Burhanuddin Pithawala

Notes on Growth and Marketing for Startups in India

Welcome to Growth Notes by Burhan

Burhanuddin Pithawala

Chances are, you are here to learn more about Growth marketing, so welcome. My name is Burhanuddin Pithawala and I believe Growth Marketing doesn’t have to be Hard. I have spent more than 10000 Hours learning, failing, experimenting, and speaking to experts – to finally get a good understanding of Growth Marketing. More about me here.

In the end, Great Growth Marketing boils down to 3 things

  • 1st Principle Approach (Think like a beginner and not an Expert)
  • Play holistically, and not just marketing, product, or sales.
  • Create a System for Successful Experimentation, that beats any person, idea, or campaign in the long run.

Below you will find my Growth Notes, which are put together basis years of learning, to explain advanced concepts around Growth marketing, solve actual practical challenges, and discuss things that matter to today’s growth teams.

If you want to talk or share your ideas, suggestions with me, here’s my email ID {burhanuddin.pithawala@gmail.com}. I am always happy to be of help to real people who are serious about what they do, who knows I may end up learning from you.

  • How do ZOMATO, OYO, UBER & AMAZON growth teams drive repeat usage of their apps?
    In 2015, Google studied the search behavior of Internet users and published an interesting article called “4 New Moments – Every Marketer Should Know”. The article categorizes the search behavior of today’s consumers into 4 major buckets and holds cues to possibly what the users intended to do when they started their search on Google. […]
  • What will happen to your Company – if you made the Marketing Budget “ZERO”
    It’s another Monday morning, Fresh into the week I usually spend an hour reviewing the Daily, Weekly, and Month to Date numbers. Once Done, I usually return to adding more ideas to my favorite ‘ideas list’ – “what all things we can do to grow faster”. But the day is anything but normal. I get […]
  • The 4 Types of Marketing Budgets and how to measure if they are working for you (4/4) Brand Marketing Budget
    Can Brand Marketing help in Acquisitions? Are there any Objective ways to measure how one’s Brand is doing? How long does it take for Brand Marketing to work? What should be the Brand Marketing Budget for your Company? Read more such interesting questions and my take on them through this article.
  • Attribution eats Marketing Strategy for Breakfast
    It is rare to find a growth marketing team today that is not Data Driven. All the Marketing Strategies (specially in acquisitions) boil down to 2 decisions Scale-Up what’s working Scale-Down or STOP what’s not working But How do you measure what is working? This is where you need Attribution 3 Most widely used Attribution […]
  • The 4 Types of Marketing Budgets and how to measure if they are working for you (3/4) CRM (Reactivation and Engagement) Budget
    In one of my marketing experiences, Google and Facebook Acquisitions turned out to be very expensive. CAC was 10000 (normalized value). At a review meeting, we all felt that it was very high and needed to go down. But there were very few alternatives. An idea was presented by someone, “What if we ran a […]
  • The 4 Types of Marketing Budgets and how to measure if they are working for you (2/4) Discounting Budget
    Part 2/4 Discounting Budget – Would you pay 20$ to Google and Facebook to acquire an unknown user or Give a 5$ discount to an existing customer to make her transact. How do you decide what to go for ? Read more on how to look at the 4 kinds of marketing budgets and how to build a market mix in this post. Know the modalities of discounting, kinds of discounting and how to measure if discounting dollars are working for you.
  • Can You Grow Your Startup 100X by Paid Marketing?
    What follows next is one of the biggest misconceptions of our times. Ask any average executive on what can be done to grow his/her business or startup and most likely, you will hear a version of the following: We need to do an aggressive marketing campaign We are not creating enough noise, I met so […]
  • The 4 Types of Marketing Budgets and how to measure if they are working for you (1/4) Acquisition Budget
    Marketing Reviews in General It’s another marketing review and every channel owner is presenting what is going on with their primary KPIs. All is fine as long as every channel has enough budget to run their show, people hardly care about the burden of the other. But all of this changes, when your budget is […]
  • 3 Reasons why Referral Marketing is not working for your Product / Startup
    When friends or founders reach out to me for growth ideas, usually I begin by asking what all growth channels they have already tried. What is startling, is that frequently Referral Marketing does not even exist in many startups’ growth agendas. This simple yet effective channel getting overlooked in so many companies is so bizarre, […]
  • Why Growth Marketing teams need a Customer Single View
    Learn what is Customer Single View, How to build a CSV – Optimise marketing campaigns for maximum customer lifetime value, conclude product iterations faster and run marketing and growth more confidently. Here we talk about how a customer single view is done and any marketing team can build it with a little help from analytics and engineering teams.