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• How to see another company’s growth tactics and try them yourself

  Julian Shapiro Contributor Share on Twitter Julian Shapiro is the founder of BellCurve.com, a growth marketing agency that trains you to become a marketing professional. He also writes at Julian.com. More posts by this contributor How do you hire a great growth marketer? How do startups actually get their content marketing to work? Every company’s online acquisition strategy is out in the open. If you know where to look. This post shows you exactly where to look, and how to reverse engineer their growth tactics. Why is this important? Competitive analysis de-risks your own growth experiments: You find the best growth ideas to adopt and the worst ones to avoid. First, a warning: Your goal is not to repurpose another company’s hard work. That makes you a thief. Your goal is to identify other companies who face the same growth challenges as you, then to study their approaches for solutions to draw from. As I walk through uncovering a competitor’s tactics, keep in mind which competitors are worth looking at: For instance, you should rarely over-analyze early-stage companies. They’re unlikely to be methodical at growth. Meaning, if you blindly copy their site and their ads, it’s possible you’ll be copying tactics that are not actually responsible for their growth. Their success may instead be from network effects or other hidden factors. Instead, it’s safest to get inspiration from companies who’ve sustained high growth rates for a long time, and who face the same growth challenges as you. They’re likely to have sophisticated growth operations worth studying deeply. Examples include: Pinterest Airbnb Amazon Facebook Uber If these aren’t your direct competitors, don’t worry. You don’t need to audit a direct competitor’s tactics to get incredibly valuable insights. You can look past direct competitors. You’ll gain useful insights from auditing the user acquisition funnel of any company who has a similar audience and business model. Examples of audiences: Wealthy consumers Enterprise businesses Middle-class adults who use Chrome Dog owners And so on Audiences matter because their behaviors and needs differ wildly. Each requires its own growth strategy. You want to audit a company whose audiences is similar to yours. You also want to ensure the company shares your business model. Examples include: A high-touch sales process with multiple phone calls A consumer ecommerce site with easy checkout A self-serve SaaS signup with a freemium plan A pay-to-play mobile game And so on Each model may necessitate different ads, landing pages, automated emails, and sales collateral. The process Never implement another company’s tactics blindly. There’s an effective process for growth analysis, and it looks like this: Source potential growth ideas. Prioritize them. A/B test them. Measure if an A/B variant significantly outperformed its baseline and whether the cost of implementing the winner would be worthwhile. Only then should you implement it. An example Here’s a brief example before we dive into tactics. Let’s pretend we’re a SaaS company offering consumer banking tools, and that we’re struggling to get users to onboard our app. Our hypothesis is that visitors are bouncing because they don’t trust us with their sensitive information. Our first step is to define both our audience and our business model: Audience: Tech-savvy, adult consumers. Business model: SaaS freemium funnel. Our next step is to look for companies who share those two aspects. (We can find them on Crunchbase.) Once we have a few in hand, we look for how they handle customers’ sensitive information throughout their funnel. Specifically, we audit their: Ads Content marketing / SEO Landing pages A/B tests Signup flow Automated (“drip”) emails It’s time to learn how we audit all that. I’ll share how our marketer training program teaches marketers to do this on the job. Tactic #1: How to see a company’s A/B tests ... Read More

