Hannah Parvaz

There’s maxing out a channel from a performance perspective, and there’s maxing out for your awareness on a channel. At some point, if your messaging is super niche, and there’s no good awareness of your product, you’re going to max out from a performance perspective, and you might need to generate awareness.

Don’t half-ass things. Get one paid acquisition channel right first, and get your process/system right. Then, you can expand from there.

The same person might have a different mindset when they’re on different channels. Think about that when choosing a channel and creating ads. Example: Facebook/Instagram to catch up with friends, TikTok to learn.

If possible, record your conversations during customer interviews, so that you can create word/phrases “banks” of when customers first start to use the product, after some time with the product, etc. Then leverage this in both the product and marketing.

In customer research, take quotes, not notes. It’s very important to write down exactly what the customer says, not what we think they mean.

Talk to your customers. Pull out exact bits of what they said and use them in your ad content.

Test on different channels your creatives that work on a specific channel. Example for Uptime: creatives for TikTok on Facebook did not work, but creatives for TikTok on Google UAC worked great.

Looking at your blended metrics is more important than ever because we’ve lost visibility. Run incrementality tests to gain back some visibility, even if it’s just turning off and on some channels.

I consider adding any paid acquisition channel the highest effort because it is ongoing—it’s “forever.”

Talking to customers is the most important and the very first thing you need to do. It’s not product interviews; it’s psychological interviews to figure out what’s going on in their mind. Why are they using your product? What would they be using instead? How do they articulate it?

Plot your core action on a drop-off funnel to understand the drop-off between signup and the first moment users do the core action (e.g., 50% drop-off). When you see several smaller drop-offs between core action events, that’s your activation moment (e.g., activation moment = 6 core actions).

You also need to talk to the people who didn’t make it to the activation moment, depending on where you see the biggest drop-offs. Run retargeting ads like “win a $100 for answering a question,” then ask for signup, and finally, ask them if they’re up for a customer interview.

Your north star metric must encompass both user and business needs. It should have a core action, a cadence, and a revenue component. Example: weekly “reading” subscribers. Ratios are very easy to manipulate, so that won’t work.

You still need to think about the Activation of your free users: if you manage to activate them, you have more chances to convert them.

Halfway through the trial, email users that haven’t activated yet. They often write back.

A signup or a trial is a meaningful action, but it’s not your core action: a core action needs to be repeatable and show a genuinely interested user. Example: at Curio, it was initially hypothesized as when someone presses “Play” on a piece of content, but then it shifted to when someone listens to 95% of the content (they found out that people were skipping the end credits, and this didn't impact activation).

Once you have your north star metric, figure out the key levers to impact it. Whether they work in Acquisition, Activation, or Retention, everyone in your business should be able to understand how they impact that metric and focus on the most impactful work to drive it.

If someone has taken out a trial or a subscription and cancels early on in their journey, they may not have reached their activation moment. It's possible to win these customers back, but it requires a deep understanding of their blockers—which means speaking to them (e.g., getting on the phone).