Growth Conference Europe 2019: Everything You Missed

Emanuela Zaccone – How Remote is Remote

The event started in the morning with Emanuela Zaccone. Emanuela is the TOK.tv co-founder as well as the Marketing and Product Manager of the company. TOK.tv is a sports social media network, with more than 20 million users. The network allows viewers to watch their favorite game on TV while talking with their friends. Emanuela herself is in charge of designing and developing new products for sports fans, and she does so using the agile and SCRUM methodology while leading the development team.

Her speech made a case for remote work. Since the founding of the company, remote work has been the backbone of TOK.tv.  sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Steve Dapper – Speech Connections for Growth

Steve Dapper loves talking. However, he doesn’t like talking as much as he likes speaking correctly. And he likes it when other people speak correctly, too. Steve is an entrepreneur, International Business Developer, Speech Trainer, Vocal & Fitness Coach.

His presentation started with the vocal exploration of the word ‘cracker.’ ‘Cracker’ is a dissyllable word which sounds pretty straight-forward. What can go wrong when you, as a non-speaking English individual, try to pronounce it, right?

– A lot, Steve says, because you don’t say “cracker” but rather, “krakər.” sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Frances Simowitz – How to Grow and Scale in a new Market

The third speech from Frances Simowitz was all about new markets. In particular, she talked about how a business can grow and scale in a new market. Frances specializes in sales and communities and is the CEO and Managing Director at NUMA, a startup accelerator.  In less than 40 minutes, she explained the importance of bringing together communities, startups, and corporations.

Furthermore, she analyzed how bridging the gap between startups and the US market has helped the acceleration of 347 startups, boasting an impressive 82% startup survival rate, 4 years after the NUMA program.  sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Ryan Kulp – Growth Starts with You

After the lunch break, it was time for Ryan Kulp to take over the stage. Ryan is the founder of FOMO, Cross Sell, and a couple of other companies. Although the former is a social proof marketing tool, and the other is an eCommerce tool, all companies have something in common: all of them are bootstrapped. Besides, there are 0 people involved in sales, and also everyone works remotely.

In total, the portfolio of Ryan’s companies counts more than 7,500 paying customers while their needs for paid advertising doesn’t exceed $500 per month. So how does he do all this? Ryan Kulp made a case against mediocrity, how to go beyond it, and how you can reach your full potential. sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Forbe’s Interview by Marco Barsallina

In the middle of the first day’s presentation, three speakers came up on stage to be interviewed by Marco Barsallina, the Editor In Chief at Forbes.it. Those speakers were Frances Simowitz, who was also the second speaker, Satya Singh (Product & Growth Manager), and Raffaele Gaito (Growth Hacker, Entrepreneur).

The interview touched on growth marketing – growth hacking and the role of the growth marketer today. sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Enrico Bruschini – Viral Growth in B2B

Enrico Bruschini, the product manager of Instana, came up next. Instana is a Performance Management Application, and Enrico is the creative mind behind the product and its growth. Enrico started off his presentation with a question: “Has anyone achieved viral growth with an expensive product (> $30k)?”. As he explained, the absence of any raised hands was expected.

Although one can find many case studies from companies that have achieved viral growth by selling consumer products, it’s not easy to find the same viral growth from B2B companies that sell expensive products. sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Luca Senatore – The Three Pillars of Growth

Luca started off his speech more like a magician than a marketer. Upon coming up on stage, he asked for a volunteer to join him, to whom he gifted his book and a free strategy session with him. The moral of the story Luca wanted to give was that the volunteer, in spite of a possible awkward moment or making a fool of himself on-stage, got out of his comfort zone, walked on stage, and then left the stage like a champion.

Had he decided that going on-stage was just “too much” for him, he’d never won anything. Growth is usually found outside the comfort zone.  sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Satya Singh – How Do Product and Growth Marketing Come Together

Satya Singh is a product marketer first and a public speaker second. Nowadays he runs his own startup, Hotels.com. Having a background in engineering and consulting, he had both the knowledge and the experience to analyse why some companies, like Friendster, Myspace and Google+, stagnated and then were wiped out from the digital map. How can one have sustainable growth hacking? 

As Satya noted, the lines between product, marketing, and sales are blurring. Being a marketer for the last 13 years have left him with 3 valuable lessons. sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Gerard Compte – Send Emails with Love

If you know FindathatLead, then you now also know the man responsible for the tool. As he explained, Gerard built and founded FindthatLead for a number of reasons, but there was one particular (traumatic) incident that was the last straw in his career: sending the wrong email.

