What is Growth Hacking?
Growth Hacking is a set of marketing techniques that combine the analytical side with creativity and curiosity to achieve sales. To do this, they use and rely on the results provided by web metrics and the feedback they get from social networks, thus reaching a greater number of audiences or potential clients.
Growth hacking is understood as a new way to enter a market and seeks alternatives that go beyond having a large marketing budget, still allowing businesses to grow and get known by more people.
For example, this new way of looking for clients and carrying out marketing techniques seeks to adapt especially to start-up companies where resources are limited.
How did the term Growth Hacking come about?
The origin of this marketing technique is attributed to Sean Ellis who assures that he was the one who coined the term Growth Hacker, that is, the strategist, back in 2010. Under this technique it is sought to analyse any campaign to see how it can be multiplied the impact and performance of it, thus obtaining scalable growth without the need to spend a large fortune for it.
They are those people who seek to expand a company audience. For this, they use A / B tests which is a test with two possibilities to see which one of the two works better. They launch viral campaigns, make strategies that go directly to users’ email, etc.
Growth Hacking Features
Now that you know what growth hacking is, I want to bring you the fundamental points that characterise it.
Marketing based on analysis
For growth hackers, so people who carry out this type of marketing techniques, it is extremely important to analyse the market as well as the results of their possible actions down to the smallest detail, figure by figure.
Creativity
As we say, growth hacking is a way of marketing with the need for a very low or almost non-existent budget. For this reason, the measurements that can be made are so important, as their analysis will make you invest only in what truly will bring the results you expect.
Now, alongside the data, creativity takes great importance. By using creativity, large and very effective marketing campaigns can be formulated with little budget, and this is where this point becomes key in this way of understanding marketing.
Curiosity
It is essential to know why users react in a certain way. This comes from complete audience analysis and optimisation to establish certain response parameters that will allow you to further refine the campaigns and learn even more about potential customers.
Steps to implement Growth Hacking
The steps to implement a Growth Hacking technique in a company are five and here I am going to bring them to you.
How will the product fit in the market you are targeting?
It is about thoroughly studying the market you are targeting and seeing if the product fits what the user needs. It is much more important to think before launching a product if it is something that would truly be profitable. The important thing is to have a product that will be easy to market even without a great campaign behind it. If you have nothing new to offer or a product that is not demanded by society, you can hardly get sales.
The solution? In this case, before doing a marketing campaign you will have to invest your money in improving the product. To do this, talk to the customers you have and ask what they think about the product or service in question and how they would improve it.
Find the functionality
Finding the functionality of the product itself is known as the growth hack. It is about finding that functionality that makes the use of the product itself already part of the marketing. To do this, social networks are being used more and more, as the operation of the product can be easily communicated through these platforms or various updates on networks.
Now that you know your strength, boost it and make it viral
If you are already clear about the strength of your offer, you have to promote it, make it known as much as possible.
Find the way of making it viral. To give you a clear example of what I am talking about, the Dropbox company did so by offering additional free space to its users if they managed to attract new users to the platform. So the customer felt rewarded for talking about something they liked about your product, and the company had a new user.
Build loyalty and optimise existing resources
No matter how good the service provided is, certain aspects such as usability and the added value of the product offered to the user can always be optimised. It is important to focus on this phase before continuing to grow because it is crucial to retain the users we have. Keep in mind that the happier they are, the more free marketing they will do to you, as they will become your subscribers by speaking well of your company to their loved ones.
Start over again
You don’t have to settle or trust. It is important to be constantly innovating and thinking about marketing techniques and actions to develop. You will only be able to continue to grow if you question what you have achieved and ask your customers from time to time what they think of your product. You must continually strive to remain competitive in an increasingly crowded market.
Examples of Growth Hacking Techniques
Great, so now you know the steps to implement this type of strategy. It’s then time for me to bring you some explicit examples that would respond to growth hacking marketing techniques. The goal of any of these strategies is to achieve better results for your business, increasing sales with campaigns that have had a minimum cost, and attracting new customers.
Make it easy for users to register on your website
If you want your database to be broader of high quality, and to ensure that your potential customers end up becoming real customers, you will have to make it as easy as possible for them.
For this reason, create a website in which filling in the registration form for the first time is simple. In this way, you will be encouraging them to create their first account and have valuable information about them in exchange.
Play with psychology
Sales psychology is one of the main key factors when it comes to generating a growth hacking technique.
