tires before completing the survey.


Use Twitter search to ﬁnd people who ﬁt your target audience and reach out to
them directly. Do the same with forums targeted to your audience.


Use surveys to home in on product/market ﬁt. When you
get 40% of users telling you they’d be very disappointed,
it’s likely you’re on to something.

sean ellis
http://intly.me/ZhXBCZ


Use a tool like Kissmetrics to get a baseline on how customers
move through your funnel. Look for bottlenecks.


Pick a high level goal for your growth rate and try to hit it.
Y Combinator companies shoot for 5-7% per week.


Treat growth like development. Work in 2 week sprints. Use points
for estimation based on bandwidth. Some tasks will be ongoing
(content marketing, pr, etc.) Use remaining points for experiments.

aaron ginn
http://intly.me/XuvbP6


How to do experiments.
1. Identify an area for improvement (homepage to email conversion, etc.)
2. Create a hypothesis (if we simplify the form we’ll improve conversion.)
3. Deploy as an A/B test using Optimizely or Google experiments.
4. If the change improves the metric you’re measuring, roll it out.
5. Rinse and repeat.


“A great deal of perseverance is required. There are a
huge number of failed experiments before success.
There is a ﬁne line between failure and success.”

michael birch
http://intly.me/Vw1xin


CAC < LTV

FREE > PAID


Select channels with high volume, high
conversion and low cost. Measure all the way
down the funnel to revenue to ﬁnd the highest
converting channels.

dave mcclure
http://intly.me/XWdGcF


SEO IN 90 SECONDS
Make sure your site is crawlable, has good information architecture and loads
quickly. Eliminate duplicate content.
Do keyword research and target high volume, low competition, low cost phrases.
Create consistent, compelling, evergreen content targeting long tail keywords.
Link internally to other relevant content pages.
Optimize headlines and meta descriptions for clickthrough. Use video xml and
Google authorship to get thumbnails into results.
Find out who’s linking to your competitors and try to get links to you as well.
Build links through guest posts, product reviews, directory submissions, etc.

rand ﬁshkin
http://intly.me/YdXAsX


CONTENT MARKETING IN 90 SECONDS
Write about the problem space, not your product.
Aim for 20 posts per month. http://intly.me/Ye1Atq
Create evergreen content that will still be relevant and searched for in 2 years.
People can’t get enough of lists. Use odd numbers.
Collect emails and send them new content - http://intly.me/XVagqJ
Interview people who would be inﬂuential to your customers. They’re likely to
spread the word about the interview, and the content will be well received.
Google likes longer content. http://intly.me/15jEusz
Do lots of guest posting. 1 for you, 2 for them. http://intly.me/W0vxxD
People love infographics.
Always include something for people to do when they ﬁnish reading. Suggest
other posts, include a call to action, etc.


PR IN 90 SECONDS
Target individual writers, not publications. Do your homework.
Start with small blogs and work your way up.
Be brief with your pitch.
Craft a compelling story. No one cares about product specs.
Build relationships before you need them. Send reporters tips.
Have 1-3 key points you want to get across during an interview. Hit those hard.
Follow up immediately with logos, headshots, product screens, etc. Make their
lives easier.

sean blanda
http://intly.me/Yx3INN


ADWORDS IN 90 SECONDS
You probably shouldn’t do it except for testing, or if your LTV is very high.
http://intly.me/Xb233s
But if you do...
Monitor conversion, not just clickthrough.
Use broad match initially to see what people search for, then narrow to
increase CTR
Use negative keywords to avoid showing up on undesirable SERPs.
Create one ad group per keyword to increase quality score.
Match ads to highly relevant landing pages.
Kill off or rewrite anything with less than 2% CTR
Always be running variations.


SOCIAL IN 90 SECONDS
Use Followerwonk to research potential users to follow.
Engage - retweet, favorite, etc. to get on their radar.
Tweets have a half-life of 1 hour, Facebook 1 day. Set a posting schedule
accordingly.
Use social to warm up leads before sending an email. http://intly.me/XbcDHH
Hashtags are usually noise, but can be a great way to reach people at
conferences remotely. http://intly.me/VmdmFt
Images in Facebook have the highest clickthrough rate. Include link in the copy.
Answer highly visible questions on Quora.
Post presentations to Slideshare.
Submit relevant posts to Reddit, Hacker News, etc.


