đ Growth Gems #42 - Gems from "The Power of Paywalls"
Hi there,
Today's gems are mined âď¸Â from an episode of Storemaven's Mobile Growth & Pancakes podcast with Saulo Marti (Marketing Director at Olist, previously 8fit, Hibooks, Blinkist).
Great insights on the stages of growth, the testing framework he recommends and why paywalls are critical especially for some genre of apps.
đ #1
Analyze the 3 key components of growth and decide what you want/can do:
- Resources that you have (money, people, etc.)
- Speed of growth you need (sometimes you donât care too much about efficiency and more about outpacing competition)
- Efficiency
đ #2
Youâre never going to be able to do everything at once: spend less, grow more, grow faster. Itâs just not going to happen.
đ #3
The network you want to test is where your target audience is, so find your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile). Where do they live? What do they use? What are they doing? For most early stage consumer subscription apps, the most ROAS-friendly channel is probably Instagram (or Google depending on the company): what are the chances to crack something nobody else has?
đ #4
Stick to the basics, learn the fundamentals of your messaging and the creative direction that works for you. Test on one of the main channels first, then you can test/scale on other channels.
đ #5
Make sure that everyone understands what a hypothesis document is and what it looks like. Whatever test you run has to be able to be described in a hypothesis document: what test you want to run, why you want to run it, how do you run it exactly, the variables tested, how youâll measure success or failure, whatâs the outcome and what are the next steps if itâs positive or negative.
đ #6
If you donât know what to do after a positive experiment, donât even run the test. This kills a lot of tests. Example: testing a creative with a green vs. blue background, then whatâs the next step...Everything green? Testing a creative with someone looking left vs. right, then whatâs the next step...Everyone looking to the right? It doesnât scale.
đ #7
Donât complain that your product team doesnât want to test or prioritize something. Make sure you explain the outcome of the test and how it could impact the companyâs north star metric. If you did that already, then this needs to be discussed/figured out at a higher level.
đ #8
Keep in mind Darius Contractorâs psychâd framework to increase funnel conversion: you attribute + and - âpsychâ points to every step in the journey. For products where the value is not immediately there (Blinkist, Audible, even Netflix), getting people to start a free trial helps them engage and gives them a chance to like the product.
đ #9
Having hard paywalls as early on in the process as possible helps you take advantage of the highest psych point possible. Asking people to pay is what most frustrates them, and if you do it too late (long onboarding, etc.) youâre missing out and not capitalizing on impulse.
đ #10
People blame the apps for their lack of commitment: language, fitness, etc. (anything that requires discipline). This is why you need to generate as much commitment as possible early on, and nothing works better than putting in your credit card.
Stay savvy!
âď¸ Sylvain