"There just aren't that many ways to scale"

Kindle vs. fire strategies, SMS marketing gallery, and the best ads from Cannes (if Cannes had happened)

I share a weekly update on ways to be a better marketer, brand-maker, team-builder, and person. If you enjoy this, you can share some love by hitting the Substack heart button above or below. 

Hi 👋

Here are four stories I found useful and interesting this week. I hope you enjoy! I’ll be back next week with some insights into the OKR goal-setting process at Buffer and how we’re thinking about the coming months.

Wishing you a great week ahead.

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

~ Kevan

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Kindle strategies vs. Fire strategies

by Casey Winters, Product & growth @ Eventbrite

Brilliant story about how companies grow at different stages.

Kindle strategies are non-scalable strategies to get from early-stage to growth-stage. For example, Superhuman doing live calls with all signups.

Fire strategies are scalable strategies.

There aren’t that many fire strategies. Those that involve network effects are generally the best. Sales, paid acquisition, virality, and user generated content with a scalable distribution channel are the most common ways to create sustainable loops to either scale a network effect or scale a product that doesn’t have network effects. This is sobering when I tell entrepreneurs this. There just aren’t that many ways to scale, and almost all involve having extremely good retention as well.

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The case for a comically-narrow target customer

by Andy Johns, Investor @ Unusual Ventures

Andy Johns @ibringtraffic

When entering an existing market you must think through two key questions: (1) Who is the precise customer I am attempting to serve? (2) What can I offer them that is 10x better relative to the alternatives?

Andy Johns @ibringtraffic

When it comes to the question of the target customer, the most common mistake is the target customer definition is too broad. It must be almost comically narrow to the point where you may be misunderstood for such a narrow focus. A few examples to illustrate...

Andy Johns @ibringtraffic

At Wealthfront our initial target customer was an engineer at a pre-IPO tech company, typically between 25 - 35 years old, less than $1M net worth, and had a personal preference to delegate money management to a trusted 3rd party...

Andy Johns @ibringtraffic

Tesla sold roadsters to a very narrow band of ~2,500 people wealthy enough, risk-taking enough, and technology-forward enough, and who didn't care about interior specs or storage capacity to take the leap of faith to buy what could have turned into a $130k lawn ornament...

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SMS marketing gallery

by Postscript

If you’ve ever wondered how to pull off an awesome text-message marketing campaign, this microsite is chock full of great examples and inspiration.

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If Cannes had happened …

by Ad Age

The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is like the Oscars for advertising. Their awards show is on hold for a year, so Ad Age made its best guesses at the ads that would have won. Here are a couple of my favorites:

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Thanks so much for reading. Have a great week!

— Kevan

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