Brandery Growth Hack Day
On Friday, we had our second of two intensive days in The Brandery accelerator program. What was the thought process on introducing these 4-hour power sessions to the program this year? “In the off season, we were brainstorming on how the startups could get the quickest start possible on building their business,” said Brandery General Manager Mike Bott. “The first element was branding, and the second was user acquisition.” You may have read about the astounding success of "Brand in a Day":http://brandery.org/blog/brand-in-a-day-recap back in June, and Growth Hack Day was equally as awesome.
What exactly do you mean by “growth hacking?”
Let’s break it down. A startup is a startup because of its potential for exponential growth in a limited amount of time. To get to a point where the business is primed for that growth, many factors have to be optimized. Yes, it starts with the brand. But now, we’re talking business model, user acquisition, and go-to-market strategy. To read more about growth hacking and the difference between growth hacking and marketing, read "this article":http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/05/05/the-actual-difference-between-growth-hacking-and-marketing-explained/ from The Next Web. We asked some current and former P&G expert marketers to come in to help the companies find that perfect equation that is going to make the startups grow. Mike, a former P&G-er himself, thinks it was a necessary addition to the teams, if only for a day.
“It became very apparent that many of the startups had no idea how to market their product," said Mike. "The idea here is to make sure that each of them have a tangible marketing and user acquisition plan, and fortunately, Cincinnati has a lot of expertise in that area.” The companies worked on go-to-market strategy, user acquisition, customer retention, referrals, virality, sharing, and path to purchase. The agencies and marketers were free to tailor their focus based on each startups’ need. We saw almost instant progress. The proof will be in their KPI's, but there was lot to like about the intensive "growth hack" day.
What was the most useful thing you got out of Growth Hack Day?
“One of the best parts of the day was each company sharing with each other what they worked on. You never know who you’re going to get an idea from. Everyone took a different approach and hearing each company's recap gave the startups ideas to augment their current plans and look at things differently.”– Brandery GM Mike Bott“The whole conversation was very beneficial. We started really broad and then narrowed down to get a pretty solid plan on how to attack social media on a local and national level, especially with a team of our size.” – Zack, co-founder of TapFit“We got a great go-to-market strategy and the framerwork of how we should position our product to be successful once we launch.”– Nick, CEO of TapFit“We worked with our agency, Hyperquake, to formulate a user acquisiton strategy that will engage the design community.”– Kevin, CTO of Frameri _Pssst:_ Stay tuned in the next few days to see what Frameri (operating in “stealth mode” until now) has up their sleeves. “We learned what voice we should be using to speak to our users and what that interaction should look like.” – Khisaun, CEO of Dwllr We also got to see some sweet updates on branding that the agencies have worked on with the startups behind the scenes. Check out Dwllr’s evolution, spearheaded by their agency partner, Rocket Science. They wanted Dwllr to be more simple, fluid, and timeless, to mirror the way their service works.