• ‘Observation’ is a tense, atmospheric puzzler where you play a modern HAL 9000

  When you watch 2001: A Space Odyssey, do you find yourself criticizing HAL 9000’s machinations and thinking, “I could do better than that!” If so, Observation may be right up your alley. In it you play a space station AI called SAM that is called upon by the humans on board to help resolve a deadly mystery — though you may be a part of it yourself. The game takes place in the near future on board the titular space station, a sort of expanded version of the ISS. You are booted up by astronaut Emma Fisher after an unspecified event that seems to have damaged the station. You, as the Systems Administration and Maintenance AI, are tasked with helping her out as she first tries to simply survive the immediate aftermath, then starts to investigate what happened. To do so you perform various tasks such a digital agent would do, such as unlocking and opening hatches, checking for system errors, collecting information from damaged laptops, and so on. It’s mostly done through the many cameras mounted throughout the station, between which you can usually move freely and change the angle so you can get at this hatch or that scrap of paper on the wall. But from the beginning it’s clear that this is not a simple case of a micrometeorite or some other common space anomaly. I won’t spoil any of the surprises, but suffice it to say that like in 2001, the mystery runs deeper than that, and SAM itself is implicated. Observation is a puzzle game that plays out in real time, though you are rarely presented with a task that needs to be completed in a rush — your commands are rarely an urgent “Open the pod bay doors, SAM!” and more “Something’s wrong with the cooling system, so this hatch won’t open, can you look into it?” And so you search using your cameras for, say, the server that controls that system, or the scrap of paper that has its schematic so you can reboot it. These solutions are usually just a matter of being, well, observant, but occasionally can be frustrating gadget hunts where you don’t know what you’re looking for among the busy background of a working space station and the detritus of the disaster. If you’re having trouble with something, chances are you’re overthinking it. I had to look up the solution to one situation, and it turns out I had simply overlooked some interactive objects because they looked so much like background. (For the record, it turns out you can turn stuff on and off at power outlets.) When you have to operate something, like an airlock, there is usually a little minigame to complete in which you must figure out which series of buttons to hit or hold — nothing too taxing, just a way to make it so you aren’t just pressing the Action Button all the time. The controls can be a bit clunky, such as one that had me hold down s to do one thing, then press and hold w at the same time. Do they not understand the same finger does both those things? Fortunately you can remap controls and although mouse movement is a bit stiff, there’s no need for twitchy response time. Although the puzzles are a bit simplistic, it’s a pleasure navigating the station because it is so beautifully realized. The creators clearly did a ton of research and Observation, that is to say the station, is a convincing 21st century operation — cameras and laptops are stashed everywhere, sticky notes from the Russian and Chinese denizens, luggage and experiments tucked away or half finished. It’s also all viewed through a combination of post-processing effects that make it all feel like you really are viewing it through a security camera system. These effects are a bit inconsistent — at one time you’ll hear what sounds like the whine of an 80s drive or system spinning up; others reflect a sort of Windows 98SE aesthetic; your own interface looks like something out of Terminator. It isn’t cohesive, exactly, but the truth is neither are the systems onboard the ISS and other space hardware. And it’s a nice touch that lets the developer differentiate each part of the station and the different devices you connect to. The modeling of the main character, Emma, is also excellent, though lapsing a bit into uncanny valley territory due to some clunky animations here and there. Maybe it’s just the microgravity. But one thing that can’t be faulted is the voice acting — Emma’s actor is brilliant, and other voices you encounter are also well done. Considering the amount of dialogue in the game this could have been a dealbreaker, but instead it’s a pleasure to hear. Ambient audio is likewise lovely — wear headphones. The atmosphere is oppressive and tense, but not exactly scary; Don’t expect a xenomorph to bust out of any vents, but also don’t expect Space Station Simulator 2019. This is a serious, adult (though not explicit or violent) sci-fi narrative and, from what I’ve played, a smart and interesting one. I haven’t finished the game (which was sent to me in advance for review… but I’ve been in an intense love/hate relationship with Mordhau), but based on what I’ve played I can easily recommend Observation to anyone with a mind to take on mildly difficult puzzles and experience a well-presented story in a carefully crafted environment. Space buffs will also enjoy. At under $25 right now (less with this week’s sale going on) I’d say it’s a no-brainer. Observation released earlier this week on the Epic Games and PlayStation stores. ... Read More

• Facebook’s ‘GlobalCoin’ cryptocurrency to launch in 2020, report claims

  Facebook plans to launch its cryptocurrency by the first quarter of next year, reports BBC News. The company is expected to reveal more details about the currency this summer, before testing begins later in 2019. The currency, which is being referred to internally as “GlobalCoin,” will reportedly be available in around a dozen countries at launch, where it’s expected to offer people affordable and secure payments without the need for a bank account. The currency will need to overcome numerous technical and regulatory hurdles before it can be launched. According to BBC News, last month Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with the Bank of England’s governor Mark Carney to discuss the opportunities and risks of the planned digital currency.... Continue reading… ... Read More

• Microsoft patent hints at Surface Pro 7 with USB-C and new Type Cover

  Microsoft is working on a new design of its Surface Pro, expected to debut later this year. While the Surface Pro design hasn’t largely changed since the Surface Pro 4, Microsoft is expected to trim the display bezels, add a USB-C port, and make the next Surface Pro design a little more rounded like the Surface Go. We’ve seen a patent that hints at a thinner Surface keyboard, and now one has appeared that shows a Surface Pro with a USB-C port and a new Type Cover model. Spotted by Windows United, the new patent details how Microsoft plans to use magnets to prevent the Surface Type Cover from flapping around when it’s not in use. You currently fold the keyboard under the device to use it as a tablet, and it’s held in place simply by how... Continue reading… ... Read More




• Putting PlayStation on the silver screen

  Efforts to adapt games to TV and film have generally been poorly received -- but the cultural and business climate we're in may be perfect for Sony's new venture... Read More

• ZeniMax amicably resolves "Redfall" trademark dispute

  Contested trademark is thought by fans to be a possible title for the next Elder Scrolls game... Read More