Ellis: Startup budgets cannot break through daily ad noise to build awareness
Sean Ellis · Sean Ellis led growth at Dropbox—& invented growth hacking. Here's his step-by-step growth guide.... · PMF Show · Aug 15, 2024 · at 27:39
Sean Ellis discusses why early-stage startups should avoid trying to compete with large consumer brands through top-of-funnel awareness advertising.
0:00 / 0:12exact quote · 12.7s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“The average person sees 4005 thousand advertisements a day. There is no startup budget that is going to break through 4000 to 5000 advertisements and actually, actually create some awareness for your product.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Sean Ellis
Ellis: 40% 'Very Disappointed' User Threshold Sets Startups Up for Success
“Over time, I started to hone in that it's probably around 40% saying they'd be very disappointed that would make
Yeah.
We would essentially set that company up for success.”
Ellis: NPS measures operational experience rather than core product need
“I think NPS is a great survey as well, but I think it's more of an operational, it's like kind of an operations feedback. Like let's say I have a product that's a must have, but their customer service is terrible. Like the person yelled at me in customer servi…”
Ellis: A/B testing messaging solely for conversion volume attracts wrong users
“That's a really typical mistake. I see a lot of companies make is that they AB test their messaging for maximum response, where ultimately if people are converting on something, the product's actually not good at doing or something that's not that important, y…”
Ellis: Referral incentives will not fix products lacking organic word of mouth
“Best practices of having a double-sided referral incentive can be effective, but I don't think it will, would improve referral rate on a product that has almost no referrals.”
Sean Ellis: Fixing products for lukewarm users risks breaking them for lovers
“My fear is always that like, if I try to fix it for the people who don't love it, I'll break it for the people who do love it.”
Ellis: Early Dropbox Scored 50% and Eventbrite 80% on PMF Test
“And when I went to Dropbox and I ran the question, I was like, 50% of people said they'd be very disappointed without the product. And then and then I went to Eventbrite after that. And at the 80% of the people said they'd be very disappointed if they could no…”