Mastering paid growth | Jonathan Becker (Thrive Digital)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2023

⏱️ 95 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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Jonathan Becker is the founder and president of Thrive Digital, where he and his team have deployed more than $3.5 billion in paid acquisition budgets for companies like Uber, Asana, Square, Tempur-Pedic, and MasterClass. He spent the first part of his career mastering SEO and is a world expert in DTC, lead generation, demand generation, and user acquisition. In today’s episode, we discuss:

• Signs that your company is a good fit for paid growth

• Strategies for optimizing ad creatives

• The merits of different marketing channels: paid vs. organic search, TikTok and short-form

• Insights on attribution and how to approach it effectively

• How market conditions and AI impact paid growth

• The crazy story of how Jonathan won Uber as a client

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Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/mastering-paid-growth-jonathan-becker-thrive-digital/#transcript

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Where to find Jonathan Becker:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jzbecker

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanbecker123/

• Website: https://thrivedigital.com/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Jonathan’s background

(07:25) The crazy story of how Jonathan won Uber as a client

(11:56) Interchangeable terms for “paid growth”

(12:31) Why you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket

(16:48) What kind of companies should pursue paid growth

(23:07) Is it possible to reach scale exclusively through paid growth?

(27:07) The evolution of performance marketing

(29:39) Advice for founders choosing between SEO and paid

(32:18) Strategies for optimizing ad creatives

(44:43) Paid vs. organic search, TikTok and short-form

(49:56) Where to spend money in order to drive growth for B2B SaaS

(55:06) Attribution in performance marketing

(1:04:18) The impact of AI on paid growth

(1:12:52) Advice for early-stage startups on hiring in-house vs. hiring an agency

(1:17:09) Qualifications to look for in your hires

(1:23:23) How Jonathan won Snapchat as a client

(1:28:55) Lightning round

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Referenced:

• Andrew Wilkinson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/awilkinson/

• Garrett Camp: https://www.forbes.com/profile/garrett-camp/

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/

• Grammarly: https://app.grammarly.com/

• Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/en

• Supermetrics: https://supermetrics.com/

• Recast: https://getrecast.com/

• Midjourney: https://www.midjourney.com/

• DALL-E: https://openai.com/product/dall-e-2

• Storyworthy: https://www.amazon.com/Storyworthy-Engage-Persuade-through-Storytelling/dp/1608685489

• Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike: https://www.amazon.com/Shoe-Dog-Memoir-Creator-Nike-ebook/dp/B0176M1A44

• American Kingpin: https://www.amazon.com/American-Kingpin-Criminal-Mastermind-Behind/dp/1591848148

• The Big Short: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596363/

• White Lotus on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/the-white-lotus

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	There's a lot of different ways that we are beginning to use AI to do more with less, basically.
0:07.0	The effect ultimately that we've seen from a human capital point of view is displacement.
0:12.0	We have more people now than we've ever had, but the
0:14.6	nature of the work that they do is more strategic. It's more about modeling,
0:19.8	validation, asking the right questions,
0:23.1	being focused around creative levers,
0:25.1	and less so the like trench work of implementation
0:28.1	and bid modifiers at the keyword level on Google search
0:31.6	and some of the like really hardcore manual analysis we had to do.
0:35.6	On our creative group we can come up with mockups in literally like 1% of the time that it took.
0:41.3	And so you still have to understand what questions to ask of the AI and be capable of iterating, but these like rough drafts that you might show like the artwork of, you know, to a client to say like, do we like this more, do we like this more, that's AI generated.
0:57.0	It's really interesting.
1:01.0	Welcome to Lenny's podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products.
1:10.0	Today my guest is Jonathan Becker. Jonathan is a legend and an OG in the world of performance marketing.
1:16.0	On this podcast, we've done deep dives into the many aspects of growth,
1:19.6	including SEO, sales, conversion optimization, retention, retention, product-led growth, product-led sales, but this is the first
1:26.8	episode where we get super deep on paid growth.
1:30.0	For the past decade plus, Jonathan and his team have planned, built, and executed more than
1:35.0	three and a half billion dollars in paid acquisition budgets for companies like Uber,
1:39.5	Asana, Square, Masterclass, Temperpedic and many more, and they've built their agency,
1:44.8	Thrive Digital Digital Digital Marketing Agencies.
1:49.2	In our conversation, we get real deep into all things paid growth, including what's changed with recent privacy shifts,
	...

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