It was in 2010 that the term Growth Hacking came into existence. This term is famous amongst startups as the technique is used to propel marketing strategies for growth-driven outcomes. Since then, it has become a buzzword, and trends are refusing to go down.
- What is Growth Hacking?
- Why is Growth Hacking Important?
- How Growth Hacking Works
- 5 Pillars of Growth Hacking
- How to get started in Growth Hacking
- Growth Hacking Strategies
- Few Benefits of adopting Growth Hacking
- Growth Hacking Examples of Top Companies
What is Growth Hacking?
For startups to grow massively with a lower budget in a shorter period, growth hacking is the strategy to be leveraged. It is the process of experimenting with various techniques and product development strategies that can help in rapidly scaling a product/ business. There is never a pre-set rule or rulebook to follow while practicing the technique. In turn, you set the rules when running the experiments that can best serve your audience/ customer.
Why is Growth Hacking Important?
Startups in the initial stages would not have deep pockets to invest in paid marketing in the online space, and they obviously would not have the bandwidth to fight with the top players in the industry.
That is when growth hacking comes into the picture. This technique uses innovation and creativity as an alternative to reach wider audiences rather than spending the budget majorly on the marketing front.
How does Growth Hacking work?
A growth hacker runs a series of small experiments to figure out the resource-light and cost-effectiveness to help reach the determined goals faster.
Since there are no preset rules to follow, some growth hacking techniques and implementations work flawlessly, while others fail. Hence a growth hacker must be prepared to handle the failures as well. The benefits of growth hacking include growing and retaining an active user base, selling products/service, and gaining exposure.
5 Pillars of Growth Hacking
This technique includes five crucial pointers. And a growth hacker must perform the following before initiating a process.
| S.No. | Step | |
| 1. | Auditing the current marketing outcomes | Evaluate and identify the best source for leads, traffic, and page views. Also, figure out which medium is working for you. |
| 2. | What are your goals? | After receiving the data, check where and how improvement can be made. |
| 3.. | Conduct experiments | There is no growth hacking without experimentation, and keep it a point to test your theories from different angles to reach your goals. |
| 4. | Keep your experimentation running | Your theories must be put to the test ‘n’ times until a significant outcome is obtained. Until then, keep the optimization running. |
| 5. | Record and share | Once you have cracked the process that gives you the desirable outcomes, document and share it with relevant teams and get it implemented. |
How to get started in Growth Hacking
Before initiating a growth hacking process, one must plan the right structure to extract the best outcome. And developing a neatly structured framework is the first step. If you are someone new to this, taking notes might help.
1. Identify your audience and objectives:
- Know your audience and what you are trying to achieve through growth hacking.
- Proper research has to be carried out, and an audit report generated with the outcomes learned from this step.
- Not only the market, but you will also have to evaluate your existing marketing initiatives to figure out if there is any scope for improvement.
2. Dig in for new ideas:
The internet is vast, and so is the information available.
- Find out what your competitors have done, where they have had their downfall
- Find what the audience wants from the product/ services
- Figure out the new features rolling out
- Brainstorm with your team to generate new ideas
3. Prioritize:
What does your business want to achieve through growth hacking? Where is the scope of improvements?
There will be various points to consider, as every aspect can be given the top priority. Hence, it is the task of the growth hacker to determine the priorities.
4. Initiate the Test Phase:
Now that you have all the audits and analyses, go ahead with implementing your growth hack strategy. Never stop experimenting and continue running the process in different scenarios to obtain a detailed insight into your idea implementation.
5. Analyze and learn
Did the process attain the outcome you are looking for? What were the improvements observed?
Document the entire process and utilize the information to conclude. Keep the process going on until you attain the desired outcome.
Few Strategies in Growth Hacking
Now that you are familiar with the core process and framework involved in Growth Hacking, here are a few hacks that you can start with by putting your existing content to use.
- Use social sharing links in your posts:
If your audience loves your content, they would want to share the experience with their friends and close ones. Have you taken the effort to build easy-share buttons? If not, do consider adding them to your page.
- Repurposing blog content:
The existing blogs in your inventory have superpowers. Yes, if this is something new to you, dive into our article about how you can repurpose your blogs into podcasts, videos, etc.
- Find your socially active customers:
Curate a list of your customers who actively post about life and various stuff on social media and have a good followers base. So, when you feel like promoting any of your posts, you can ask these customers to repost them, thereby increasing reach and audience.
While these are only a few growth hacking techniques, there are numerous other strategies involved in this process, which you will be learning once you get the hang of the initial phase.
Few Benefits of adopting Growth Hacking
- Growth-driven
- The inception of new business models and product ideas
- Beneficial for any company, team, or individual
- Building better customer-centric products
- Discover data-driven strategies
- Cost-effective and improves ROI
- Analytics-related insights
Growth Hacking Examples of Top Companies
- Gmail
Did you know that Gmail initially had an invite system for users to start using their service?
It is the best example of how a Fear of Missing Out marketing technique is performed to its full potential. The marketing strategy increased customers’ curiosity about Gmail, and they somehow wanted to get into the Gmail ecosystem. The popularity of the invite-only system grew so much that the Gmail invites were auctioned on eBay.
The growth of the Facebook-owned Instagram has been phenomenal. As per Backlinko.com, Instagram, with its more than 1.3 billion active users, is the world’s 4th largest social media platform. The success of the company was due to the growth hacking strategies they adopted at an early stage, and some are listed below:
- User-centric approach
- Butter-smooth user experience
- Rolling out the app for free on an experimental basis
Shazam
How often is it that you listen to a song but are not able to recall the name of it or from which movie it is? Shazam came up with an innovative approach where the app users can identify songs from the music and lyrics by holding phones near the speakers. This activity would intrigue the interest of onlookers and attract them. Next, the word of mouth does the magic.
Concluding thoughts
If you are interested in learning growth hacking, you will be at an advantage if you have strong digital marketing skills and knowledge. That is because a growth hacker has the prime responsibility to use cost-effective and resource-light digital marketing tactics to help grow/ retain an active user base, sell products, and gain exposure.
And that is why I suggest you check the PG Program in Strategic Digital Marketing. The program has 36 digital marketing tools covered, 8 weeks of performance marketing module, 4 weeks of digital footprint creation, and many more benefits to offer. Begin your growth marketing journey by upskilling with the finest.
