Recently, we had the awesome opportunity to attend an event featuring Justin Wu, a leading Growth Hacker extraordinaire @hackapreneur at the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center in San Francisco, CA... it was jaw-dropping to say the least.
We have summarized some of his insights from the talk at Nasdaq. Justin was moving quite fast and dropping insights all over the place. Below are just some of the highlights from his talk, he moves fast and we did our best to get it down for you!
“Growth hacking is a process of rapid experimentation across marketing channels and product development to identify the most effective, efficient ways to grow a business. ... Growth hackers are marketers, engineers and product managers that specifically focus on building and engaging the user base of a business.”
Justin's Top Social Media Channel: SNAPCHAT
Snapchat- be careful as it can be the hardest platform for grow, followers must have your username or snap code >>
- Usernames or profiles are needed
- Growth can be hard as it is 1:1 engagement
- Top users and early adopters are: Gary Vaynerchuck, Tai Lopez and DJ Khaled
- Currently there is not enough good media content creators for the channel
- Be sure to Snap every single day- as a growth strategy
- Create 10-15 min of content per day - to keep people engaged
- Growth- over delivering 10X content, drop native content (when possible)
- Influencers most share from conferences only... so what!
- Add photos with captions and quotes they really work!
- Ask for feedback from your followers, this is so critical! Great help and your continued learnings, evolving and responding from the development side
- Trade content with others they get something and you get something, collaborate with other founders and hackers!
"Be on Every Single Platform"
Did you know that you can save your Snaps and repost them back to Facebook (FB) and Instagram (IG) even Twitter (TW). Syndicate your content as much as you can, be hyper-efficiency!
- It's okay and advised to repurpose your social media content on all channels, people all see it differently at different times.
- Start on one channel to get comfortable and share to all platforms, some people will do well on one or maybe 2, 3, 5... you'll find out fast.
- There are too many factors to know which one will be the best, so be Omni-Present online
- Create a lead generation funnel or 'end game' for your social media conversions for new leads - one new client should be worth being on a new platform!
- Justin gets "massive retainers" now from new clients (making bank)
- Build your new audiences based on interesting, relevant and cool topics
- Create mini-funnels with your unique edge for your business development
- Be sure to speak in public to attract your audience, builds up your reputation too
- Create a MVA= Minimal Viable Audience, make sure you enjoy working with them, host workshops to see if you do!
“Create your MVA = Minimal Viable Audience”
@HACKAPRENEUR Instagram Strategies
Do you know about top Engagement Groups on Instagram? These are powerhouse private IG user groups that follow and mention your posted content for impactful fast engagement results and growth!
- Use a mass scheduled planner for your account/s
- Be educational, authentic and engaging to increase value to followers
- There is lots of collusion from the top accounts, mentioning each other for engagement
- Creating private chat groups as engagement groups
- Justin uses the Kik app - kik.com
- Be wary of BlackHat hacking world for networks and collaboration of users
- Mention other chat groups for more follows
- Use the Telegram app - there are other shady apps used by Russian hackers
- Create Chatbots for conversation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatbot
- All word of mouth from 1 million followers or above
- Engagement groups can trick the IG algorithm for likes and fast for virality - can land you on the IG explore page to all users!
- Example account went from 0-40k followers in just 3 months by leveraging inside private groups and these strategies
@HACKAPRENEUR 'SuperHack'
When you need to mobile phone verify different accounts on Instagram or other social media accounts, you need the following:
- Buy AT&T GoPhones to validate new accounts - as you need a real new mobile #
- Grow your initial 300-5000 followers organically so IG does not flag/block your new account!
- It can take 5-10 accounts to block a domain URL website
- They can block a landing page- so funnel many to a single domain
- Build syndicate accounts - as a big network for traffic, for dirt cheap!
- Land partnerships- hit up people from large IG accounts, drive traffic to your @profile, cost $5-10k to get big name people from buying and Instagram accounts!
- Social Reach Perception (SRP) - what people think your following is... combined from accts.
- Use your SRP for selling deals for new clients to show reach and engagement, get your up-front costs from clients
- Send it out on 30-50 profiles at once to make it go viral on Instagram
- Use Instagram stories and mention other profiles to link back to
“Understand your SRP - Social Reach Perception combined from all your accounts and groups”
JEDI FACEBOOK STRATEGIES
The social media monolith that is Facebook is changing. External agendas and stock market pressures are changing this massive platform. Justin dropped ideas on how to still grow there.
