Colin Hodge provides advice on paid marketing strategies. He recommends (1) starting with Facebook and Google ads due to measurability and low budgets, (2) testing different content like photos and text copies with various audiences, and (3) optimizing ads for valuable user actions like streams watched rather than just clicks or installs. He also suggests reviewing performance daily and making adjustments weekly.

1. 1
"SUCCESS SEEMS TO BE
CONNECTED WITH ACTION.
SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE KEEP MOVING.
THEY MAKE MISTAKES, BUT THEY
DON'T QUIT.”
—CONRAD HILTON
Smart Paid 💸
Marketing
#marketing #ads #data-driven
www.ColinHodge.com

2. 2
Colin Hodge
● Specializes in Organic Growth with a Global Mindset
● Board Member for a Silicon Valley social company with over
$200M in annual revenue
● Served as Chief Growth Officer at M17 Entertainment,
which includes the #1 livestreaming video company in
Developed Asia, 17 Live, overseeing global expansion and
helping to launch the biggest markets, as well as leading the
marketing team at headquarters in Taiwan
● Served as CEO of 17 Live USA and launched the highly-rated
PG video streaming app, LiveAF, in Los Angeles, California
● Grew revenue and users of new or acquired social apps as
Head of Paktor Labs, including 20x growth for one app that
is now a top-grossing social app in Taiwan
● As CEO & Founder, created and grew viral app DOWN to
6M+ users organically, exiting in successful acquisition
● Studied Computer Science (major) and Business
Management (minor) at Cornell University (B.S. 2007)
.com

3. 3
Results: 17Live

4. 4
GLOBAL GROWTH
41%

5. 5
Why do paid marketing?
1. To expand userbase when it makes sense
financially, either:
a.profitably or
b.at a loss when it’s crucial for a profitable side of
your market
2.To test ideas, copy, and channels with small
budgets

6. 6
But first...
Let’s review the SMILE framework for growing
your startup!

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METRIC IDEAS
Choose your North Star
METRIC and discuss what
affects it
Brainstorm IDEAS to
improve the metric
FRAMEWORK FOR GROWING YOUR STARTUP
SUCCESS
Define what SUCCESS looks like
& what you need to improve to
reach it!
S I
LAY OUT
Select promising ideas
and LAY OUT how to
try them
EXPERIMENT
L E
M
EXPERIMENT with your
best ideas, iterate, and
repeat!

8. 8
Let’s look closer
at IDEAS
and EXPERIMENT

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IDEAS
Brainstorm IDEAS to improve
the metric
Tactics:
1. Psychology: get into the customers'
mindset (e.g. Personas)
2. Examples: think how others, like
competitors or similar biz in other
regions, have attacked this problem
3. Think Big: If you want to increase
this metric 10x and money nor time are
an issue, what would you do?
Rules:
1. There are no bad ideas - be supportive
and positive!
2. Use "and" NOT "but"
3. Let people finish expressing themselves
without interruptions
4. Record the session: notes, audio, etc.

10. 10
Personas
- Map out the type(s) of users you’re trying to acquire,
including demographics
- Imagine yourself in their daily lives, moods, attitudes, and
interests
- Ideally, base these user types on your existing userbase,
drawing from their behavior within your product
- Create names and characters for these “personas” to make
it easy to remember
“Jon”, 27, works as a salesperson at a TW company
earning $4,000/mo, loves basketball and the
cheerleaders, too. He spends 2 h / day on Instagram, 1h
on LINE, and checks FB 2.5x / day from his iPhone.

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1. Category of user you want to acquire:
e.g. super-engaged users who check-in daily
2.Think of your typical existing user segment like this
Note: later on, do surveys to find out more about them, like we did with our VIPs
and daily users
3.Demographics of user:
e.g. Male, age 28, on 3rd job since university, parents are Taiwanese from Taichung,
has steady partner but no kids, earns NT75k/mo
4.Write down the user’s psychology/day:
e.g. Lives in Neihu, Taipei and works in Xinyi, commuting via MRT where he checks
his phone every day for ~30min, including your app 5min 1x in the morning, 1x at
night; Frustrated with his finances and boss; goes to the gym 2x/wk and values
fitness; watches Netflix and funny youtube videos the most; rarely uses FB but is
following lots of fitness KOLs on IG;
5.Name your persona!
Worksheet: Personas

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EXPERIMENT
EXPERIMENT with your best
ideas, iterate, and repeat!
● Run A/B tests with acceptable risk (e.g. if you don't
want to risk revenue much, set your baseline
variant at 80% and the new variant at 20%).
● Ensure results are statistically significant (95%
confidence interval).
● Iterate on many different variations of tests, if
possible, to ensure that you find the best way to
communicate it to your customers.
● Look for 🎇 sparks 🎇 of potential growth - results
where a key metric moves significantly - and then
pour gasoline on by focusing experiments in that
area.
● Repeat the LAY OUT & EXPERIMENT steps with
promising ideas until you find a spark to focus on.

