In this interactive workshop led by Heidi Yu, participants share practical growth‑hacking tactics across multiple channels. The discussion begins with SEO, where the consensus shifts from keyword stuffing to producing high‑quality, audience‑focused content and ensuring proper CMS integration. The conversation then moves to App Store Optimization (ASO), covering keyword limits, timing of app‑store feature windows, and strategies to sustain momentum after a feature. A substantial portion is devoted to paid acquisition, especially Facebook ads: participants discuss budgeting (e.g., $2,000 per campaign), the importance of precise audience targeting, day‑of‑week spend patterns, regional cost variations (Spanish‑speaking Latin America cheap, US expensive, China unavailable), and tricks like pausing ads to save budget. International targeting strategies are explored, recommending testing cheap markets (Mexico, Brazil, Egypt, Thailand) before scaling in costly regions like the US or niche Chinese‑speaking Silicon Valley audiences. The session also touches on B2B sales structures, with examples of a natural‑language site‑search product and hedge‑fund risk‑management services, highlighting the need for dedicated salespeople, use of tools like Intercom and LinkedIn ads, and the balance between inbound marketing and outbound outreach. Finally, the group warns against spamming, emphasizing ethical considerations in growth tactics. Throughout, the tone remains conversational, supportive, and experience‑driven.
Chapters
So for SEO apps, guys. Not SEO. Oh yeah, SEO first. Search engine optimization. Anybody have experience you want to share? 3 sentences.
Yeah, I used to sell that to clients before.
Oh, wow. Did you make any money for that?
Yeah.
Ooh, okay, so you guys should ask him. It's free, right? Cool. So what are the 3 tricks you can share?
Well, now it's gotten a lot about content itself rather than keywords and all of that. So my best advice, and I don't even charge for it anymore because it's all about content really, the content that you produce, and actually try to talk to somebody on the other end rather than trying to fake the system with keywords and You know, tags and everything. So I would just concentrate on the actual content and providing good content. That's my biggest advice.
Cool, cool. How about you?
I was going to say, like, make sure that you understand, like, how Google's API works with the keyword. Yeah, when you're making a website, if you have, like, a If you're using a CMS, like WordPress or something like that, it's a lot easier to do search engine optimization than it is if you straight code your website. So make sure you build it right if you get to that point.
You guys are all experts already, I'll ask you. So yeah, yeah, yeah. How about ASO? Apps? I've never heard of that. Maybe I typed it wrong. No, it's app search optimization. That's correct. So that's ASO, app search optimization. So there's something like 12 keywords for the App Store or something? Or 100, oh, actually 100 characters. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I've heard my developer shares with me that Every Thursday, App Store will feature new apps all the time. So make sure you guys hit that time. Also, if your app gets featured somehow, make sure there's another way you guys can keep it going for a little bit increase. Once they are featuring you guys already, you guys are already on top that time. If you can give it a little bit— that would really help. Paid acquisition, somebody just talked about paid channels. There's so many paid channels, Facebook ads, Google AdWords, and also ad networks. Anybody want to share Facebook ads? Yeah.
It can get expensive.
How expensive is it?
It can get really expensive. I think the most I've ever spent on one campaign Like $2,000.
Wow, you got money.
Yeah.
But I mean, it's— you have to know, like, you have to really be specific about your target because you can end up wasting a lot of money. And if you— there could be days where you find it less busy than certain days. Like, you know, Friday night is obviously going to be very busy.
Everyone's out, someone's going to be on Facebook, so you turn it off.
And I didn't know that you could actually turn it off and like save your budget. So there's like a lot of tricks that running Facebook ads—
and you can have multiple ads running at the same time if you set one budget. And it's just really all about, yeah, like having the right content, having the right picture, having the right title that people are apt to click on.
But yeah, if you like There's lots of tricks to running Facebook ads.
Totally.
Yeah, yeah.
But you can go as little as you want.
Who else wants to share? Yeah, expert.
Yeah, if— I don't know, but I don't know if anyone has a product like that, but targeting Spanish-speaking people in Latin America is very, very cheap. I did it once for like less than 2 cents per like kind of thing, and I got like 17,000 likes for a company in a matter of Like three months.
Oh, I'm gonna ask you later. Definitely, you guys have an expert in your classroom.
For Spanish-speaking people, I don't know. I just found that there's a reason for that though.
What is the reason?
There's a reason that the acquisition fee is so low because the the net yield per like exposure is low. You know, you got like you gotta think why is it cheaper to target?
It's also like how much people—
Yeah, definitely.
If you guys have a little small budget, you can definitely try it out for your own targeting group. I did some, so I did some campaign for targeting the people living in Silicon Valley who speak Chinese. So it's getting really expensive once they're like really narrowed down to that geolocation and who can also speak Chinese. It's kind of getting expensive. But however, worth the money, I was figuring out, it's cool. One was did PokéMaru for my ecommerce. I did a bunch of Facebook ads. I was targeting somewhere, so we ship internationally. So I was targeting Egypt. So those countries, however, is so cheap, very affordable. I have so many likes and just go viral in that area. And actually I got orders. from those countries. So if you guys are doing internationally, so US is usually the most expensive one right now. But if you're doing, sometimes when you have your product out, you want to try different countries, maybe you can target those different countries first to have the user feedback before you are launching, spend your big bucks in the US market. So any of you guys are doing targeting to different countries or globalized? Where is it?
It's a platform called Nudestarter.
It's like Kickstarter for nudes.
And I pretend to reach all the world.
All the world, nice. I'm reaching Mexico. Mexico? Oh, okay. Yeah, actually, I did Mexico and Brazil. Those are very affordable. Russia sometimes. But Thailand, when I was doing Thailand, I don't know why Thailand is expensive. I don't know if that's less people speak English there, There's a lot of expats in Thailand. Yeah, but however, it's so expensive. I don't know why.
Yeah.
But Singapore, Malaysia, those are good, good price. Facebook, you cannot really do that in China, which the market is huge, but there's different ways if you guys are focusing on China later or want to go China. There's a lot of other ways. So sales team, any of you guys doing to B? Type of product? What is it?
Mine is a search engine that can search the content of your website, and it takes natural language queries, so kind of like answering any question you have.
Oh, nice. What is it?
Yeah, we want to sell the 3S to push reality content.
Oh, okay. So, or to be, you also have to be—
Risk management advisors for hedge funds.
Oh, hedge funds, wow. Why that? Okay, okay, sales team. We didn't really have sales teams in our company until recently. So, myself, I'm a salesperson for my company. Also, our marketing director also works as our salesperson. But now we're going to hire one more salesperson. Sometimes salesperson could be really cool to have, especially if you're doing to-be. Sometimes we do all those tricks like Google AdWords, Facebook ads, or LinkedIn ads if you are focusing on to-be, but however, still have people talking on the phone or answering Intercom, which is another software I really love. So definitely that works to have somebody.
Spamming.
Spamming, okay, we already talked about spamming a little bit. Just be really careful. Sometimes you are not really want to do the spamming, but some action will turn yourself to be a spammer. Just be really careful.
