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Things Every Founder Should Know About Growth with Julian Shapiro of Bell Curve

Episode #079

After helping dozens of startups with his agency's growth marketing training, Julian Shapiro (@Julian) knows a thing or two about growth. In this episode, he shares some strong opinions about why every company should run ads, why e-commerce is more promising than SaaS, and how you should prioritize your focus as a founder to ensure you start a business that can grow.

Show Notes

  • Julian.com — Julian's personal blog where he helps you master various topics

  • Bell Curve Training — growth marketing training course from Julian's agency, Bell Curve

  1. 6

    Julian, you're cute and I love you.

    1. 2

      hi Julian

    2. 1

      This comment was deleted 5 years ago.

  2. 4

    This was hands-down the best podcast episode I've ever listened to. Wow.

  3. 4

    I love the way Julian talks. I wish I had such clarity of speech.

    Great content, too.

  4. 3

    this is fantastic and loaded with extremely valuable insight that is highly accurate in terms of how to come up with an idea and grow a business that is more likely to succeed than others. There is a method, and Julian really does a great job explaining it. It's a method I have been doing as well and currently do, just takes discipline. Again, this is a MUST LISTEN! I have a full page of notes. Just awesome.

  5. 3

    Great listen - particularly the parts about not ignoring ads and working on what is most likely to succeed. Ads as a means of testing ideas keeps popping up and it appears to be a great, short route, to testing if a product would work as opposed to organic growth or word of mouth; and passion can lead someone to work on products no one wants as opposed to working on what has been tested and shown evidence to work.

  6. 2

    My Main Takeaways:

    • Julian tweeted “Given equally skilled founders, mobile apps, ecommerce stores, and even Chrome extensions succeed far more than Software as a Service startups do.”

    • Most of Julian’s clients care a lot about growth and growth marketing. They track their ad-spend meticulously. Rather than brand marketing (where they are trying to get their word out).

    • When starting a business, focus on nailing growth marketing BEFORE you focus brand awareness marketing. Make sure people are interested and that there is traction before you try and perfect your brand colour schemes etc.

    • Julian is a huge advocate of using Ads for any business. Because they are a very good source of traffic. When done right, ads can generate a lot of profit.

    • Ads a very good way to validate an idea.

    • The best marketing channels for B2C products: Facebook/Instagram Ads, Content Marketing, Public Relations (Influencers), Pinterest Ads, Google Ads, Google Shopping.

    • The best marketing channels for B2B product: Sales teams (cold email/calls/networking/Linkedin), Lead Generation through Facebook/Instagram Ads, Google Ads, Content Marketing.

    • Julian disagrees with the advice that goes “Choose what you’re passionate about" and "solve your own problem” rather, he says: start off with what is most likely to succeed financially and has a good growth potential (achieving your financial goals), and choose which one of these options you’re most passionate about. Julian recommends eCommerce stores.

    • Assess the existing competitors in your field to see how well they are doing to see how much opportunity there is.

    • Focus Your Energy: Identify the number one use case that your product could solve, and double down on that.

    • Think less about “markets” and focus more on “audience”.

    • Growth is the most important thing (Making sure that your business is self-sustaining.)

    • A good idea isn’t just about the market/audience, it’s about how well you can pitch and execute it.

    • Ensure customers don’t perceive any friction when getting started with your product/service.

    • When trying to sell to businesses: Be the buyer, ask if you would buy it yourself. Try and sell it, see if anyone else will buy it (before you even make it).

    • When trying to sell B2C in eCommerce: Identify eCommerce trends where branding is the differentiator. I.e. identify upcoming eCommerce trends and jump on the trend early by branding yourself heavily. (This is a killer opportunity, more-so for branding experts).

    • When starting, experiment with different marketing/ad channels and see what works best, then double down on that.

    • Julian says eCommerce works better than SaaS most of the time because eCommerce websites sell things that people are already buying.

    • “If you show your ad to someone who is at the point of their life that they are ready to buy, you have a good chance of making that sale.”

    • Julian says that Los Angeles is a hot spot for hot eCommerce startups.

    • Twitter is a terrible Ad channel (at the time of this video).

    • The best type of virality is inherent virality, where your product is embedded into another product that a user uses.

    • The second best type of virality is word-of-mouth where people talk about your product because they find it amazing.

    • The last best type of virality is artificial virality where you try and force your user to share your product with others for tokens or something.

    • Hot Ad Tip: Social networks typically release ad platforms when they get enough users. If you start advertising with them early you can take advantage of the fact that no one else is using it. You can use Google Alerts to track when news of a Social Networking platform releases an Ad platform.

    • When advertising a mobile app, don’t direct people straight to the app store, direct them to a landing page, pitch them and THEN direct them to the app store. This will likely decrease the amount of downloads, but will increase the amount of purchases because users are now informed about your app (i.e. they are now sold.)

    • Video Ads almost always out-perform image Ads.

    • Tailor your funnels to people in each of your separate target demographics.

  7. 2

    Hey @csallen, any timeline when the transcript will be up? I find myself skipping around to find certain topics and would love the ability to ctrl+f the convo!

    1. 3

      This week at some point

      1. 1

        I am still waiting for the transcript :)

  8. 1

    Thanks for the interesting and useful podcast!
    One note, though...

    Airbnb, nobody knew people wanted that, for years.
    Well, VRBO has been working for more than 20 years (started in 1995) and many people knew and used it. They just created a hype, that's why I think they became much more popular.

  9. 1

    This comment was deleted 5 years ago.