People who work in digital marketing all the time use the term “growth hacking”.
But what does “growth hacking” really mean, and how can it be used in normal marketing? Let’s look into this new way of doing things, stress its main ideas, and give real-life examples of how it can help businesses grow by leaps and bounds.
How does Growth Hacking work? 🤔
There is a strategy called “growth hacking” that focuses on quickly trying out different marketing platforms and product development to find the best and most efficient ways to grow a business. Sean Ellis came up with the phrase in 2010, and it’s become very important for startups and digital marketing ever since. Growth hacking is all about finding quick, scalable, and cheap ways to speed up growth. This is different from traditional marketing, which relies on long-term campaigns and brand-building exercises.
Key Ideas Behind Growth Hacking 🔮
Choices Based on Data: Growth hackers make a lot of choices based on data. They can quickly tell what’s working and what’s not by looking at how users act, market trends, and how well campaigns are doing. For this process, you need tools like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, and A/B testing systems.
Solving problems in a creative way: growth hacking is all about being creative. Growth hackers are creative thinkers who look for new ways to get and keep people. This could mean using unusual marketing platforms, coming up with new product features, or using viral marketing.
Rapid Experimentation: Many studies must be run at the same time to test different growth hacking strategies. This lets people learn and try again quickly. The key is to fail quickly, learn quickly, and keep improving methods based on what you learn from data.
Scalability: Growth hacking strategies that work can be quickly scaled up to meet rising demand without making the costs go up by the same amount. Scalability makes sure that if a strategy works, it can lead to big growth without requiring a lot of extra money.
Parts of The Strategy ✅
Acquisition: Getting new people through different methods, like paid ads, social media, SEO, and content marketing.
Activation: Making sure that new users have a great first experience with the product so that they are more likely to use it regularly and actively.
Retention: Using email marketing, push notifications, and personalized experiences to keep people interested and coming back.
Referral: Getting happy customers to tell their friends about the product, which starts a spread loop that brings in new customers.
Growth Hacking In Everyday Marketing 👨💻
Referral Programs: Dropbox is known for using a referral program to get more people to use its service. Dropbox encouraged users to invite their friends by giving extra storage space to both the referrer and the reviewer. This led to rapid growth.
Examples of popular loops: Instagram and TikTok are two social media sites that use them. People who make and share content inspire others to do the same, which starts a cycle of new users and involvement that keeps going.
Product Changes: For example, Airbnb’s growth sped up when users were able to post their ads on both Airbnb and Craigslist. This small change to the product made Airbnb’s reach much bigger, letting it reach a huge number of users with little work.
Content marketing: For example, the social media management tool Buffer used high-quality content marketing to get more people to visit and sign up. A lot of people were interested in using Buffer because it regularly posts useful blog posts and resources on social media marketing.
A/B testing: For example, Amazon tries its website all the time with A/B versions to improve the user experience and boost sales. Small changes, like changing the color of call-to-action buttons or the way product pages are laid out, can have a big effect on sales.
Exclusive Access or Scarcity: For example, Clubhouse, an audio-based social network, made people feel like they were the only ones who could join by making it invite-only at first. The fact that the app was limited and hard to get made people want it and talk about it, which led to fast growth.
Using Influencers: For example, the beauty brand Glossier grew its business by getting real customers and micro-influencers to talk about its goods. Glossier built a community-driven brand that spread through word of mouth by sharing real user-generated content.
Integrations with Popular Platforms: For example, Slack became an important part of many teams’ workflows because it worked with popular tools like Google Drive and Trello. These add-ons made it easier for people to use Slack as their main tool for communicating.
Freemium Model: For example, Spotify’s freemium model lets users use the basic version of the service for free, but they can pay for a premium subscription to get access to more benefits. This plan helps bring in a lot of users, and some of them become paying customers.
Improving Onboarding: For example, the language-learning app Duolingo improves its onboarding process so that new users can see right away how useful the app is. Duolingo makes it more likely that people will keep using it by walking new users through their first lesson as soon as they sign up.
Growth hacking is a powerful method for companies that want to grow quickly and sustainably. Growth hackers can find unique ways to get new users and keep existing ones interested by focusing on making choices based on data, solving problems creatively, experimenting quickly, and being able to scale.
These methods can be used in everyday marketing to get amazing results, as shown by the examples given. Growth hacking will continue to be an important strategy for businesses that want to stay ahead of the curve as the digital world changes.
