We build and execute ambitious growth strategies.

We’re a high-frequency testing lab that focuses on testing acquisition channels to find and utilize the most effective ones for your business.

Germinal is insurging the traditional way of doing marketing and research. They have developed a unique understanding of social networks that allows to test innovation ideas with an incredible speed. On top of that they don’t dress well and are humble nerds.

Marie-Catherine Cerutti

Head of France and Europe Brand Hub at Ipsos Strategy3

Germinal, and its disruptive approach to qualifying new concepts in record time, has proven instrumental to a number of our clients.

Laurent Houel

Associate at Fast Up Partners, ex-Branding Director at Evian

The teams are helping us to digitize our go to market. Their added value is undeniable and their professionalism is recognized within the teams.

Nicolas Windpassinger

VP Schneider Electric and Author of "Digitize or die"

Chez nous on se tue à essayer de faire les choses bien, alors quand on rencontre une autre boite dans laquelle chaque membre a le même objectif, ça fait plaisir. Et ça roule bien.

Rodolphe Gardies

CMO Asphalte

Germinal has been instrumental in structuring our lead generation framework. But what I appreciated the more is their commitment to result, reactivity and, above all, creativity in uncharted territories. It’s a rockstar team!

Stephanie Tramicheck

Founding Partner and Blockchain expert, Propulsive.io, San Francisco

What our clients say

Germinal is insurging the traditional way of doing marketing and research. They have developed a unique understanding of social networks that allows to test innovation ideas with an incredible speed.
On top of that they don’t dress well and are humble nerds.

Marie-Catherine Cerutti

Head of France and Europe Brand Hub at Ipsos Strategy3,

Germinal, and its disruptive approach to qualifying new concepts in record time, has proven instrumental to a number of our clients.

Laurent Houel

Associate at Fast Up Partners, ex-Branding Director at Evian

The teams are helping us to digitize our go to market. Their added value is undeniable and their professionalism is recognized within the teams.

Nicolas Windpassinger

VP Schneider Electric and Author of "Digitize or die"

Chez nous on se tue à essayer de faire les choses bien, alors quand on rencontre une autre boite dans laquelle chaque membre a le même objectif, ça fait plaisir. Et ça roule bien.

Rodolphe Gardies

CMO Asphalte

Stephanie Tramicheck

Founding Partner and Blockchain expert, Propulsive.io, San Francisco

We are a growth team

What we aren't

WE CONNECT MARKETING, PRODUCT, AND SALES TEAMS.

We’re not a marketing team

We don't define your marketing strategy

But we do test your content

We are a high-frequency testing lab.

We’re not a product development team

We don’t code your product

But we do suggest optimizations for improving your conversion rates

WE ENABLE PEOPLE TO INDUSTRIALIZE THE PROBATIVE TESTS WE’VE DEVELOPED.

We’re not a sales team

We are not a sales force

But we do generate sales opportunities by testing your acquisition channels

What we aren't

What we are

What we aren't

We’re not a marketing team

What we are

We are a high-frequency testing lab

Germinal teams work in one week long sprints.

We have one goal: to fail and learn from our failures as quickly as possible.

We aim to ensure that when success comes, it’s as powerful as it can be. We want to go where you’d least expect us. During a short “growth meeting”, we define our objectives and tests for swift execution.

We then hold a meeting to analyze the data collected during testing. After comparing them against our database (of more than 2,000 previous tests), our “Growth Lead” will develop a hypothesis and proposals for the next round of testing.

The teams at Germinal are organised by expertise.

Each employee chooses a path when joining the company, and gets trained intensively over their first 6 months.

This guarantees perfect mastery over their tasks, along with accurate data analysis. All the main acquisition channels you find online (SEO, FB ads, social media, etc…) are covered by at least one Germinal team member.

If there’s anything that isn’t covered by an employee, Germinal can get support from the “Growth France” community, which was created by the one of the company’s founders. With more than 1,400 members today, we can quickly outsource talent.

Members are chosen based on their ability to think differently.

They prove themselves by outlining creative methods they’ve employed in previous professional positions.

Of course, unconventional doesn’t mean illegal, and the company relies on legal expertise to ensure all methods used are law-abiding. We also ask that Germinal team members be extremely rigorous when completing their tasks.

It goes through a standardized process with much automation to free up time for high added-value projects.

Numbers, numbers and more numbers.

One obsession : optimization

Site visits, click-through rates, and costs per customer action are just three of the many quantifiable data points we pay close attention to.

Our objective: to optimize them, because we believe they’re the only true indicators of an experiment’s accuracy.

Our added values

innovative process

A mastery of

acquisition channels

unconventional state of mind

The "data" at the

center of our business

Our added values

An innovative process

Germinal teams work in one week long sprints.

We have one goal: to fail and learn from our failures as quickly as possible.

A mastery of aquisition channels

The Germinal teams are organized by expertise.

Each employee chooses a path when joining the company, and gets trained intensively over their first 6 months.

An unconventional state of mind

Members are chosen based on their ability to think outside the box.

They prove themselves by outlining creative methods they’ve employed in previous professional positions.

The "data" at the center of our business

Numbers, numbers and more numbers.

One obsession : optimization

The synthesis of these 4 pillars lets Germinal create Growth teams: teams dedicated to growth, and only growth !

A new way to structure startups, this strategy has been used by the best companies in the US over the last couple of years, and is starting to emerge in Europe. We want to embody this movement and change the way European companies grow.

I want to grow

Our Method

Iteration Method

System

The concept

Iteration Method

B-to-C

Weekly focus

Iteration Method

B-to-B

Monthly focus

GROWTH
MEETING

Meeting

System

Part 1

(1h30)

Assess the previous round, analyze metrics.