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How to do paid marketing?
Evaluate where to reach your customers
- Research where your potential customers spend their time
online (FB, Google, LINE, Youtube, Twitter, Reddit, etc.)
- Consider Facebook & Google if:
- You want more easily-measurable results
- You want to ensure you get at least some results
- You want to start with a pretty low budget

14. 14
How to do paid marketing?
Evaluate where to reach your customers
- Consider an influencer/KOL campaign if:
- Your product is something influencers could feature
somewhat naturally in their content
- You want to tie in a larger marketing campaign
- You’re OK with less-attributable results and a “win or fail”
outcome

15. 15
How to do paid marketing?
Starting with the mainstream channels
- Avoid 3rd party agencies or app ad networks at first!
(these require anti-fraud tools, like Appsflyer, to get good value)
- e.g. Facebook, Google, whatever has wide adoption in your
region
- Facebook often has better results to start, and you can target by
similar interests, demographics, and similar audiences better
- Google allows you to target competitor keywords, searches,
hidden long-tail gems
- Youtube can lead to lower CPA for good content

16. 16
Content is king
Test out 50+ of photos,
videos, and text copy with
different audiences,
leading to 100s of
variations
- Start with 5 pics, 5 texts, and 5
audiences
- Add 3 more pics or videos per
week
- Key lesson: you don’t know
what performs best until you
experiment!
How to do paid marketing?

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How to do paid marketing?
Content is king
- Official photos/videos or high quality materials aren’t always
the best creatives for performance ads; lower quality creatives
sometimes reduces CPR
- Use your persona’s mindset to come up with creatives that
will catch their eyes and clicks
We tried many types of streamer photos, and we found
that the best were NOT the most revealing photos - those
that showed their curves without being too sexual had
lower CPRs.

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How to do paid marketing?
Target actions, not clicks
- For apps, test targeting:
- registrations (CPR)
- purchases (CPP)
- key app action (e.g. watch stream or like a profile)
- other valuable actions users can take
- Many startups get burnt paying per [worthless] view (CPM),
click (CPC), or install (CPI)

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How to do paid marketing?
Target actions, not clicks
- Try optimizing against multiple action events within
your product and see which one produces the best long-
term LTV customers
We tried testing our ads optimized against many
user actions - “view stream” performed better vs.
“register” and “install”, in terms of lowering
acquisition costs.

20. 20
How to do paid marketing?
Target actions, not clicks
Meh 😒 Better 😏 Best 😍

21. 21
How to do paid marketing?
Review daily, adjust ~weekly
- Check your ad performance daily to spot new trends
(shift budgets to variations) and ensure nothing is
broken
- Look at each ad’s Click-through Rate (CTR), install %,
other CPA you are targeting

22. 22
How to do paid marketing?
Review daily, adjust ~weekly
- Refresh and add new creative ~weekly, also adjusting
campaign bids, audiences, other settings
- It can take 3-7 days to see reliable results even with a large
budget, so don’t adjust too frequently (their auto-
optimization doesn’t work well then)
We would add 1-3 new creative sets each week, with
each set containing many different variations (text, ad
template style, target audience).
P.S. Carousel-style ad templates worked best on FB

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How to do paid marketing?
Facebook dashboard example

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How to do paid marketing?
Solid short-cuts
- Use FB’s “Lookalike Audiences” based on your best users
(those who paid, retained awhile, etc.)
- If you don’t have users yet, you can do Lookalike Audiences
from any partners with similar target users
We made “Lookalike Audiences” from our users who
paid, were retained > 3m, super-commenters, VIPs,
streamers, etc.

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How to do paid marketing?
Solid short-cuts
- Use the platforms’ suggestions and automated
optimizations
- Using a 3rd party SDK like Appsflyer helps you compare
deeper data across multiple ad channels (and catch fraud if
you pay for that extra tool)

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How to do paid marketing?
Influencer / KOL Campaigns
- Be prepared for either a win or failure. There can be complete duds
when running these creative campaigns.
- Track the results they have already (cost/like, cost/share,
cost/comment, estimated CPA) and your subsequent results
- Negotiate price heavily with the KOL, especially with agencies
- Target KOLs with audiences that fit your personas
- Allow the KOL creative freedom: the end result will be better if they
produce something their audience likes
- Still try to get final veto on the result & some revision rights, as well
securing how they will mention and drive traffic to your product
- Taiwan KOLs have pretty high prices, so be sure to compare a few

27. 27
"SUCCESS SEEMS TO BE
CONNECTED WITH ACTION.
SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE KEEP MOVING.
THEY MAKE MISTAKES, BUT THEY
DON'T QUIT.”
—CONRAD HILTON
Szu-han (Purple) Chen
Linda Ho
Shy Liu
Ryan Wu
Special thanks for help
gathering insights: