Growth Hacking is a new thing happening in the world of revolution. It is a new concept developed by Sean Ellis in the year 2010 as a consultant for start-ups to achieve success within a short period.

Start-up companies, who are familiar with the term, will have the upper hand in the marketing sector as it provides a competitive advantage. This is why some start-up companies have shown ridiculous growth over a short period.

Every start-up wants to ridiculously grow its business, so they have started using the concept of Growth Hacking. This helps to acquire new customers and retain existing ones.

You should have a look at this guide to clear your concepts about the term.

Definition of Growth Hacking:

As said earlier, Sean Ellis first coined the phrase “Growth Hacking” in 2010 while coming up with a new job description. He then, as a consultant, helped a lot many start-ups to reach incredible growths.

However, the problem starts when he tries to find a replacement for himself to purse new business instead. He wanted someone who could take over the charge of growing the start-up.

Traditional marketers are quite different from modern marketers. Like them, modern marketers don’t care about factors like budgets, expenses, conversions, etc. 

As Sean posted, “A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth.”, he made it very clear that a growth hacker is a person who cares about the growth only. 

A growth hacker can be anyone with a focussed determination.

Growth hacking is done by using analytical, inexpensive, creative, and unique methods to bring about the start-up’s enormous growth. To achieve the goals set, growth hackers use appropriate measures and consider every aspect of their growth.

Overview:

New start-up businesses need marketing but don’t have big marketing budgets for offline marketing. They need cheaper ways to promote their goods and service.

For example – Uber taxi service. The service depends on the customer being picked up from a place and dropped at a different location. And the payment is made via the app, which is used by an infinite number of users. This is scalable.

Also, the product promotes itself. A user of the app tells his associates about the app and also the user experience. And they would spread it further.

That’s how growth hacking was done on a large scale to see exponential growth.

We will provide you with the ways that growth hacking could be done to hike up your brand’s growth rates.

Step 1:Make sure you create a product people want

Through an extensive market of even a mediocre product, it can show great results. But if it’s terrible, the world will know it in no time, that is., people don’t want your filthy product. 

To avoid these kinds of responses for your products, it’s better to get feedback for the users on an early stage itself, to keep on improving the product and make it more like user-desiring.

Two steps to make your product more market fit:

Firstly, you need a proper survey of the market to understand what the people need, to make a market-fit product.

Secondly, get feedback as soon as you have an idea. When you explain your approach to people, they would question many problems that can arise afterward.

Keeping the problems in mind, you can produce a decent product.

A company that did this is Instagram. Talking back and forth with the potential users made them realize that there’s no decent app for sharing photos and all. Then they modified the then app into a suitable app, which had 25,000 installs on the first day itself and reached 2 million users within 2 months.

Step 2: Don’t target everybody

If you target every person to be your customer, you might end up with zero sales because the growth hackers won’t know whom to convince and why. Just like not everyone likes pizza, some like burgers too.

So, it’s vital to know that your customers really want. Not all of them, but a few of them. 

Unlike traditional products, the buzz creation after the launching of the software is more important than the buzz created before the launch.

They launch the product at an event after gathering the ideal customers and creating a buzz about it. Impressed people go for the product, and others give their feedback.

Step 3: Acquisition:

Eric Ries helped the people worldwide learn about growth hacking, though Sean Ellis created its concept. 

In Eric’s book, The Lean Startup, the people from the tech and software world knew the concepts about growth hacking.

In the book, he had explained how beneficial growth hacking could be to all types of industries around the world.

The three engines he described in his book are:

Viral – your growth depends on their referral to their associates.

Sticky – a fantastic experience that makes people have you around.

Paid – you paid to gain a customer who will give you more business.

Step 4: Activation:

You want customers in the long run. If they eventually leave, it’s not a proper activation.

Fraser Deans pointed out three distinct phrases on an activation:

Pre-signup: Kinds of Stuff that someone uses before they are opt-in.

First User Experience: detailed steps to help someone follow the concept

Post-signup: Kinds of Stuff that comes later so that someone doesn’t have any regret.

Step 5: Retention:

The easiest way to success is to maintain the customer count. Before gaining new customers, you must try to retain existing customers.

Customers go around the internet visiting new channels and analyzing your product and their products before buying.

This is called the “Zero Moment of Trust” by Google, explaining the customer’s way of thinking. They visit different channels and consult various experts before trusting someone.

You need to connect to your customers via email or messages, where they can converse with you directly.

Live chatting is another way to communicate with customers. This helps the customers to get their queries answered. This is far better than emails, which takes days to get answered.

Step 6: Revenue:

Software companies always have a tight budget. So, they need their investment to bring ROI.

Your company might not bring back the investment within the first few months, and you remain stuck in negative cash flow.

So, the growth hackers have created a unique email campaign with an excellent offer to bring loads.

Sometimes, you might get colossal ROIs as well.

Growth hackers have technical skills to know what to do to implement changes and work accordingly. They always come up with new ideas, tests, measures, and ways to get you the ROI you want.

Step 7: Referrals:

There are so many companies around the world doing things for people. They spend a lot of time, energy, money, and effort to make a product and give their customers a feeling of satisfaction.

But do they refer their preferred company to their friends?

Not easy to answer.

Most companies use the Net Promoter Score to predict referrals.

Step 8: Improve your product continuously

Improvement is always needed. 

Competitor companies will always come up with new features in their product, declining the value of yours.

Growth hackers plan actionable goals to stand tall against opponent companies.

Growth hacking is a mindset with no fixed strategies, but with only one goal- growth.