How to grow a subscription business | Yuriy Timen (Grammarly, Canva, Airtable)

Sep 1, 2022 1h 8m 19 insights Episode Page ↗
Yuri Timmin, a growth advisor to companies like Canva and Airtable, discusses tactical growth strategies for subscription products. He covers when to invest in virality, SEO, and paid growth, common failure modes, and how market shifts are impacting acquisition channels.
Actionable Insights

1. Prioritize Onboarding for Complex Products

Invest in improving onboarding, especially for complex prosumer products, as it’s a high-leverage opportunity that can significantly increase activation rates (2-4x for early stage, 20-30% for later stage). Guide users and customize their initial experience to avoid overwhelming them with the product’s full robustness.

2. Invest in Deep Customer Research

Consistently conduct user interviews, market research, surveying, and panels to gain clarity and momentum, especially in early stages. This deep understanding of customers and prospects can galvanize your team and provide focus.

3. Focus on One Growth Channel

When resources are limited, intensely focus on one growth channel or tactic at a time. Establish clear, objective guardrails to determine when a tactic is showing promise or when to move on, ensuring it receives an “appropriate shot.”

4. Avoid Premature Growth Diversification

If a single growth tactic accounts for 80%+ of your user acquisition but your overall user base is still small, resist diversifying too early. Instead, lean further into what’s working to build it into a strategic advantage and hit critical growth rates.

5. Shift to Sustainable Growth Initiatives

In the current market, prioritize sustainability, extending runway, and minimizing burn over “growth at all costs.” This makes longer-term, defensible growth initiatives like SEO more attractive for early-stage companies.

6. Assess SEO Opportunity Early

Evaluate SEO potential by checking for a unique editorial, programmatic (e.g., templates, data-driven pages), or data angle. If you can check two or three of these boxes, SEO may be a worthwhile investment for your product.

7. Timebox SEO Experiments to 3 Months

To reduce the cost and risk of SEO experimentation, timebox initial efforts to three months. This allows you to quickly determine if the strategy is likely to work without committing excessive long-term resources.

8. Seek Specialized SEO Expertise

Given the specialized nature of SEO and constant algorithm changes, consider hiring an outside resource (boutique agency or solo consultant) for an initial audit. This can efficiently vet the opportunity and provide actionable insights.

9. Leverage Paid Growth with Strong Unit Economics

If your company has high LTVs (hundreds of dollars, prosumer buyer), healthy conversion rates (20-35% site-to-free, 5-7%+ free-to-paid), and strong financial health, lean into paid growth. This is especially effective if you can identify less saturated channels.

10. Use Paid for Returns or Learnings

Employ paid acquisition either to drive profitable returns at efficient unit economics or as a rapid feedback engine for testing messaging, positioning, designs, and features. Clearly define your objective for each paid campaign.

11. Delay Paid Acquisition if Funnel Weak

If your product’s funnel doesn’t convert well, users don’t retain, or LTVs are too low, it’s not the right time for significant paid acquisition. Focus on improving product-market fit and core metrics first, potentially using a small budget for quick positioning tests.

12. Adjust Paid Payback to 6 Months

In the current market, aim to pay back paid media investments in six months or less. Adjust your targets and cut any campaigns that significantly exceed this timeframe.

13. Invest in Better Attribution Stacks

With increased scrutiny on attribution, invest in building a robust attribution stack, including tools for media mix modeling (e.g., Recast) and incrementality testing (e.g., Measured, Incremental). This helps understand the causal relationship between spend and results.

14. Capitalize on Decreased Ad Competition

If your company possesses strong cash reserves, robust unit economics, and efficient payback periods, leverage the current market conditions. Decreased competition on ad platforms can lead to lower CPMs, offering a significant advantage.

15. Explore TikTok Advertising

Don’t dismiss TikTok as a viable advertising channel, as its audience is much broader than just Gen Z and it can be a highly efficient digital channel for many brands. Your target audience is likely present on the platform.

16. Reconsider Out-of-Home and Direct Mail

Re-evaluate out-of-home (OOH) and direct mail campaigns, as online attribution has deteriorated while offline attribution methods have improved. These channels are gaining traction and can be very performant for many brands.

17. Utilize Podcast Advertising

Consider podcast advertising as a highly performant channel for many brands. The narrowing gap in attribution capabilities between online and offline channels makes it a more attractive option.

18. Practice Essentialism

Adopt the principle of essentialism by cutting out noise and focusing on a singular, high-impact goal, doing it exceptionally well. This approach is particularly valuable for leaders managing aggressive goals and multiple responsibilities.

19. Control Your Reaction to Events

Embrace the mindset that while you cannot control external circumstances, you can always control your reaction to them. This perspective fosters perseverance and resilience in challenging situations.