The term “Growth Hacking” was coined by the CEO of Growth Hackers Inc., Sean Ellis. Growth hacking is a term normally used for strategies that can help produce growth for startup businesses. This is a crucial process for such startups because they have to grow at an accelerated pace within a specific period of time on a small budget.
Growth hacking strategies are mostly utilized to acquire as many customers as possible through limited or little spending. These strategies are initiated by professionals who are known as professional growth hackers. Their main focus is to test and analyze different types of strategies that are most effective in growing the business.
DON’T TARGET EVERYBODY
Growth hacking is not only restricted to startup companies. It has since evolved to include already established companies who adopt the same strategy to promote their products.
The strategies are most effective when they are geared towards targeted customers. Spending small amounts of money on every single potential customer is a waste of precious time and money and will provide you little to zero results. It is better to market your product to those who will be the most receptive to and convinced about buying your product.
EXAMPLES OF GROWTH HACKING STRATEGIES
Based on the limited budget, most companies cannot depend on Super Bowl ads or other big budget promotional strategies.
There are plenty of examples to prove the effectiveness of growth hacking.
- McDonald’s serves as the prime example. Its professional growth hackers made use of the popular interstate highways to display their billboards in large quantities during the 1950s. Since, then the food company has continued to flourish and becoming the giant industry it is known as today.
- Similar strategies have been applied today by other companies like Uber who used apps to acquire more and more targeted customers to drive them to their destination outdoing every taxi company in the process.
- Dropbox promised more storage to its users who would invite new users to its platform.
PROCESS OF GROWTH HACKING
CREATE A PRODUCT THAT DRIVES THE MARKET
Until now marketers were hired to promote an existing product or service, after it had been launched in the market.
These days growth hackers are put to work before the launch of the product just to make sure that the product is pre-optimized for the target customer.
Therefore, growth hackers identify the best features of the product and if required make changes to the product to make it more attractive. All this is done to give the marketing a higher chance of reaching desirable results.
DECIDE THE BEST STRATEGY TO BE IMPLEMENTED
As part of the process, you need to find an actionable way to start the spark by experiment with different growth hacking strategies. Back in the day, businesses relied heavily on billboards but now with the usage of apps and social media they can pursue different methods to promote their product or offer their services.
Airbnb for example used Craigslist to seek its targeted customers who required affordable accommodation.
RELIANCE ON WORD OF MOUTH
The importance of word of mouth or ‘going viral’ as it is referred to, cannot be understated. It is the most challenging process of growth hacking. Once that level of virality has been generated, the customers respond and share your product services at an exceedingly accelerated rate. Historically, word of mouth was used among people recommending a product to one another during a gathering or any other form of interaction. Since then it has gained more relevance online.
Facebook used to be the go-to platform for online professional growth hackers to promote their products. The CEO of SpeedDate, Simon Tisminezsky is one such individual who leveraged Facebook to acquire his customers. But since then, social media has evolved and expanded dramatically.
OPTIMIZATION BY DATA ANALYSIS
Inspecting and researching data is critical in helping you gather relevant information regarding the targeted customer in terms of interest and response. You can use data analysis to not only acquire customers but also improve customer experiences. Accomplish this feat by having professional growth hackers help you gather data throughout the entire customer journey as he seeks to buy off your product.
There is no such thing as having “too much data”. Every piece of data gathered is precious and relevant to your business.
IMPROVE YOUR STRATEGY
Basic objective of growth hacking is to find new approaches for maximizing growth from time to time.
The process never stops after first campaign is successful. After first level of success, you have even more opportunities and leverages to rely upon for your next move.
In fact growth hacking is known to be a process of continuous improvement after analysis of customer data; hence scaling up results perpetually.
By continuing to make improvements on your product, you can give abundant reasons for customers to return to your company repeatedly.
IN CONCLUSION
Growth Hacking is an ideal method for every business to adopt considering its results delivery time and efficacy. With a little amount of spending you can save yourself the trouble of risking a substantial financial loss, whilst enjoying considerable gains.
