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Have you heard about growth hacking? If you have not heard about the concept of Growth Hacking, let me explain to you more, well.. If you own a website or an emerging online store and you are having problems reaching a wider audience and your profits are very low.. then let me tell you first that you are not alone.
All companies and startups suffer from this, because the competition today is so intense that some new entrepreneurs become frustrated and believe that the place is no longer room for everyone! But Sean Ellis has another opinion that is different from the usual, and we will get to know it together, while trying to explain the concept of growth penetration and multiple techniques for accelerating growth, this new marketing method that he came up with.
In this Blog, we’ll take a look at what growth hacking is, how to do it, and the best strategies for small businesses in 2024 .
What is Growth Hacking
Growth hacking is a marketing strategy that focuses on finding ways to grow a company's customer base through means other than traditional marketing.
It is the process of experimenting with different marketing strategies in order to get more users. It’s about using what you have and stretching it as far as it will go.
If you're looking to scale up your business as fast and effectively as possible, then you should learn about Growth Hacking. It has been around since 2010 and is much cheaper than traditional marketing campaigns .
It is usually not a one-man job as it requires the cooperation of various departments such as product development, design, marketing and sales.
Who is a Growth Hacker
A growth hacker is someone who looks for innovative ways to grow your business and makes use of every single contact point. In a sense, it doesn't matter what you're doing – from product development to marketing, from engineering to sales – all are growth hackers. Growth hackers are not just marketers.they are usually curious and analytical minded :
- Growth hacker focuses exclusively on strategies related to the growth of the enterprise.
- Builds hypotheses, sets priorities, and tests innovative growth strategies.
- Analyzes and tests to see which approaches work.
A successful growth hacker knows how to prioritize growth, how to identify customer acquisition channels, and measure success and growth.
What is the difference between a Growth Hacker and a Marketer
A growth hacker is not better than a marketer or an alternative to it. They both have different competencies and skills which should be considered when you're trying to expand your business.All of his decisions, strategies, and methods are aimed at one goal: increasing services.
It's important for marketers to understand that a growth hacker's job is not to help generate new customers, but rather to try and improve the retention rates of customers. In order to distinguish themselves from traditional marketers, growth hackers are going to use marketing tactics that primarily focus on growing the company in other ways.
Think of him as a consultant specialized in helping you grow your service, just like Dropbox did. And it all started with Sean Ellis, who coined the term when he was the founding CEO for Qualaroo and growth has been at the time, an unexplored topic.
When Sean Ellis needed help, he found applicant’s resumes to be excellent in marketing, but from his experience he knew he needed another kind of special skill, which made him invent the term “growth hacking”.
When do I need a growth hacker
The perfect timing is when you find a service that solves a real problem, which means that it has found a successful fit between the problem and the solution that is being offered to the market. And the service is now at the beginning of the stage of adapting the product to the market, which means that the market has built a service that needs it and there is an increased demand for it.
How to start a growth hacker program
The first step in a growth hacker program is to create your product and test it. If the initial tests are successful, then you can consider scaling up your efforts.
Data collection is the first thing to understand the key traits of your buyers. Once you know what they value, you can make quicker growth hacker decisions based on their needs.
One of the best ways to stay on top of a customer's needs is by talking to them. Working with your current customers is crucial if you want updates and feedback on your product.
This way, you can grow and track their success while they're at it. It is also important to use A/B testing and other conversion optimization techniques to make your growth hacker program successful.
Best Growth Hacker Strategies
Most growth hacker strategies fall into three main areas:
- Content marketing.
- Product marketing.
- Ads.
Depending on the methods used, content marketing can be a low-cost way to create awareness for your product. Content marketing activities include:
- Create a blog and create valuable shareable content.
- Guest blogging.
- Create content for social networks.
- Writing digital books.
- Podcasting.
- Conducting webinars.
- Organizing contests and giveaways.
- Get bloggers to post reviews of your product.
- Join relevant forums and groups.
- Influencer Marketing.
- Use email marketing to build strong relationships with your users.
- Improving content visibility through SEO.
- Seek to be listed on digital marketplaces and related sites, such as Product Hunt.
Product marketing includes several techniques that can help you make your product more attractive and build your user base. They include:
- Leverage FOMO using an invite-only signup system.
- Gamifying the user experience to make it more enjoyable, and to provide rewards.
- Offer incentives to affiliates, which benefit both the affiliate and the new user.
- Affiliate marketing, which also uses content marketing techniques.
Growth hackers can also use social media and pay-per-click (PPC) ads to promote products.
The most important techniques for accelerating growth
Thinking Out of the Box
One of the most important techniques for accelerating growth is not to be traditional in your marketing thinking.
If your competitors, for example, depend on marketing via Instagram or marketing via Facebook and other popular platforms, you can market through lesser-known social media sites such as relying on Telegram marketing groups, or marketing via another platform.
In general marketing through social networks does not necessarily mean that you should go to design a marketing plan on Facebook or Instagram only. Use the Marketing grader tool to see how active your competitors are in social media marketing.
This blog will be very useful to you : Best ways to increase sales through social media.
