The Internet has given birth to a new type of product concept. In the pre-Internet age, products were physical. The internet has redefine the word “product” to mean something that is created by combining information and services. For thousands of years, products have been physical goods. But now they are invisible bits and bytes in the form of software products. Think of Uber, Dropbox, or Facebook. These are all examples of hybrids; they are a combination of a service and a product.
While these brands have a lot of value, they don’t use the traditional 4 marketing P’s when it comes to advertising. In other words, these brands partner with other companies instead of distributing their products on their own. They offer a virtual user experience, rather than features or size.
The product that only exists virtually has some qualities that regular products do not possess. The user may get more by sharing it. Facebook, for example, wants you to share their content with your friends. Uber encourages you to share rides to get discounts. So, you benefit when you share the virtual product. A shampoo and toothpaste are not things that you would typically think of as being necessary.
Start-ups don’t need someone who can build and manage a marketing team, manage outside vendors, or achieve corporate objectives. At the beginning stages of constructing a start-up, the primary objective is simply to promote growth.
A start-up company’s primary focus is to increase the number of people using their product by marketing it as a new and exciting opportunity. You need users to tell their friends about the product, and their friends would tell their friends.” Traditional marketers are also interested in growth, but not to the same degree.
Growth hackers have a singular focus that allows them to see opportunities that others might miss. If they focus on only the one task that is most important, they can achieve it early on.
What Is Growth Hacking?
The term growth hacking came about because the market needed a way to boost growth. In more detail, growth hacking means finding creative, low-cost ways to grow a company’s business. In other words, it is a strategy used to increase a company’s growth.
A growth hacking strategy is one that is focused on growth and nothing else. It is most often used in relation to early stage start-ups who need to grow quickly on small budgets. There is no need for hacking when it comes to growth hacking, it is simply a method of marketing that uses data to help generate demand. It is the process of designing and conducting experiments to improve the results of a target area.
The Growth Hacker’s Brain
What qualities does a growth hacker need to have? There are three important qualities a growth hacker needs to have: the ability to work with data, the ability to write code, and the ability to think like a marketer.
Experimental
Trial and error is essential to growth hacking. Difficult market conditions necessitate a lot of experimentation for these start-ups. That doesn’t come as a surprise. Most of the start-ups offer product concepts that are innovative and ground-breaking solutions that the market needs. Some start-ups create products that people didn’t even know they needed. These businesses can be very successful because they are fulfilling a void in the market that no one else knew existed. There is no foolproof guide or a one-size-fits-all rule for achieving growth.
Because growth hackers need to learn through experience, they must also learn how to fail better before they can achieve their goals. Successful growth hackers realize that they need to fail many times before they will ultimately succeed. Therefore, they need to be able to experiment a lot and be good at planning and organizing. Growth hackers aren’t satisfied with just one plan—they have multiple contingency plans in case their first one doesn’t work out. There should always be a contingency plan in case the original plan doesn’t work out. This can be based on observing what went wrong in previous trials.
Observational and Analytical
They are always observing and analyzing everything around them. Growth hackers tend to use digital marketing campaigns more often than other marketing strategies. Digital marketing focuses on numbers and trends. Insights cannot be gleaned in the same way from other media channels such as TV, radio, and experiential marketing. For example, outdoor billboards will not tell you how many people saw it or how old they were.
Digital channels allow you to see detailed information about the gender, age, location, and how long visitors stayed on the page. Growth marketers face the daunting task of analyzing huge amounts of data. The more data a growth hacker has, the more informed their decisions will be. This minimizes the risk and makes the trial and error process less likely to fail.
Growth hackers need to be able to work with numbers and be able to understand large amounts of data. It’s a good idea for a growth hacker to have a strong foundation in statistics. They also need to be able to take numbers and turn them into stories that can be used to plan marketing initiatives.
Creative
Growth marketing is a data-focused approach to marketing that is used within an organization. This type of marketing is more concerned with analytics than with the creative aspects of marketing. A growth hacker’s natural inclination is to solve problems.
These tech start-ups interfere with the brain of the growth hacker. These start-ups offer new solutions to problems in new markets, so they face a lot of unfamiliar issues. We need to find new solutions for our new problems. A growth hacker cannot simply copy the methods used by corporations in fast moving consumer goods, fashion, or real estate, they need to come up with new approaches. It would be difficult for someone who prefers to work with a routine to be a growth hacker because they would need to be comfortable with change.
The person responsible for growth hacking in a start-up is the one who is responsible for solving any problems the business encounters. The growth hacker is responsible for making sure all the company’s initiatives are aligned. This includes sales, business development, communication, and customer acquisition. This person needs to be able to come up with new ideas and learn new things quickly.
There is often no clear cut path to growth and it can take a lot of creativity to find new ways to grow.