Part 2

(1h30)

Create an action plan for the next round, based on what was learned previously.

Day 1

Implementation

System

Part 1

Set up an action on an acquisition channel. Ex: Twitter bot, email campaign, Facebook ads campaign, SEO/SEA trials.

Part 2

Implement 5 to 10 hypotheses for the action. Run primary tests.

Day 2

Test + Implement

System

Part 1

Analyze results from the previous round. Adjust parameters to optimize the ongoing strategy.

Part 2

Implement new actions on a different channel.

Day 3

Test + Implement

System

Part 1

Assess results from the two previous actions.

Part 2

Depending on the results:
- good : continue optimizing and focusing on the two actions
- bad : implement a new action.

Iteration method:

Our work is iterative.

We implement growth hacks, we test them, we learn and we adjust. An iteration is based on one meeting, and three days of execution. Each day of execution is iterative itself: why try different hypothesis and we invest on the ones bringing the bests results.

Meeting

Growth Meeting

B to C

Part 1

We know that our client has a high engagement rate on Facebook and excellent organic reach on Instagram.

Part 2

We decide to focus on these two channels.

Day 1

Implementation

B to C

Part 1

We launch a paid acquisition campaign on Facebook to increase page likes.

Part 2

We run eight different ad types. (A/B tests on photos, texts, links)

Day 2

Test + Implement

B to C

Part 1

The FB ads results show that ads #2, #3 and #5 didn’t perform well. We cut them and optimize the others.

Part 2

In parallel, we set up a bot to follow accounts and like photos based on relevant Instagram hashtags.

Day 3

Test + Implement

B to C

Part 1

We analyze the bot’s first results. We broaden its scope of action by following the fans of DC competitors.

Part 2

We realize that FB ad #7 is performing the best. We cut all others and only invest in #7.

Next meeting

Test + Implement

B to C

Part 1

We assess the results of the previous iteration.

Part 2

We see that 25% of the people we follow on Instagram follow us back. We decide to capitalize on this growth hack by further broadening the bot’s scope of action and starting an influencer marketing campaign.

Iteration method:

Our work is iterative.

We implement growth hacks, test them, learn and adjust. An iteration consists of one meeting and three days of execution. Each day of execution is iterative itself: we try out different hypotheses and invest in the ones with the best results.

Week 1

Growth Meeting

B to B

Implementation of analytics on the website and the product for more effective qualification of incoming flows to assess the relevance of our actions. Identification of a use case & launch of two LinkedIn Ads campaigns.

Outcomes :

We must now analyse everything that has been tracked to propose product improvements. However, the analytics implementation is already showing us that the product is highly complex on first use.

We therefore propose to address this point urgently.

The LinkedIn Ads campaigns have a good CTR but an extremely high CPC, and we therefore propose to compare with FB ads.

Week 2

Growth Meeting

B to B

Processing of the analytics and proposal for an abbreviated on-boarding process (halving the number of stages)

Creation of a Facebook page, launching two FB ad campaigns to test the channel.

Outcomes :

The FB ad campaigns cost less, but have a very poor CTR, and we therefore prefer to emphasise LinkedIn Ads in our testing of new use cases.

After analysing the site and product data, we realise that the LPs have a major conversion problem.

Additionally, this analysis confirms our feeling from the previous week; the on-boarding process requires urgent improvement.

We decide to test the effectiveness of Google AdWords.

Week 3

Growth Meeting

B to B

Creation of two landing pages for the new use cases and optimises of the existing LPs.

Launch of two LinkedIn Ads campaigns for the new use cases.

Previous campaigns are optimised.

The Google AdWords acquisition channel is tested.

New on-boarding proposals.

Outcomes :

Google AdWords turns out to be much too competitive and is abandoned for the moment. The LinkedIn Ads campaigns are still expensive, but are nevertheless highly successful. We decide to let them run to generate more data to analyse.

We test a new acquisition channel: e-mail marketing.

Week 4

Growth Meeting

B to B

LinkedIn scraping and creation of an e-mail database built on this information.

Preparation of the e-mail sequence.

Campaign launch

Outcome of the month :

Relevant LinkedIn Ads for two use cases (CTR in excess of 3%)

Facebook Ads are much less expensive (a quarter of the price) but less effective (1% CTR)

Google AdWords were not effective

Improved the efficiency of the on-boarding process by 34%

E-mail campaign to be deployed on a larger scale

Iteration method:

Our work is iterative.

Carried out over four weeks, giving 16 days of delivery and 4 Growth Meetings.

Our offer

Growth Team

12 execution credits

Growth lead

For startups

2 growth meetings

weekly commitment

DEDICATED 3-PERSON TEAM

STARTING AT 6,900 €/M

Hyper Growth

32 execution credits

Growth lead and growth strategist

For corporate

5 growth meetings

monthly commitment

DEDICATED 7-PERSON TEAM

STARTING AT 17,900 €/M

I want to grow

12 execution credits

Growth lead

For startups

2 growth meetings

weekly commitment

DEDICATED 3-PERSON TEAM

STARTING AT 6,900 €/M

I want to grow

32 execution credits

Growth lead and growth strategist

For corporate

5 growth meetings

monthly commitment

DEDICATED 7-PERSON TEAM

STARTING AT 17,900 €/M

I want to grow

Work with international companies

San Francisco

Paris

London

Berlin

Zurich

Tokyo

Beirut

Singapore

They talk about us

Our side projects

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Join more than +1,200 GH to discuss best practices, discover the most effective tools, and participate in our meetings and AMAs.

Our team teaches at France’s best business and engineering schools (ESCP, EDHEC, etc) for over 250 hours per year.

Our book, "Growth Hacking: 8 weeks to double your prospects," is the bestseller in its category in France.