Did you know that on FB you can buy likes?
- FB - used for new ad campaigns and multimedia content pages
- It is now a Pay-to-Play club- for organic reach has collapsed
- Organic content is tough to go viral, most are now from promoted posts and paid boosts
- Justin runs some big pages like 13 million followers, and they re-share- as they need content - and free publicity
- Popular social media content is short skits, memes, and engaging short funny viral videos
- Share this content to other pages, they love it when you hand them great content for credit back to your page/profile
- Check out Ad Espresso tool- to optimize your FB ads, test 5 different text headers, different images and text descriptions- forget A/B testing you have 5-10 choices or more now!
- Find your audience demographics and copy them, make assumptions and hypotheses that are different to test them
- Create Dynamic ads- they will see different ads as the user moves down your lead generation funnel.
- Like email drip marketing campaigns you can now create, Ad Drips- if you can't convert them on the first ad, keep trying more as they move down your funnel
- Use a 1 minute video as a quick way to convert them from one point to another
- Use pattern disruption techniques to see what they respond to
- Once they convert, get them to share it to their friends and networks!
- If they buy more they can refer more people to you... it works
- Create FB lookalikes audiences, use a FB pixel code on your website.
“Create Ad Drip campaigns, to test new ads as they move down your marketing funnel”
Leverage Powerful Facebook Groups
Nowadays, Facebook groups are seeing more engagement versus company sponsored pages. Facebook will be connecting groups with pages soon!
- Become a Thought Leader in your own public or private FB groups!
- They will become integrated with FB pages (coming soon!)
- There are super fan clubs from FB business groups that are highly active
- For your FB page, you can easily invite people to like it
- Email or type a repeatable script to get people to like your FB page or from promoted posts!
Become a Growth Hacker
Justin shared some of his personal ideas on how he broke into this new type of business, specializing in rapid prototyping for new development online!
- Know your software - learn how to use the functionality of it all
- Understand how the data is collected to be leveraged
- Have some knowledge in basic Sales & Marketing techniques, know what your value proposition is
- Technology is all around is and can be leveraged as needed
- Outsource some of the work with contractors and freelancers on Upwork and Freelancer.com
- Learn to code (basically) on Java and Python to be able to talk to any coder you work you, you will need to know how to call Bullshit on them!
- Understand social media and website APIs, how they are used per channel
- Learn to write custom scripts for Chrome Browser to simulate actions online
- Some APIs are part of a blackhat network (beware)
- Focus on core content marketing
- Analytics are used to understand your funnels
- Create engaging landing pages
- Conversion optimization is the key, how quickly can you convert them from viewer to customer
Understand their thought and pains as a development process
“Growth hacking is a mindset but there are now too many one trick ponies who only know one platform. Be omni-present!”
FINAL INSIGHTS
- Look a the BIG picture of your growth where do you want to be?
- You can't be just a specialist only, focus on the growth overall
- Math make it fun and become architects of your own growth
- Learn the new channels and data that is relevant
- Learn to build a product and service as a developer, then learn to execute it, know how to live with developers (they are the key)
- Understand LTV = Lifetime Value of a customer!
- Work with developers to extract their LTV
- Do you understand attribution? It is based on behaviors and data...
- Become an information architect
- Be sure to stack your experiments
- Watch out for account bans by running your automation scripts
GROWTH HACKING BANS + TIPS
Justin warned us all of some of the common pitfalls and fails of new hackers in this field... watch out for the shit.
- Instagram has over 600m users and thus too many security checks to be everywhere at once
- The age your account matters, post normal real content for at least 1-2 months minimum
- Start slow on hacking new actions to increase it over time
- You can have SSL private proxy- tools and rent IP addressed (WTF)
- Your phone # can get banned on social media
- But you can get a new phone # from Cricket wireless
Justin also shared why he choose to live in Los Angeles, aka Silicon Beach versus NYC or SF. He feels like there are more large brand opportunities there with less competition. SF is filled with tech that does not pay as well as large company brands, Hollywood and the town is filled with Influencers to leverage for channel growth. He is crushing it at celebrity investments, getting 'massive retainers' for new work and being the real deal, standing out!
For more follow Justin Wu on:
Instagram @hackapreneur • Twitter @hackapreneur and Snapchat @hackapreneur (mobile)
More events at the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center @thecenter
To get a free media strategy review consultation to support your growth click here.