What Is the Difference between Growth Hacking and Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing and growth hacking go hand in hand. However, if you want to put them in a hierarchy, growth hacking would be the parent and marketing would be the child.
Growth hackers are responsible for finding new ways to grow a company by working across departments including marketing, sales, and product development. They do not limit their responsibilities to mere maintenance and instead do what it takes to stimulate growth. Rather than trying to make a product/service that meets the needs of the consumer, they are focused on how to make the company more successful.
Digital marketers are more specific about what they do compared to other marketers. Digital marketing is a powerful tool for bringing a brand to the attention of its target audience. It creates a desire for the product/service in question. The first stage of the sales funnel is awareness. We’ll tackle that in details later. Digital marketers use different types of marketing, such as content marketing, email marketing, SEO, and paid search.
This means that digital marketing can help growth hacking efforts by providing additional insights or resources. Digital marketers focus on achieving growth through digital platforms. Growth hackers use digital marketing techniques to grow their business on digital channels. They pay attention to company growth as a whole, instead of just individual products, features, promotions, or acquisitions.
10 growth hacking concepts and best practices
Let’s look at 10 growth hacking concepts and best practices you can use to see a difference in your startup or established company:
1. Be Accessible
Having accessibility to a wide range of users allows businesses to develop their products successfully. A company that can offer several touch points in trending platforms will see an increase in user adoption.
2. Listen to Users
Whether online companies want it or not, they are subject to user commentary. When it comes to managing a company’s reputation, some businesses choose to ignore the information entirely, while others only take action after damage has already been done. The companies that are able to improve based off of what is being shared in online forums are the ones that are really listening. This allows them to have a direct positive impact on their user base.
3. Find Your Niche
Even if you think your company is more main stream than niche oriented, take another look. Most businesses have a niche that they fit into. For example, if you own a bakery, you would most likely sell baked goods. If you use the same techniques in a different online forum, you will be able to expand your main product. One way to become an expert in your field is to choose a relevant topic of interest and become knowledgeable about it. You can become a thought leader in your industry by creating a blog and writing guest posts. A login for your primary website will give the user access to special insider forums and additional benefits.
4. Prospect Nurturing With a Twist
The concept is to serve potential customers with the right content at the right time. To successfully nurture your prospects, you need to have a good understanding of what they want. Do your research ahead of time to make sure you’re meeting their needs. There are several traditional methods of prospect nurturing, such as creating content to promote your brand, re-engaging with past customers, providing educational and training materials, and targeting prospects who have already shown interest in your brand.
5. Use Scalable Tactics
Start small with any tactic you choose to implement. Those that become popular in a scalable way gain their own momentum and lead to higher conversion rates. To ensure your company doesn’t slow down as it grows, it is important to have the right infrastructure in place.
6. Rethink Your Content And How It Is Presented
Modern companies cannot disregard the information they present online. Relevance and precision are vital in content. If you want someone to react to your message, it is best to make it short and quick. Infographics and videos are becoming increasingly popular as tools to increase conversion rates. The headline is more important than the content, so make sure it is well written.
7. Leverage Alternative Platforms
This tactic is more advanced and may require programming skills to fully take advantage of it, in some situations. You can access a larger market for your product if you can find a way to promote it for free through another platform’s community. If you want to enjoy the same kind of cross-community marketing that large businesses do, try interacting with other businesses who have large followings on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
8. Embrace Change
As a growth hacker or vendor, your job is never done. The marketplace is constantly changing and if a company wants to stay successful, it needs to change with the times. Keep up to date with the latest trends by using analytics and intelligence from your current users and competitors. If companies do not adapt to the future, they will be bought out or go out of business.
9. Integrate Into Other Platforms
The relationship in this text is more of a symbiotic relationship than a parasitic one. Many platforms welcome cross recommendations. If multiple sites share a single touch point for users to access them, then traffic to all those sites will increase. Adding a button, badge, widget, or other link to your website can help increase traffic.
10. Make Smart Suggestions
You should always try to be engaging with your users, and remember to prompt them to take action on your website. Instead of having CTAs that are stationary on your page, you can have them pop up when visitors click on certain areas of your page. Some ideas may have a negative impact on a user’s experience which could make them leave your website. For example, pop up ads could get in the way of what your website is trying to accomplish. Make the experience enjoyable for users so they will come back.
In a Nutshell
There are many ways to grow a business, and growth hacking is just one suggestion. While it may focus on programming, there are other ways to be creative and promote growth. You don’t need to be a programmer to be successful in growth hacking.
Try out some of these marketing and startup strategies this year, and compare the results to your past numbers to see what works best in your market. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to finding a job, and what works for one person might not work for another. It’s important to find a strategy that works for you and your situation. Don’t underestimate the importance of technology – it is essential for any business owner who wants to stay competitive. The key to becoming good at anything is to keep at it and never give up.
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