Hacking Growth Book Summary

To identify your product's core value and "aha moment" that turns users into devoted fans, analyze user behavior data to find:

• The tipping point number of actions that engaged users take vs casual ones (e.g. Following 30 people on Twitter, adding 7 friends in 10 days on Facebook)
• The common actions that retained users take but lost users don't
• The key product features or parts of the user experience that most engage your fans

Then focus your user experience on driving more users to that aha moment as quickly as possible. For example, when Facebook identified adding 7 friends in 10 days as a key tipping point, they redesigned their new user experience to focus people on adding friends upfront.

Section: 1, Chapter: 2

To enable high velocity testing, create a growth idea pipeline that captures experiment ideas and follows these principles:

1. Empower everyone on the growth team to submit ideas in a standard format: Idea name, description, hypothesis, and metrics to track.
2. Use the ICE prioritization score (Impact, Confidence, Ease) to objectively rank and prioritize ideas. Rate each idea on a 1-10 scale for each.
3. Each week, review top ideas and decide which to resource. Assign an owner to each chosen experiment.
4. Run multiple experiments per week. More experiments = faster learning. But ensure each is well-constructed to give clear results.
5. Track all experiments and share learnings broadly. Build a knowledge base of past tests anyone can access. Be sure to also track failed experiments!

Section: 1, Chapter: 3

Chapter 4 lays out the four key steps in the growth hacking process:

1. Analyze: Review macro metrics, dive deep into user behavior data, and gather insights from customers via surveys/interviews to generate experiment ideas.
2. Ideate: Encourage the team to brainstorm bold experiment ideas aimed at improving a North Star metric. Create an idea pipeline and rank using the ICE method.
3. Prioritize: Each week, review top experiment ideas and prioritize based on impact, effort and company goals. Assign an owner to each.
4. Test: Launch experiments quickly, ensuring each is constructed to give clear, statistically significant results. Track results obsessively.

Section: 1, Chapter: 4

To keep experiments organized and surface key insights, document each test with the following details:

• Name: A concise label to refer to the test
• Description: What change is being made and who will see it (e.g. a 50/50 split test of two landing page headlines for new visitors)
• Hypothesis: The expected result and why (e.g. Changing the headline to emphasize key benefit X will increase signups by 10%)
• Metrics: The key metrics to track (signups, click-through rate, retention rate, etc.). Include a primary metric that determines success.
• Launch details: When it started/ended, sample size, anything that might affect results
• Results: The actual metric changes seen in the test. Note statistical significance.
• Conclusions: Insights gleaned and ideas for follow-up experiments to further optimize

Section: 1, Chapter: 4

Chapter 5 introduces the concept of Channel/Product Fit - identifying the optimal channels to reach your target customers with your product offering.

• Make an exhaustive list of possible channels - paid, organic, viral, PR, email, etc.
• Consider your business model and customer to prioritize channels to test. B2B products will focus on different channels than consumer apps.
• Prioritize 1-2 channels to start. Go deep before expanding to more channels.
• Experiment within each channel to optimize your customer acquisition. Track CAC and LTV.

The key is aligning your channels to your product, and focusing on the most effective channels while avoiding premature "channel sprawl" that dilutes your efforts.

Section: 2, Chapter: 5

To craft an engaging early user experience that maximizes activation, use the Triple A framework:

1. Acknowledge: Make users feel acknowledged and appreciated for signing up. Send a personalized welcome message.
2. Affirm: Affirm that the user made a good choice by signing up. Reinforce your value prop and benefits. Share impressive usage stats or social proof.
3. Action: Direct the user to a key action that will deliver value and help them experience the aha moment. Focus on one clear call to action.

By making users feel good about their signup while also guiding them to unleash your product's core value, you can build early engagement and improve activation rates for your product.

Section: 2, Chapter: 6

There are three key phases of retention that growth teams should focus on:

1. Initial retention (first few days/weeks after acquiring a customer)
2. Medium-term retention (solidifying the customer relationship and making product usage a habit)
3. Long-term retention (continuing to provide value to retain the customer over many months/years)

Different tactics should be used in each phase to optimize retention. In the initial phase, focus on getting the user to the aha moment quickly. In the medium-term, build habits around using the product. For long-term, keep adding features and value to retain the customer.

Section: 2, Chapter: 7

To transition users from initial retention to building a habit in the medium-term retention phase, growth teams should construct an engagement loop:

1. An external trigger prompts the user to action
2. The user takes the action
3. They are rewarded for taking the action
4. Over time, an internal trigger develops so they take the action on their own without prompting

"As users become more experienced at using your product, features they haven't used yet—and new ones being introduced—should be brought to their attention, gradually and in a way that allows them to tackle learning a new feature only after having achieved mastery of the previous one."

Section: 2, Chapter: 7