Make profitable deals
It is difficult to succeed in any field without forming alliances and partnerships, so you can, for example, agree with one of the sites or social media pages to do the participation of the audience of each of you, so that it becomes possible for both of you to benefit from the audience of the other, and suppose, for example, that this page that you contracted with has 200K thousand followers, and you have 150 thousand followers on your page, so you can share followers, and thus you will have 350 thousand, which is the same number as well, but on condition that the niche you share with is close to your field of specialization and not a direct competitor to you.
Break the routine
You can rely on drawing lots among your followers and drawing winners on a monthly basis, for example, including free gifts, or conducting personal challenges between you and your followers, such as appearing in a live broadcast and allowing them to ask you about anything they want or something like that, and this is one of the techniques for accelerating growth that will increase confidence between you and your customers and makes you close to them and a friend to them, and you can also hold periodic competitions on a regular basis to attract audiences, as competitions are the fastest growth accelerating techniques that increase interaction and increase awareness of your brand and activity.
In order to run competitions, you must specify:
- The right season to launch contests: such as holidays when the number of netizens is more or holiday seasons.
- Your goal in holding competitions: will it be to increase the number of followers, increase the rates of appearance of your products, or to create more interaction.
- Contest budget and duration: to avoid unwanted surprises.
- Type of prizes and gifts: Will it be a “money prize, free products, free monthly subscription, or a travel ticket to one of the countries”
- The more expensive the prize the more people will trust your brand, follow you, and interact with you.
- Market your competitions and challenges: via multiple marketing channels such as Facebook marketing, email marketing, influencer marketing or all of these types.
Seizing opportunities
Do not spare any effort or opportunity to market your brand, no matter how small the opportunity seems to you, you may really need it, so be sure to participate in any conference or event related to your field of specialization, and because you are the owner of an unknown project yet, it is natural for you to be on the sidelines of these conferences and events, but Do not rush, the most important thing in the beginning is to create a network of relationships and acquaintances that will enable you to enter little by little in the world of money and business owners, and then introduce yourself and your company when the appropriate opportunity arises. This is a growth accelerator technique that will not require any financial or material investment from you.
Youtube marketing
We do not mean that you contract with an influencer on the platform or open a professional channel, but only that you make an introductory video for your site or your activity in general, and then publish it on the YouTube platform, which is the largest visual platform on the Internet, and it will only take you some effort and time to create Introductory content for your site, or you can use professional video designers through freelancing sites such as Freelance or Fiverr. Read more about the importance of designing a visual identity and logo for your company.
Personal Branding
It is marketing for yourself by yourself, as we often remember the names of website owners and companies more than we remember the companies themselves, and this is because the entrepreneur’s marketing for himself is very important and marketing for yourself is by being always present to serve your customers and supervising your business.
As they say, “Your back does not itch like your fingernail” so Do not rely entirely on others to run your business, especially if you are an expert in your field, as this will make others trust you more.
You can use a chat bot to respond to your customers in the event of your manychat absence.read this blog 8 Ways To Use Chatbots And Their Advantages In Marketing And Sales.
We have entrepreneurs such as Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon is the best example, in addition to the founder of Tesla Electric cars Tesla Motors and the owner of the Space X project Elon Musk These two people are mentioned in the media more than they mention the names of their companies simply because they are interesting and market themselves in the right way. Personally, I see it as the most important technique of accelerating growth.
Freemium system
Use the Freemuim feature because it has proven its effectiveness in recent years, because customers simply prefer products and services in which temporary free use is available “for a week, a month or more”, which makes the customer feel free and has more room to decide whether or not to buy the product or service. This is one of the secrets of acceleration techniques.
A/B Testing
An A/B test is a test that allows you to compare two variables from which you want to choose one because it performs better than the other variable.
Example: You have an online store and you would like to know which of the two words is better “limited offer” (variant A) or the word “special offer” (variant B) and to know this, use the Google Optimize tool, which is free and allows you to know which of the two variants brings greater conversions so that you decide to choose it and install it on Your online store.
Examples of growth hacker
These are some examples of successful growth hacker campaigns:
Dropbox: This platform rewards existing users for inviting new users by giving them extra storage.
Hotmail: Appended an extra line to every outgoing email to encourage people to create a new account.
AirBnB: This company uses Craigslist to find and market to people looking for affordable accommodations.
Amazon: Amazon refused to carry out any marketing campaigns, at the beginning of its commercial career. In return, the “company” used the amount of money it saved from the campaigns to provide the “free shipping for orders” feature. The aforementioned service caused the growth of the loyalty of the first customers and the marketing of the company through a good reputation, in addition to the use of reward strategies when inviting friends to shop from "Amazon".
PayPal: It is a giant and famous online payment company. She started her massive growth journey using the referral system, which enabled her to achieve daily growth of 10%. Thus, the "company" gained a user base of more than 100 million people in a short time.
Conclusion
In conclusion, these were the most important techniques for accelerating growth, and although some of them may seem familiar to some, their application is actually not that easy. It requires thinking outside the box and making several concessions in order to develop the business.
Techniques for accelerating growth or hacking growth are undoubtedly the best marketing strategy compared to other strategies(Traditional marketing), do not forget to follow all the latest techniques of accelerating growth because it is the most updated e-marketing strategy.