In his former company, as an employee, he sent a wrong email. In that email, he had attached the prices from their suppliers and Gerard sent it straight to the client’s Inbox. The cost of that mistake in terms of money was 30.000€, but the impact for Gerard was much higher. sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Raffaele Gaito – Delight me

Day two started with Raffaele Gaito. Raffaele is one of the founders and organizes of Growth Conference Europe. His presentation shed light on the last stages of the marketing funnel, and he expanded upon how to retain users through customer satisfaction and “delightment.”

And so, Raffaele presented 7 ways to “cuddle your users.” After each way, he recommended his favorite book so you too can study the topic.

These are Raffaele’s 7 ways and the books he suggested: sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

• Use a personal touch
• Communication is always P2P
• Build relationships
• Customization is key

Recommended book: Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business by Harley Manning, Josh Bernoff, and Kerry Bodine

• Over-deliver
• Surprise your audience
• Beat the expectations
• Give presents and do giveaways

Recommended book: Overdeliver: Build a Business for a Lifetime Playing the Long Game in Direct Response Marketing by Brian Kurt

• Build a culture
• Values instead of products
• Fight for a cause
• Pick a side

Recommended book: Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh

sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>Rafaelle’s full speech at Growth Conference Europe:

https://youtu.be/RFPR3ndHRgM sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Vasil Azarov – How to Start and Grow a Community

Vasil is the founder of Growth Marketing Conference, an actionable, hands-on educational event dedicated to growth, and the biggest growth hacking conference in the world.

Apart from being the co-organizer of the GCE event, Vasil made a presentation about community building, which he shared with the audience. His main concern was growth through relationship building and event marketing. sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Theodore Moulos – Moving from Services to Products

Theodore Moulos is the group CEO of GrowthRocks & Viral Loops. GrowthRocks is considered to be one of the best growth hacking agencies in the world; googling “growth hacking agencies” and seeing the company on top means that at least they know their SEO game. On the other hand, Viral Loops is a B2B SaaS company with products revolving around viral & referral marketing solution.

What Theodore presented in this 30-minute speech was the role that growth hackers should play and what the term “growth hacking” means today. sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Massimo Chieruzzi – How we Grew AdEspresso With(out) Growth Hacking

Massimo Chieruzzi is the Co-Founder and CEO of AdEspresso, which has been under the Hootsuite umbrella since early 2017. AdEspresso is a social media tool that assists you in the creation and optimization of your ads. And Hootsuite is, well, Hootsuite – one of the top social media management platforms out there.

Back to Massimo, he shared with the GCE audience how he managed to grow AdEspresso: how he transformed it from a $90k/month company to a $30M/month company, in 3 years. All of which happened with only 2 full-time employees doing marketing, 3 contractors doing content writing, and less than $10k/month in paid advertising. sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Steli Efti – Why Growth Hacking Doesn’t Work Anymore

Steli Efti was born in Greece but was raised in Germany – he also prepared a speech for a growth hacking conference with the intention of making a case against growth hacking. A man of many contradictions it seems – or is it? 

Steli is one of the co-founders and CEO of Close, a sales communication platform founded in 2013. Unfortunately, Steli was sick and couldn’t make it to the conference. Regardless, through a video, he sent his regards and his valuable insights on what growth hacking should be and what it shouldn’t be. sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Clayton Wood – 2019 Top Google Ranking Signals

Clayton has built two multi-million dollar marketing brands from scratch with 0 investments. He’s been in the digital marketing business for over 10 years – be it coaching, personal branding or SEO, which was what he talked about.

In his short yet highly valuable speech, Clayton shared with the GCE audience the Google Top Ranking Signals for 2019.  sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>Next, Clayton briefly explained a lot of different aspects, like search intent optimisation, how Gohttps://youtu.be/Zssvv0BYzxEogle’s RankBrain works and uses UX signals, organic click-through-rate, the reality of voice search content, technical errors, and of course, backlinks.

Watch Clayton’s full speech at Growth Conference Europe:

https://youtu.be/Zssvv0BYzxE sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Phil Byrne – You Can’t Hack Happiness

Phil Byrne has been with Intercom for more than 3 years, and he is responsible for the production of the company’s educational videos, demos, and tutorials it releases. In case you don’t know about Intercom, it is a customer messaging SaaS platform which has received more than $240M in funding and currently has more than 30k paying customers.

In his presentation, Phil delved into how we “can’t hack happiness,” and he did so through demonstrating the way Intercom changed its onboarding process. sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Ignasi Buch – Empathy Driven Growth

You may not know that Ignasi Buch has a thing for numbers, but you probably know the company which he works for as a product marketer and a data scientist – Typeform. Ignasi described how empathy is a core value for Typeform and the way it defines how they hire, how they treat each other, and how the brand talks to its audience. 

