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1. What Is Growth Hacking?
2. Growth Hacking Examples
3. Tools For Growth Hacking
4. How To Hack Growth?
5. Summary
6. Tools and Resources
Index
What Is Growth Hacking?
Entrepreneurs, startup enthusiasts and online marketers use the term growth
hacking frequently these days. Startup companies have started moving from
the concept of a digital marketing approach to that of growth hacking.
However, the concept still remains vague to most people as they struggle to
find the perfect “growth hack” that will take their startup from the ground to a
significant traction level.
Growth hacking is nothing but using a set of marketing channels (or hacks you
might say) that will take your startup from level zero to a significant traction.The secret of a growth hacking strategy lies in the fact of discovering that
exclusive marketing hack by brainstorming and experimentation, investing
your efforts in that marketing channel and improving the results by constant
analytics and optimization.
Image source: Forbes.com
The growth hacking funnel is described simply by a series of steps which are as
follows:
1. Awareness/Acquisition : This stage is all about getting your product or service in
front of the targeted eyeballs. The trick here is to find the most cost effective
solution which will scale up your business in the least time possible
2. Activation: Once users have seen your product, what drives them to signup/buy
it? Activation is all about getting people (who are aware of your product) to try out
your product. Conversion rate optimization is one of the most important things.
3. Retention : Once you have some users onboard, you need to understand that
staying in touch with them and forming a lasting relationship is of paramount
importance.
4. Referral : Using existing customers as a marketing channel is a smart way that
successful companies use. Referral programs that involve existing customers invite
their peers to try out your products is a smart way to grow your product base.
5. Revenue: And finally, building a constant revenue stream to make the business
sustain (and thrive) is the final and most important step.
The Growth Hacking Funnel
Image: NeilPatel.com
Growth Hacking Examples
You can be an early stage startup or someone with its first 10k users looking to
expand further. You can use different levels of the growth hacking funnel to
accelerate your startup’s performance.The following examples how different companies used growth hacking at
different levels:
– AirBnB: This company helps you find accommodations for bed and breakfast.
They were an early stage startup who required the targeted awareness about
their product. So they used a 3rd party platform- Craigslist (allows you to buy
and sell anything, find jobs, accommodations etc) and posted their listings
there.
They used the existing traffic of Craigslist and got people to visit their site who
finally turned to customers.
What can we learn?Using an existing platform which can get you targeted users can help you save
the trouble, time and money that will be spent for organic acquisition.
– Dropbox : After successfully acquiring users, dropbox launched a referral
program where existing users could get free storage by inviting their friends to
use dropbox.
What can we learn from this?
Giving incentives to users for inviting their friends is a smart marketing method
on terms of referral marketing.
Image Source: Shopify.com
Tools For Growth Hacking
The tools of growth hacking are no different than the regular ones you use for
online marketing. Here are some of the major ones
Ÿ Search engine optimizationŸ Search engine marketingŸ Content marketing (social media marketing, blogs etc)Ÿ Email marketingŸ Conversion rate optimisationŸ Offline marketing and word of mouthŸ Private advertising
How To Hack Growth?
Step 1 : Understand your target audience
How to find your target audience:
– Conduct online surveys using SurveyMonkey.com and record responses of
people from different demographics
-Get out of the building : Go start talking to people on the road, students in the
university and wherever you think your audience might be. Ask them questions
about your product(or idea) and validate your audience. Treat them with a
chocolate in lieu of talking to you and they will be happy
Once you have understood the audience, try to understand where do they
hang out
– Are they active on Facebook or are they teenagers and more active on
Instagram and Snapchat?– Do they respond to ads which come as flyers or ads on Google search?– What is their daily routine of going about things?
Image Source : HBR.org
Step 2 : Define a process for all marketing channels Once you have figured out where your audience hangs out, you have to select
the most relevant marketing channels.
For example, one of our clients was building an application specifically
targeting teenagers
For this purpose we understood that Snapchat and Instagram are going to be
the main drivers of success.
After you have figured out the marketing channels, list out all the
daily/weekly tasks that need to be completed for the marketing channel.
You can read up on the internet to find out indepth ways of exploiting that
marketing channel.
For example, for understanding Snapchat marketing, this post really helped me
Here are some marketing tasks that I have decided for one of my clients who is
an e-commerce client
Step 3 : Constantly optimise your marketing
Startup teams learn something new almost everyday. While doing marketing
for your startup, you will learn a bunch of things like:
– Social media network A is performing better for you than network B– Ads on the search engine network aren’t any good to you– People started disliking you since you pulled off that marketing stunt
And thus, your process chart for marketing and business strategy is going to
change all the time.
You are never going to get it right the first time.
And only by evolving and iterating your marketing multiple times, will you
know what works for sure and what “looks like it will work” but doesn’t get
the desired ROI.
The best way to measure progress is by keeping a simple tracker (on Excel)
of the most important marketing metrics and track progress by matching
them to the marketing channels deployed.
Here is a very simple tracker of my social media efforts
Summary
Ÿ Growth Hacking can be seen as a marketing funnel represented by
Acquisition-Activation-Retention-Referral-Revenue
Ÿ The first step to hacking growth is to identify who the target audience(stay
laser focused) and where do they hang out
Ÿ The next step is to identify the most relevant marketing channels based on
the above analysis and divide your marketing efforts into tasks that can be
done repeatedly
Ÿ Last and most important step is to always keep learning, optimizing your
strategy and getting better at it.
Tools and Resources
Ÿ Search engine optimization: Google Search Console and SEMRush
Ÿ Search engine marketing: Google Adwords and Wordstream.
Ÿ Content marketing: Wordpress, Hootsuite and Unbounce.
Ÿ Email marketing: Mailchimp and InfusionSoft
Ÿ Conversion rate optimisation: Unbounce and Optimizely.
1. Lean Startup- Bible for startup owners2. Zero to One by Peter Theil
1. GrowthHackers.com2. Inbound.org3. Startup-marketing.com4. QuickSprout.com5. Blog.KissMetrics.com6. SocialMediaExaminer.com
Books
Blogs and sites