FACEBOOK ADS IN 90 SECONDS
Images are the most important factor. Test 50 images. Test orientation
(looking right, looking left.) Test color and shape of borders.
Use country targeting when testing conversion. US costs 5-10x other
countries. Use Canada, New Zealand, etc.
Focus on conversion, not just clickthrough rate. It’s not uncommon to have
40-60% conversion rates if it’s targeted well.

andy johns
http://intly.me/WNO2ct


Include static links in embed codes or widgets to
acquire lots of inbound links.
http://intly.me/YlK3kU


Leverage a large existing network. Airbnb ﬁgured out how to
auto-post to Craigslist (even though they had no public API.)
http://intly.me/UrpQwn


LANDING PAGE OPTIMIZATION IN 90 SECONDS
Headlines are critical. Test like crazy. http://intly.me/XMU9x6
Include a big image or video. Test like crazy. http://intly.me/WNO2ct
Have a big, compelling call to action. Put it above the fold. Test like crazy.
3-7 beneﬁt statements, not a list of features.
Include social proof - testimonials, logos/photos/videos of happy clients, etc.
Capture emails so you can talk to them again if they aren’t ready to commit.
Simplify, simplify, simplify. http://intly.me/Zh4B2N
Detect the source of a referring click and send them to the right place - iOS to the
app store, web to website, etc. http://intly.me/XﬁtVw

oli gardner
http://intly.me/Z4l5aT


OPTIMIZING SIGNUP IN 90 SECONDS
Reinforce the beneﬁts of signing up.
Simplify your forms. Don’t ask for unnecessary information.
Fewer pricing options.
Check for errors or provide suggestions inline without having to submit.
Offer social sign-up options and use social proof (faces next to button)
Don’t offer a discount, offer more for free. http://intly.me/Xb78bS
Explain what happens next. http://intly.me/Ym9HGj
Let them start using the product ﬁrst, then ask for signup to save their work.
Implement live chat to capture people who are hesitating. Understand their
objections. Track consistent ones. Make your product or copy better to convert
these folks in the future.


EMAIL CONVERSION IN 90 SECONDS
Provide an offer to get emails (whitepapers, etc.)
Identify the window when they’re most likely to convert and focus your energy
there. If there’s < 1% chance of conversion after 7 days, focus your energy before
7 days.
A/B test every email - focus on the subject line.
Add a call to action to every email.
Segment your subscribers based on the call to action that caused them to sign
up.
Create auto-triggered emails using customer.io to follow up with people who bail
out of your signup process.


ONBOARDING IN 90 SECONDS
Provide a simple walkthrough of your core experience.
Have your demo assist the user in the creation of their initial content.
Use gamiﬁcation (LinkedIn’s % complete, etc.) to incentivize users to complete
next steps.
If connecting with Facebook, consider auto-following friends already on the
service. http://intly.me/Uq4xet
Auto-follow inﬂuential users to get over the cold start problem.
Don’t create friction in the user experience with heavy moderation tools, etc.
Particularly early on. You can address spam later. http://intly.me/Uq4xet
Send a series of email autoresponders over 1 week teaching users how to get the
most out of your service.


Bucket and track the retention rate of speciﬁc sets of users
using cohorts. This allows you to see how product
enhancements impact retention for new groups of users vs. old.
http://intly.me/Urou4B


Get users to the Aha moment as fast as possible.
For Facebook that’s 10 friends in 7 days.
For Twitter it’s following 30 people.

chamath palihapitiya
http://intly.me/12T1saz


Your best tool for retention is email.
You’ve been outbid (eBay)
Year in Review (LinkedIn)
You have a new friend/follower (Facebook, Twitter)
You’ve been ousted as the mayor (Foursquare)

If you’re an app, make heavy use of notiﬁcations.


Contact your ﬁrst 1000 customers personally. Email from the
CEO. Ask them to help spread the word, and to give you
feedback. Include your actual cell phone number.


Turn content consumers into content creators by painlessly
seeding the production into the search ﬂow (Quora, Stack
Overﬂow, etc.)
http://intly.me/UIrdnH


Pinterest auto-follows connections but staggered them,
sending an email notiﬁcation each time a “connection” was
made to boost returning users.
http://intly.me/Uq4xet


Make it easy for your users to
pressure their friends to
come back in.

aaron ginn
http://intly.me/Z4reUx


Make heavy use of social artifacts. Ask for
automatic notiﬁcations during network connection.
Identify every meaningful sharable event.


PS: I Love You. Get Your Free Email at Hotmail


Make it painless for users creating new content
to also spread the word via external networks.
http://intly.me/VWpJKQ


Prompt users to “remind”
people they’ve asked to
connect with.

aaron ginn
http://intly.me/Z4reUx


Create custom, personalized landing pages
http://intly.me/12PiTEz


Provide incentives - ideally ones that improve
the experience of using the product.


Create a contest and incentivize users to share with others.


Let’s build something great together.
www.digintent.com


http://www.sean-johnson.com

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