His journey with Typeform allowed him to make a lot of tests, and Ignasi presented one of the most impactful tests they did: The test begins with the hypothesis that what users want is to get into the Typeform editor immediately, start building forms and distribute them as soon as possible. Is this what users really wanted? What would happen if they removed their entire in-app onboarding flow?  sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Fernando Angulo – Content for people and for Google

The next man who walked on-stage is involved with digital marketing for over 10 years, and for the bigger part of his career he’s been working at SEMRush – the famous 360 digital marketing management platform. Fernando’s speech was all about Google’s featured snippets.

Before he moved on with his research presentation, he explained why you should care in the first place, and what are the benefits of ranking for a featured snippet. sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>Types of snippets:

• Paragraph
• List
• Table

sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>Fernandο also shared the anatomy of a successful snippet. What are the common characteristics that featured snippets share? Fernando suggested that if you understand that anatomy, you can have a much higher chance at being featured if you wish. In this manner, the recipe for formatting your future featured snippets goes like this:

• The paragraph should be 46-84 words long (272-370 characters)
• The number of the total headers and subheader should be close to 22
• The snippet source should come from a secure domain (HTTPS)
• Include around 33 external link citations
• Don’t forget the ALT text of the images
• The images should be landscape, with a 4:3 ratio
• Avoid walls of text
• Be succinct; the Flesch-Kincaid reading level should be around 7th’s grade

Watch Fernando’s full presentation here:

https://youtu.be/vWRQ46uFeJQ sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Naser Alubaidi – Why Partnerships are The Ultimate Growth Hack

A growth marketer from Canada, Naser Alubaidi presented and analyzed his favorite and ultimate growth hack, which is no other than Partnerships. As Naser described himself, he was the type of kid who was always looking for shortcuts. However, the strategies he usually ended up adopting were neither scalable nor sustainable.

That changed when Naser read a book by David Deida, which made a striking analogy for Naser: Life is an onion. At the core of that onion resides everyone’s purpose and their life goal. And to reach that core, you will have to start peeling the onion first, which translates to aligning many aspects of your life with your goal. sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Luca Barboni – Growth Hacking as a Service that Works

Luca Barbon is the founder and VP of Marketing of the Italian marketing & advertising agency 247X.

He described the filtering mechanism the agency applies at the beginning of the communication with potential clients. As he said, the agency focuses on eCommerce and B2B clients and there is also a list of questions that asks their clients in order to understand more about them and find out if and how it can help them. sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Braulio Medina – Art & Science of Data-Driven Growth

Braulio came all the way from Rio. He is the co-founder of Growth Team Brazil – Brazil’s first growth hacking agency. He opened up his speech with the Top 5 factors of success. Those factors came from a research they did with more than 200 companies. According to the research, those factors are: 

• Timing
• Team Execution
• Idea “Truth” Outlier
• Business Model 
• Funding

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Gerardo Forliano – 7 Common Mistakes in Digital Product Design

Gerardo Forliano is a man of many things. He is a growth hacker, the admin of Growth Hacking Italia – the leading Italian growth hacking community – the CEO of Growthalia, an Italian growth hacking agency, and the event organizer of Growth Hacking Day – the most significant European growth hacking event.

Whenever Gerardo goes hands-on in marketing, he will be around product design, UX, or content marketing. Playing different roles has allowed Gerardo to acknowledge some mistakes in product design. sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Ben Kaplan – How to use Data Driven PR to Grow Sales

Ben Kaplan has a 15-year career in the media and is the founder and CEO of PR Hacker, a Top 100 PR firm in the U.S. He is also a Harvard-trained economist and public commentator in the education field.

As Ben suggested in his speech, public relations can be used as a tool to drive core business metrics: KPI’s, user downloads, sales, and acquisitions. Data-driven PR, in particular, can be one of the marketing branches with the highest ROI.  sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>

Valentin Radu – Cognitive Biases & Machine Learning

Last but not least, Valentin Radu was the closing keynote of the Growth Hacking Conference 2019. Valentin is the CEO and founder of Omniconvert, an eCommerce personalization software. He is also an avid blockchain supporter. Cryptocurrencies aside, Valentin’s speech was focused on Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) in regards to the human element.

Valentin began with a story of his from 1997. Then-young Valentin wanted to make some money to go on holidays. And so he got a job: selling cookbooks on the streets of Bucharest. It was a rough start, but in just a few weeks, through tweaking his strategy multi ways (number of prospects, locations, pitch), Valentin started selling more and more – his CRO was going up. sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–> sc-shortcode-cleaner-clean-content-end–>