Growth Hacking Techniques: Key Ingredients To Success
July 11th, 2021
Every company starts somewhere. No one fiscally responsible runs a super bowl ad the first year of a company’s existence (I mean, we won’t judge. Maybe just a bit). Ok, so when you are starting out, what kind of marketing will bring you from a mom-and-pop shop on the corner of Main St. to a globally recognized brand?
Say these two words with me: Growth Hacking. Don’t you feel cooler already? You are entering the world of hacking, and it’s time to break the rules of the expensive, traditional marketing strategies.
Your brand is competing with brands worldwide, especially if you run an eCommerce business. Not only do you have to be cost-effective, but you also have to be able to reach as many people as possible.
That’s where growth hacking comes in.
What is a growth hacking
It can be difficult to see growth hacking as its own thing, as many believe it is just modern marketing. It is an important strategy to consider because these cost-effective methods help you grow your business while increasing your exposure. Knowing some critical things about growth hackers will help you identify when you are using traditional marketing strategies or growth strategies.
Growth hackers:
- Use the entire funnel, including Referral and Retention, while marketers mainly focus on Awareness and Acquisition.
- Experiment with new methods and change the game plan seemingly daily depending on what works and what doesn’t.
- Have more technical skills than marketers, using tooling, programming, and automation to streamline their programs and make them cost-efficient.
- Are more involved with the product and can have input and change the product based on consumer reaction
- Focus on upcoming growth opportunities vs. focussing on day-to-day marketing and branding.
Growth hacking requires a team that can work fluidly together and independently, meaning they can work great in a group but also work separately and find ways to piece the puzzle together all the same.
Two primary forms of growth hacking
PPC (pay per click) advertising is a crucial element for growth hackers. They don’t tend to work on traditional advertisements, those handled by your standard marketing team. The data provided allows the growth marketers to adjust the cadence and style of their content almost daily.
Content Marketing
Usually, a low-cost method of marketing can be anything, including:
- Starting a blog
- Creating social media content
- Podcasting
- Having webinars and/or having videos related to your product service to help describe it and its intended uses
- Running contests and giveaways.
- Getting influencers to show off and interact with your product
- Joining relevant forums, groups, and subreddits- Reddit is one of the best forms of marketing. If you trend on Reddit, you will have people blogging about you for free.
- Using email marketing- still one of the more effective forms of marketing today.
- Improving content visibility by optimizing how your business is displayed on search engines- make sure you come up when keywords are searched, etc
- Make sure you are highly rated on Google reviews and Yelp- most people search for the highest reviewed businesses when looking for certain products.
Product marketing
- FOMO- Induce the fear of missing out by having invite-only signup systems. People will be more likely to sign up to say an email marketing program if they think they may not get another chance.
- Turn your marketing into a sort of game, like McDonald’s and Shaws do with tokens for their monopoly game.
- Referral rewards programs- refer someone, and you both get x amount off your purchases.
- Affiliate marketing, which combines both product marketing focus with content marketing tactics.
Keys to growth hacking success
Let’s take you on a journey.
You have an incredible product and business. It is so exciting, and now it is time to tell everyone that you are ready to be their new favorite brand.
You got the business side on lock, but you are looking to hire a small team of growth marketers to work on your brand awareness and attracting new leads. The first step is to make sure you are ready internally to pursue this form of growth. Grab a meeting with your key stakeholders and pull out this checklist. Once you can check off every box, then it is time to look for your new team.
- Do you have a clear understanding of what the goals of the company as a whole are?
- Do you have a proper budget set aside to fund the campaigns through completion?
- What metric do you want to improve? Awareness? Conversions? Leads?
- Are you clear on a long-term plan? Do you want explosive growth to sell your business to a larger company? Or do you want a steady stream of revenue without over-exerting the business?
Now that you have locked down your side, pull out the following checklist while interviewing your potential hackers:
- Do they understand your push to scale as fast as possible without incurring huge costs?
- Are they Social Media masters?
- Are they able to produce marketing content as well as interpret the marketing data?
- What are their technical skills – photo/video editing, SEO pros, programming, and automation?
- Are they agile? Are they eager to try a variety of techniques, including unconventional ones?
- Are they obsessed with data? Can they analyze and understand how the consumers are reacting to each campaign and each piece of content.
- Do you trust them? Growth hacking and marketing can sometimes feel chaotic, and the ROI may not be visible initially. But with the proper growth marketer, you know it is only a matter of time.
Secure the future of your brand
Marketing is personal. It is personal for the people you are targeting, and it is personal for your business. Marketing is how you represent yourself out in the world, and that is why it is so critical to take the time to do it correctly.
Nowadays can help you out with our viral marketing campaigns. We care about all of our clients and make sure that we know your goals to confidently achieve them. We have already worked with some incredible brands we couldn’t be more proud of. Will your brand be the next one we can’t stop bragging about?
Sources:
Social Media Marketing Funnel | Sprout Social
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) – Definition, How It Works, Models | CFI