For example, you can launch a campaign with a limited number of units to create a sense of urgency to purchase the product if your audience doesn’t want to miss the chance.
Showing the opinions of people who have already purchased the product is a resource that encourages immediate purchase by making people end up acting on impulse. If they have already bought from you once and they like what you offer, you will have won a new customer.
This is a crucial step as purchasing is mainly an emotional behaviour. Stimulating the right driving emotions to lead your ideal clients to purchase your product/service is the key point of marketing your business with a high return on investment, especially when your budget is low.
Offer your service under the freemium modality
Offering your services for free for a while so that your customers can test it before will increase the number of real clients. By trying the product and being satisfied, undoubtedly the users’ trust increases, and you will be gaining new customers as well as high loyalty. These types of techniques have been used by companies of the stature of Amazon through Amazon Prime or Spotify, which through their paid versions offer a series of added advantages over the free version.
Know your customers’ experience with the product
It is not enough to sell a product or offer a service to retain your customers. You must be interested in the experience they have with your product or service and the perception they have of you. A gesture as simple as worrying about their experience after receiving the order will make them value this interest shown in a very positive way and, therefore, will improve your branding.
Surprise your customers
In the registration form, ask them the day of their birthday to be able to send them some kind of detail such as a discount coupon on their next purchase, add a gift product in the next order, etc. They are small gestures that will help you to retain your customers for little money, and you will also improve your brand image, reputation, and your relationship with them.
Incentivise prescription
Encourage prescription among your customers and their environment. This corresponds exactly to the previous example about Dropbox where the company offered additional free storage if users managed to attract new users from their environment to the platform.
How much should you invest in Digital Marketing?
Tools to carry out a Growth Hacking strategy
Among the most useful tools when executing a strategy of these characteristics there are platforms such as Google Analytics and KISS Metrics. Using one of the platforms below, you will be able to measure and analyse the return of your campaign based on various variables.
Survey Monkey or Qualaroo:
They will help you see qualitative data that can be hidden behind the numbers that analytics show.
Hubspot and Optimisely:
For A / B Test, they will show you how to improve the conversion rate. This will help you to see what to improve to make a potential customer eventually turn out to be a real customer.
Hello bar:
They are fundamental tools for dissemination that will help to make the product or service known to a larger number of potential customers.
On the other hand, if you are looking to retain your customer, you will have to resort to a tool such as Intercom.io.
The truth is that they are only one example of the tools that can be used in a Growth Hacking strategy as there are many more that can be useful. It is best that you try them to see which ones best suit your needs.
The companies that have made Growth Hacking their creed
Some of the firms or, rather, multinationals that have based their growth on these types of techniques are Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox, Pinterest, YouTube, Groupon, Reddit, and Instagram.
All of them have used and continue to use techniques related to growth hacking to build their brand and improve profits, trying to know at all times what the user thinks about their product and constantly looking for ways to improve it.
Conclusions on Growth Hacking
Growth hacking represents a change in mindset when looking for more customers. It is a series of strategies that have to be implemented in a company internally while marketing, as we know it, is external.
Growth hacking makes the study of data its main strength. It does not seek so much to have new customers as the only goal but to retain the maximum loyalty of those it already has and, through them, continue to increase its community and reach more people.
Growth hacking is a process based on the Lean Startup philosophy, which serves to encourage business development without the need to invest too much, based solely on verifying hypotheses and verifying results through exhaustive analysis of the launched campaigns. In growth hacking, measurement is the foundation of everything.
Each business has a different goal, and the most important data to measure will vary depending on the type of business and the aim of the launched campaign. For example, if we want to retain customers, you can do so through small prizes on their birthday, as per above, and you can see the conversion of the campaign by checking how many people have redeemed that coupon.
We are facing a new way of understanding the sale of products and services and of expanding a business based on customer loyalty and creativity with effective and very measured but low-cost campaigns.
How can you implement an efficient Growth Hacking strategy into your business?
Serendipity Marketing is a leading full-service digital marketing agency London, generating high-performing strategies in three different languages: English, Italian, and Spanish.
Our unique approach, thanks to the mix of marketing strategies and psychology science, allows us to generate and run efficient growth hacking strategies for any business, leading them to tangible results in a quick time and constant growth.
Rely on an expert digital marketing agency London, such as Serendipity Marketing, to get an efficient growth hacking strategy for your business to boost your visibility and sales.
