Comments on: Hacking Traction: The Dark Side of Marketing Optimization

By: Be Selective and Make a Point, Any Point

Be Selective and Make a Point, Any Point — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:33:53 +0000

[...] best way(s) to make that happen. In particular, we’ve talked about the correlation between viral growth, traction and revenues. That’s because, in the end, we all want to know what — other than advertising — [...]

By: Diversification = Mediocrity

Diversification = Mediocrity — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:10:08 +0000

[...] If you seek extraordinary performance, focus on what you know very well, do your homework, have conviction and take a stand. It’s the right way to build a product, to build a company — and to be an exceptional investor. Clearly even focused investors make a few bets; you can make a few very well-researched bets per year. But can you really make 30 bets per year, per person, and keep coming out a winner? Great entrepreneurs iterate, but my experience with great entrepreneurs is that there’s usually an ethos and sense of clarity behind what they’re trying to accomplish. It’s not about tossing spaghetti at the wall. [...]

By: Latest marketing news - Nike gets new digital marketin | mortgage linx

Latest marketing news - Nike gets new digital marketin | mortgage linx — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:28:22 +0000

[...] Hacking Traction: The Dark Side of Marketing Optimization [...]

By: Creating value versus optimizing revenue | Insights into Startups and Entrepreneurship - nPost Blog

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:35:11 +0000

[...] around One of the big thematic issues that has been referenced numerous times by myself, Eric Ries, Mike Speiser, and others is the limitations of quantitative testing in building a business. In particular, [...]

By: Karl

Karl — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:22:39 +0000

Got it, I agree. Sadly I think most of the people showing traction are using far more than MV to get the numbers at least all of them I know. The tough part is several have managed to use the ill gotten traffic to build pretty substantial businesses. Time will tell if they can leave the very techiques that got them there. Great to see posts on this stuff hope you do more!

By: Mike Speiser

Mike Speiser — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:11:01 +0000

I’m not blaming the tool, but rather the people who think the tool is a product. As I noted in the post, I think optimization techniques are a great way to make a good thing better. But that the tool is not a product in itself.

By: Karl

Karl — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:07:17 +0000

Hmm multivariate has been around for a while and lots of big ecommerce sites use it like Amazon. As well the advertising industry has been hacking us for years :) I don’t think its the MV that is to blame for the false traction as the commentor above notes. Its what these companies do with the info they acquire from users without their knowledge. For instance there are quite a few companies that use the info they get by you adding an app or signing up for their service to figure out what other sites you are on, your friends and even your email. They then use this information to bombard you with requests on other social networks and email you without your permission or at least without making it clear they will. Another example is cross app pollination which fb has tried to kill several times i.e. I give one app permission and they sneak in alerts from another app they want you to add into the stream alerts from the one you added.
I think its this behavior along with other, sometimes even more nefarious, behaviors that not only show fake traction but really alienate consumers. It has taken a while for these techniques to backfire but from what I see there is little or no chance of this slowing down because these techniques are *incredibly* effective. The numbers are truly staggering and just like the spammers they will do it as long as it makes them money.

By: Creating value versus optimizing revenue | Futuristic Play by @Andrew_Chen

Creating value versus optimizing revenue | Futuristic Play by @Andrew_Chen — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:00:18 +0000

By: Tuesday, June 9, 2009 | shiner.clay

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 | shiner.clay — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:38:22 +0000

[...] The dark side of marketing optimization [...]

By: Mike Speiser

Mike Speiser — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:38:39 +0000

No doubt!

By: Mike Speiser

Mike Speiser — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:35:52 +0000

I don’t want to name names — I realize my argument could be strengthened by doing so, but some friendships and relationships would suffer as a result ;-) The social media space is a good place to look to for examples — including both independent websites and Facebook applications, for example.

In terms of repeat visits, you are right that looking at repeat visits is a very good sign of engagement. And if you ask for the right data and ask the right questions you can piece together what’s really happening. In fact, that’s one of the things I do to see if there is any there, there. But smart people can often find innovative ways of initially presenting data in a favorable way — usually excluding critical views, as I am sure you can imagine.

Another thing I like to do is to search blogs and Twitter for signs of something interesting. A Twitter Search is a great way to quickly learn a great deal about a company…

By: Farhad

Farhad — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:00:08 +0000

Also, while it’s fairly simple to incentivize users to register, are there also cases where you are skeptical of metrics that show repeat usage? Isn’t that harder to hack?

Also, we have also used multivariate testing to drive registrations. But in our experience this has been an optimization with improvements measured in 10%s of percent but not in multiple factors. Would appreciate an example that shows dramatic improvements, where there are 10′sMM pageviews, where in the absence of hacking it would only be order(s) of magnitude less.

By: Jake

Jake — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:04:24 +0000

Would be interesting to have someone show a real-life case study of using multivariate to optimize traction. That would be one of the best attended conference sessions in the valley today.

By: John Sullivan

John Sullivan — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 06:12:05 +0000

@iTrack Hey I agree with what you said and went and checked out your unique COOL site.

As far as the topic the internet (world) has always been poluted with scammers I just don’t know how you can wake up everyday knowing you scam people :( Anyway people that all of a sudden are gurus and experts at social media I have found aren’t to social and in fact in real LIFE they are mostly GOOFS.
We will hear soon how someone came to their house and get their REFUND.
The whole reality of success in America is often sadly the bigger the Douche and arrogant you are the more success and people do for you > looking up to these people I don’t get it :)
Cool post stumbled

By: Mike Speiser

Mike Speiser — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 03:16:24 +0000

AJ, I agree with everything you said. The reason I focus on the “hacking traction” bit is that I’ve seen a ton about getting product right, but little about how people are using very sophisticated mathematics to attract users without a product.

By: AJ

AJ — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 02:11:24 +0000

Mike,

I think you are focusing too much on the use of machine learning and multivariate testing to get signups at the cost of a far stronger point in your article (the last one): that startups should first spend time building a valuable product and then focus on optimizing it using multivariate testing. When you build something people want, any traction you get is there to stay.

No matter how much multivariate testing you do to optimize your “copy, size, color, font and placement of data fields; the format and text of buttons; the flow of pages”, in order to get millions of users to sign up, you still have to a) Get millions of users to your web page b) At least appear to offer something they think may be valuable. Millions of people won’t sign up for free TPS reports no matter how well you design your site.

What’s more, if the number of signups was such an important metric, MySpace would be hot hot hot. Active accounts is what matters and people actively use a product only when they find it to be of value.

And after getting all of this right, there’s the actual goal of making money to think about :)