Growth hacking sounds like a powerful way to turbo-charge growth – but with so many ways to do it, it can be hard to know where to start.
We outline some growth hacking techniques that can produce quick wins, so you can test them out and see which are right for you.
The ‘Must-Have’ Growth Hacking Ingredients
- Content. Growth hacking is about having great content. Blogs and videos should form part of your strategy, along with an aggressive content marketing plan.To put it simply: if you want to grow quickly, you need to be adding lots of good content.
- Guest blogging. As well as driving an audience to your own blog, make sure you are taking advantage of others who already have an established audience. Find the ones who are a great fit for your business and offer them high quality and exclusive content.
- Personal branding. Who’s behind the brand? What’s the company all about? Think about how you can highlight some key personalities within your business, from the CEO to office staff and brand ambassadors.
- Email list. Your contact database will always be your most valuable asset, no matter what the nature of your business may be. Build up your list, nurture it and add to it on an ongoing basis. Network on and offline, and spend time nurturing your existing contacts. If you’re doing nothing with your existing list, that’s one huge missed opportunity.
- Analytics. Growth hacking without measuring or understanding what’s going on, is a waste of time. You need to know your numbers and the story they are telling you. After all, accelerated growth can only happen in tandem with looking at the numbers and how they are developing over time. Knowing why something works – or why it doesn’t – is key here.
- Technical skills. In addition to identifying problems and finding solutions, growth hackers, unlike traditional marketing experts, must have the tech skills required to implement these solutions without the help of the tech team. The kind of skills needed range from front-end coding to building and optimizing landing pages and working with growth hacking software.
- Data-driven decision making. Growth hackers are extremely analytical and use data to inform every step. Every marketing decision, every solution and every experiment made revolves around data and growth.
- Product-oriented focus. Growth hackers understand the potential of digital products and the role they can play in their own adoption. Thus, growth hacking enables strategies where product-oriented methods, like referrals, are central.
The AARRR Pirate Funnel in Growth Hacking
In 2007, Dave McClure, a Silicon Valley-based entrepreneur, angel investor and a former marketing director at PayPal, created the AARRR framework:
- Acquisition
- Activation
- Retention
- Referral
- Revenue
AARRR is a way to measure startup growth by tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) outlined by five funnel stages. After McClure proposed the idea, users nicknamed the AARRR framework “pirate metrics”.
Here’s how the AARRR framework works: to monitor the performance of your growth hacking marketing efforts, you can pick a few KPIs for each stage of the sales funnel. For example, if you want to understand how well your acquisition channels work, you can monitor and analyze the number of site/landing page/widget visits.
11 Growth Hacking Techniques
These suggestions should bring you quick wins, if they work for your business. If you test them and don’t see any impact, it may be time to move on to another growth hacking technique.
1. Break down your goals into sub-goals
By focusing on the smaller sub-goals that are SMART (instead of more general goals), you can attain the overall growth of your business. The SMART goals framework suggests setting goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound.
2, Find a place where your target audience is located
If you’re looking for the growth hacks used by many successful companies, most of them started out by finding a place where their target audience hangs out online. For example, you can market to the members of particular Facebook groups with a messaging that will engage them.
3. Use the freemium model
The freemium model has become the dominant business model used by startups. By allowing users to try out the premium version of your product before they decide if it’s right for them, you can expand your user base, and as a result, grow your business.
4. Implement a referral program
Referral programs and other reward-based programs, are a great way to scale business growth. Develop a referral program that benefits both the referrer and the new customer. This way, you’ll create a win-win situation that will benefit your customers and stimulate growth.
5. Leverage influencer market
Social media optimization and particularly leveraging the influencer market, is another way to scale growth. Before pursuing a partnership with influencers, ensure the influencer of your choice is aligned with your brand’s values, target audience, and product.
6. Employ the invite-only signup system
By implementing the invite-only signup system, you can leverage the fear of missing out (FOMO) that will prompt users to sign up for your service. For instance, you can allow each service user to invite up to five friends who can then invite up to five friends, and so on.
7. Content hacking
Content hacking is another way to scale growth. Wait, what exactly is content hacking? Basically, it’s a combination of growth hacking and content marketing efforts. By improving your content marketing game, you can increase the traffic to your website and as a result, grow your user base.
8. Gamify the user experience
Gamifying the user experience is another way to boost growth. With gamification, every interaction will feel like an achievement and your customers will actually enjoy engaging with your products.
9. Inspire collaboration
Collaboration is what drives the growth hacking process. Different departments of your organization need to be working together and to do rapid experimentations to enable growth.
10. Get creative
The growth hacking method was innovative at a time and now hundreds of professionals employ it to enable growth. It took a creative (and analytical) mindset to come up with such a concept. Turning your creative ideas into experiments is the essence of the growth hacking process.
Don’t Overlook the Potential of Website Visitor Identification
When you’re exploring growth hacking techniques, don’t overlook the potential of website visitor identification software. By finding out which businesses are on your website and already interested, so you can outreach to the hottest prospects and turbocharge your lead generation.
