Narveer Singh

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What Is Growth Hacking? A Beginner’s Guide

This is a new field in the ever growing world of digital marketing. This is mainly aimed at start-ups and is slowly gaining popularity among new only entrepreneurs.

All start-ups want to get that one click that hits them off into huge profits and revenue. It should either grow fast enough or die. 

Growth hacking is a way to help new businesses grow in the fastest way possible. Growth is what they are after.

But what exactly is growth hacking?

It is an experimental way to determine which methods are most effective to grow a brand or business (usually start-ups).

Growth Hackers

It’s simple. People who do growth hacking are called growth hackers.  A growth hacker should be creative. 

They should come up with new and cost effective strategies that both get consumers and help retain them.

Some of the main things they do include SEO, A/B testing, email marketing, content marketing etc… all of which we have discussed above.

But there are some specifics that you need to know when starting growth hacking.

  • Pre-launch email list

This is here email marketing comes in handy. As discussed under email marketing, it remains the best way to achieve leads and conversions. Suppose you have a new product coming up for launch. You need weeks and weeks of preparation and marketing to build curiosity and appeal among the audience. Start by creating a list of emails. Who are all the people you’re going to mail this to? They need to be potential and active consumers and even new customers. When you email them about the launch, give enough information to get them curious but not too less or not too much.

  • Product hunt

Product Hunt is an online company that helps startups launch ideas on their platform. Here  audiences use the product and give feedback and it’s a great way to get attention to your new product.

  • Referrals

Referrals work in any industry. Word of mouth still remains one of the most effective ways of persuasion. Family, friends, celebrities… they can all be used as referrals to make audiences more aware of your product.

  • Adjacent markets

People think that most of Nike’s products are only focused on track and field sports but they don’t know that it includes almost all sports gear. This means that when they first started they were in the track and field section but then expanded into other areas as well. Adjacent markets expand your company’s niche and reach so do this once you are well settled into one particular area.

  • New brand partnerships

Collaborating and partnering with other businesses is never a bad idea. It creates buzz in the market and will definitely give you more organic customers and followers. The other brand’s consumers are more likely to move towards your brand as well. The buzz would create more people to notice you in the market.

  • Host and attend community events

MAKE CONNECTIONS. This field is full of people with power and it’s always better to be on the side that will benefit your business. Meet people in events, invite them to yours, make a professional family that helps you and which you help, put your business card in the hands of as many as possible. Be ready to learn from the best.

  • Build a community

This community is slightly different from the one you make offline. This community is online on social media!  The advantage of social media is that in addition to getting new followers, you also have the opportunity to earn with every post you make if you have a significant following.

  • Go behind your biggest competitors (competition scans)

Yes they are your competitors, and yes they may be larger than you but there’s a reason why they are successful. You’ve heard of ‘keep your friends close but enemies closer’ right? Apply the same principle. Keep an eye on your competitors – see what their strategies are and if you can implement something similar or more unique than that. What do they have that you don’t? Monthly competition scans help you compare monthly developments between you and all your competitors.

Take a look at their blogs and the keywords they have used. Which competitor had the maximum impact and why? See their brand partners and all the methods they have used for growth and implement them.

  • Aggressive CM strategy

All content marketing strategies rely on getting feedback from consumers and creating value for your product. With the feedback they give, you need to work on any possible defects and tell your consumers that “look, we took your suggestions and made this a product you cannot say no to!” unless your content marketing strategy is not audience centric, you cannot grow.

  • Influencers

This is similar to partnerships. Instead of partnering with brands, you’ll be partnering with people who have a huge following or a celebrity status. Influencers are called this for a reason – people do what they do, be it clothing or makeup or accessories. If they endorse your product, then the people that trust the influencers will also trust you. This is of course given that your product should be of the highest quality and must deliver to the consumers what was promised.

 

How can you perfect growth hacking?

 

  1. Perfect your product: you shouldn’t lose out on this one. As long as your product has flaws, it’s going to be a drawback for you because nobody wants something that is imperfect. So get all the flaws and loopholes surrounding your product. That way you can focus only on growing in marketing and not on the product itself. It should be like “I have the perfect product, why don’t you buy it?”.
  2. Measurable goals: it’s good to have many goals, but as a growth hacker, you can’t possible hope to achieve them all instantly. Take it step by step by measuring which goals are the most relevant, urgent and required. 
  3. Test your approach: this means you need to do a trial and error run with your current growth hacking methods. If one of those methods is not working for you, then it’s time to change it.
  4. Analytics: as you set measured goals, you should also keep a track of how well you’re achieving these goals. This is where you join your hands with analytic tools and measure how you’re doing.
  5. Optimize! Keeping everything said above in mind – optimize your content accordingly! Even the smallest of error or glitches can cost you a significant amount of lead conversions!

Growth hacking may be a relatively new term, but it is definitely something you should invest on!

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