Growth Hacking Strategies for Startups

Growth Hacking

Growth Hacking Strategies is most commonly associated with start-ups and small businesses, i.e. those organizations that don’t have a huge amount of cash to spare but need results quickly. However, it’s a measurable concept that can apply to any online business interested in maintaining the growth and retention of an active user base.

What actually “Growth Hacking” is?

Growth Hacking is the concept of focusing entirely on the growth/rise/scaling of a startup which uses creativity, analytical thinking, and social metrics to sell products and gain exposure. Growth hacking techniques involves comprehensive action where even a coder or a designer works for the growth of the startup business.

The motive of growth hacking strategies is generally to gain as many visitors or customers as possible while spending as less as possible. The phrase “growth hacking” was invented by Sean Ellis, founder and CEO of GrowthHackers, in 2010.

What’s the difference between Digital Marketing & Growth Hacking?

The main difference is that Growth Hacking is a start-up thing because startups are looking for “hockey-stick” growth which is a sharp increase occurs suddenly after a short period of inactive. They simply don’t have budgets like huge companies. On the other hand, Digital Marketing is for big companies, because they have to make sure their brands remain at high levels. And because they need to acquire new generations of consumers.

Digital marketing focuses on the overall goal of building brand awareness, whereas growth hacking is more focused on highly defined and short-term achievable goals

Growth Hacking Process

Growth hacking techniques includes testing and experimenting new ideas and techniques, performing them quickly, and measuring the result.

The following steps are a summary for the whole growth hacking process:

1. Fitting the Product to the Market

Usually professional growth hackers are being called upon during the pre-launch phase to make sure that the product/brand is pre-optimized for the customers it is being organized for.

Therefore, the first step in a growth hacker’s job is to observe which features and adjustments would make the product more attractive to give the campaign a higher probability of getting desirable results.

2. Conceptualizing and Implementing an Appropriate Growth Hack

Once the content or features of the product or services have been already optimized, the next step is to find an actionable way to start the word of mouth.

It is important to differentiate a growth hacker’s approach from the traditional marketer’s in this regard.

3. Looking for Viral Boost Opportunities

Once a growth hacker has started optimizing the product or services content and has found a sustainable growth hack that will provides as a source of potential users, the next step is to look for methods to grab viral boosts wherever possible.

During this stage, the growth hacker asks themselves, “Other than from improving the product itself, how can I get our existing users to bring in more users?”

4. Analyzing and Optimizing Based on Data

Implementing their creativity to engage the initial users is only the first half of the battle. To make sure that the whole effort isn’t nil, growth hackers also need to be scientific and thorough when observing user behavior, traffic analytics, conversion rates, and other metrics that can provide useful insight.

5. Rinse and Repeat

One of the most amazing parts about growth hacking is the opportunity to repeatedly find new approaches to generate additional growth.

The hacking doesn’t stop after the first stage of success. In fact, after gaining some strength you’ll have even more financial and industry grip, as well as more measures on which to base your next move.

What does a Growth Hacker do?

A growth hacker is a hybrid between a marketer and a coder whose main focus is increasing an organization’s reach, brand recognition or revenues.

Things that a professional growth hacker works on:

1. A/B testing landing pages.
2. Capturing emails before you launch your product.
3. Optimizing the virality of your product so that more people use your product.
4. Software development, business analytic and web design.

Who needs growth hacking strategies?

1. Startups:

Growing up a startup business can be both thrilling & challenging.

With limited & low budgets and resources, growth hacking becomes a critical asset for startups to develop.

2. Bloggers/Influencers/Freelancers

If you are into blogging, influencing or a freelancing, growth hacking is one skill that can make you stand out of the crowd and achieve your goals.

3. Brands:

There’s nothing about growth hacking that cannot be implemented in a large organizational business. Big brands need to hold the power of growth hacking and generate separate job roles for people responsible for a single thing- growth.

Benefits Of Growth Hacking Strategies

• Provable ROI – By using data to inform every decision you make, and tracking the performance of a hack correctly, you can easily notice which hacks are performing as you’d hoped, and which aren’t.

Persist with those that show promise, remove those that don’t.

• Low-cost – By its nature, growth hacking strategies are designed to use whatever resources you have in as reasonable way as possible.

• Low-resources – Growth hacks are usually developed and implemented by an individual on the product or the whole team, and don’t require an entire marketing team to implement & execute.

• Generating Qualified Leads – One of the critical growth hacking benefits is that it can produce a high number of qualified leads. But as we’ve said before, growth hacking is more of a mindset than anything else.

It means that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to the issue. Nevertheless, the upside of this is that growth hacking can mold itself to any business, regardless of size or industry.

• Flexibility

The flexibility of growth hacking strategies makes it a viable and valuable process.

Be it a single-man operation or a multinational enterprise; growth hacking works equally as well in all situations. The reason for this is that the process is, fundamentally, nothing more than a growth-oriented mindset.