What is Growth Hacking?
Whether a brand has been around for years or is just starting up and looking to gain exposure, growth is an extremely necessary and important part of any marketing strategy! The rate at which your brand expands and your target audience becomes aware of who you are and what you do can determine your success, and many businesses need quick ways to increase their growth within an extremely limited and short amount of time. Growth hacking refers to instances where brands need to focus entirely on growth and implement different strategies that are solely centred around expansion. These different strategies and techniques vary between different industries and companies, but they are referred to as growth hacking tactics.
Growth hacking in digital marketing has become a very widely used and known tactic to quickly grow a business. The main goal centred around growth hacking is expansion within the shortest amount of time possible while spending the least amount of money, leading to a massive increase in revenue as well as customers! Growth hacking is necessary for both companies who are starting out and need to start growing and earning money quickly as well as brands and businesses who are looking to jump from being a small to medium sized company to a larger one. The different growth hacking strategies used centre around small budgets with maxim effect and they are an important part of business development.
What is a Growth Hacker?
A growth hacker is an individual who specialises in creating and developing tactics to help brands and businesses quickly get and retain customers. These individuals focus their energy entirely on the quick growth of a business and work to create and implement strategies that are centred around effective marketing tactics. These types of individuals are however not just focused on marketing but rather on the speed and cost at which growth occurs, finding the best and most cost effective ways to target specific audiences and create brand awareness around a business. A large part of what a growth hacker does is create and test out new theories and ways that growth can be stimulated within a business and the best tactics to use to initiate these different strategies. Testing and measuring the different elements and tactics involved is therefore an important part of any growth hackers job!
What is The Difference Between Growth Hacking and Traditional Marketing?
Traditional marketing strategies are generally centred around initiating sales rather than growing a business, and while these two concepts may have many features and inclusions that overlap with one another, their fundamental goals are quite different. Growth hacking is all about implementing and monitoring different tactics that are centred around growing a business as quickly and as cost effectively as possible, ensuring that the numbers and growth statistics are the measurements that grow. While this does involve initiating more sales and finding the best ways to attract customers, you are looking at significantly increasing these sales within a short period of time! Growth hackers are usually used to generate growth and may even help to design certain products or services so that they are specifically geared towards increasing the number of sales and interactions that a business has. They are therefore two very different, but both equally vital parts of any marketing strategy or campaign!
How Does Growth Hacking Work?
Growth hacking is a system of testing that looks to figure out what you have done in the past, or what previous business have done, to initiate growth and looks to emulate these conditions. Growth hacking is a system of testing the best strategies to use to try and generate the most amount of growth through monitoring the different effects that your growth hacking tactics have on a business.
Raising awareness of who a brand is and what they do is an integral part of growth hacking and ensuring that you are attracting customers that will not only make a purchase but continue to be interested in what you have to offer is a large part of what makes growth hacking so important, particularly when it comes to newer businesses.
Growth hacking fundamentals work through testing and implementing strategies that are going to help a business grow exponentially in a very short amount of time, increasing growth, revenue and the awareness that a target audience has over a business through cost effective tactics and strategies.
Data Analysis
A very important part of growth hacking is the analysis and testing part of the process, and ensuring that the different strategies that a business is using is actually effective and working to increase the size and reach that a brand has is imperative. Analysing growth hacking metrics ensures that if the tactics that are currently being used are not helping the brand reach the goals set that changes can be made quickly, as to not impact the overall success and time frame in which the growth needed to be achieved.
Technical Data
Data analysis is done through the monitoring of technical data and measuring different metrics across a webpage to see how much growth has occurred. Understanding and knowing these different metrics and gaining insight into how they work is extremely important when it comes to the growth and development of a business.
Creative Thinking
A large part of what makes growth hacking such an interesting and lucrative part of marketing is that brands and businesses need to use creative and unique methods to attract potential customers. In order to grow exponentially without spending too much money is often a lot harder than it sounds, and growth hackers have to think of tons of different, creative and unique ways that they can initiate this growth in a cost-effective way.
What are The Benefits of Growth Hacking?
Provable ROI
The amount that you spend on implementing growth hacking techniques is minimal and it is therefore extremely easy to ensure a return on the investment that you put in. Having a provable and easily achievable ROI is great for business, particularly if you are just starting out or are going through a phase where you need your business to grow quickly.
Low-cost
There are minimal costs involved with the techniques that are used in growth hacking, ensuring that the amount that is made from these different techniques goes straight back into your business! Growth hacking is all about taking your brand or business to the next step of development, and what better way to do this than through a low-cost initiative?
Low-resources
As you will see in the below growth hacking examples, growth hacking techniques rely on using very few resources to grow their business. The techniques used are smart and often centred around a customer base doing the work for you! The growth hacking process relies on growth hacking analytics to better understand businesses and customers, and by doing this, minimal resources are used through the process.
What are The Examples of Growth Hacking ?
Having a growth hacking marketing plan and creating one based on what has worked in the past is a great way to ensure success! The following are a few examples of brands and businesses that used various growth hacking techniques to grow their business!
Hotmail
Hotmail has taken to initiating growth hacking techniques to increase the number of users who sign up for and use the platform. They have done this through the inclusion of a small line at the end of every email sent, encouraging those who are receiving the email to sign up for a hotmail account. Every email that is sent to a non-hotmail user has the potential to gain a new customer and this is done without the platform having to use any resources to do so!
LinkedIn showed us the perfect example of how using a small network area and specific industry to learn the ins and outs of job networking could be extremely beneficial! This world-wide platform started out using one industry, the tech industry, in one area, Silicon Valley, to learn the different needs within the job market. Identifying key strategies and things that worked for businesses looking for workers and for people who were looking for jobs. Using the tactics that proved to work, this network expanded globally and is the most used platform for job hunters!
Netflix
Starting out as a video rental company, Netflix is a great example of a business who had to move and improve with the times. Netflix is a business who noted changes in the way that people were wanting to watch movies and series, identifying that they were no longer going and renting out DVDs or videos, but rather finding them online. The network split into two different divisions, one that focused on video rental while the other focused on streaming platforms, and the work really paid off because today the platform has more than 117 million subscribers from all over the world!
DropBox
DropBox has implemented an amazing strategy to try and increase their growth and they do this by rewarding their current customers with more storage space when they invite new members to join dropbox! This great initiative is cost-effective, as all they have to do is supply those who get the customers with more storage space! This tactic places current customers as the marketers, growing their reach exponentially and doing what a team of marketers could never be able to do!
Airbnb
As one of the biggest booking platforms in the world, Airbnb has created a name for itself in ways that I am sure even the founders could not have even imagined! Used throughout the world to book and rent out accommodation, Airbnb is a great example of how growth hacking can grow a business. Before Airbnb had the name and platform that it does today, the founders realised that they needed to grow the platform through using other popular booking sites, and with craigstlist being such a big one at the time, they allowed for their customers, who were renting out their accommodation, to promote their listings on craigslist. This action ensured that people who were looking for accommodation on Craigslist would come across numerous options from Airbnb, helping renters to rent out their accommodation and also grow the name! When it comes to growth hacking for startups, using similar techniques to what this profound company used is a great way to grow your business quickly!
What are The Growth Hacking Tools?
As with any marketing strategy, there are a number of different tools that have been developed to help brands and businesses along when it comes to growth hacking. The following are just a few of the best and most effective kinds of growth hacking tools on the market today.
Expandi.io
When it comes to B2B growth hacking examples, Expandi.io is one of the top tools to use! This platform works by automating your LinkedIn marketing through automated invitations and messaging, and even automatic profile viewing! Expandio works through identifying who your ideal customer would be and sending messages to these different companies, providing a great way to attract new business!
Zapier
One of the most vital growth hacking skills is automation, as this allows you to process information faster than you ever have before! This tool works by connection you with hundreds of marketing tools which are then automatically used to streamline and organise your data, helping you to better organise your business!
CrystalKnows
Another important thing about growth hacking is that you have to understand people better. CrystalKnows uses a person’s social media profile to give you vital information on the best ways to interact with them, helping to ensure that you are putting your best foot forward!
GrowthBar
When it comes to content growth hacking, SEO is extremely important. To automate your SEO processes and equip you with the knowledge you need to succeed in search engine optimization, GrowthBar shows you the most important SEO analytics and statistics! Whether you are looking into B2B or B2C growth hacking techniques, GrowthBar has a ton of different features to help your business grow.
