Growth hacking, the trending word for businesses these days, is what everyone is focusing on. There are two types of people, those who are fed up hearing the term and others who are troubled hearing the term for the first time. No matter which group you belong to, in this article, we would do an in-depth analysis of Growth hacking and strategies for better growth. Before Growth hacking, first, understand the Basics and outcomes of Digital Marketing to get a clearer picture of this blog.

The term is widely used by startups and other business for their business/customer growth strategy. In simple word, Growth Hacking is nothing but experimenting with marketing, product development, or other areas which may work best for your business growth. This is a simple reason why we see the crazy boom of startups. So what exactly is Growth hacking is a good question to ask.

Digital Growth Hacking

What is Growth hacking?

Growth hacking is experimenting or using marketing strategies to grow your customer base as well as your business. In simpler words, it is an umbrella under which all the strategies are focused on customer base and business growth. For a detailed and simpler definition, click here. One of the biggest examples of growth hacking done right are Dropbox, Paypal, Airbnb, Facebook, etc.

So what did they do for such sudden growth?

• Airbnb’s Growth Hack
  Airbnb knew that they could find their targeted audience on Craigslist. Craigslist was the on the go place for cheap vacation rentals. They could easily reach up to their audience through Craigslist. So, they made it possible for a host to publish a listing straight on Craigslist with just one touch. The Craigslist post would revert customers to Airbnb. Getting in front of customers is a big deal, and if done appropriately, then success is at your doorsteps. This was a risky tactic to use. Craigslist eventually caught up to Airbnb and made sure that this functionality would never work again. But Airbnb had already taken off, and with some innovative ideas and coding, Airbnb took the company to the next level.

• Dropbox’s Growth Hack
  Dropbox’s growth hacking strategy is rather simple but effective too. What they did is they provided a referral program, which made current users invite their friend and family to use dropbox. They just rocketed from 100000 users to 4 years in over a year as a result of the strategy. While the company was publicly owned in 2018, its market value was 12 billion dollars. From these examples of growth hacks done by successful business, what we can understand is that they used strategies to communicate/reach out to their customers. So growth hacking is nothing but reaching out to customers and impressing them, thereby building a customer base through marketing and other strategies.

Not everyone has the luxury of doing ads and large marketing campaigns. What we can do is find out ways to reach out to our customers, impress them and thereby grow our business.

How to Become a Growth Hacker?

Sean Ellis is the father of the term, and he coined it in 2010, trying to come up with a new job description. Yes, the term is only 5 years old, but the practice has been followed for years. The noticeable growth hack practised was by McDonald in the 1950s, when they popped at every interstate highway as an offline growth hack.

So, when Sean Ellis had a hard time finding replacements when he would leave startups for new ventures. He didn’t want a marketer but a person whose ultimate aim is growth. He wanted someone who can grow the business. Modern products have a modern distribution system; therefore, traditional marketing ways doesn’t work well.

Anyone can become a growth hacker, be it an engineer or a marketer, and the main thing is the focus towards growing the business.

To become a Growth hacker, ask yourself some questions, such as:

1. Where can I find my Audience online?
2. What actions do they perform while online?
3. What my customers value?
4. What value can I provide my audience to become my customers and spread the word to others?

You can create more such growth hacking questions according to the nature of your business. And try to create value for your audience or become viral on the internet (your targeted audience).

6 Strategies for Small Business to grow using Growth Hacking

Source: Freepik

For startups and small businesses like ours, it’s growth or nothing. Suppose there is no growth that the business count is about to die. And businesses can’t survive without a proper customer base. Following are some strategies to engage with your audience online and grow your customer base and business.

• Create an Online Presence

If you already don’t have any online presence, it means that you are already losing a fair percentage of your audiences. In this digital era, people prefer to buy products/services online. In 2016 there were 1.4billion internet users, which will be fourfold in 2021, meaning there are more than 2.0 billion internet users right now. In 2021 there are 4.72 billion internet users, and a part of them belongs to your audience list, which you are missing without having an online presence. Set up a website and related social media accounts for your business. Don’t go for all social media channels; go for the ones where your audience is present and active.

• Focus on Content Marketing

Content marketing is one of the effective strategies in digital marketing to evolve your audience to customers. Content is the king of everything online, be it blog, picture or video. What I mean by content marketing is providing interesting and valuable content to your audience. Which will, in turn, help you convert your audience to customers. If you have your business website, you can write informative and interesting blogs, which will help in increasing traffic, SEO, and customers. Nowadays, everyone goes to the internet for answers and solutions; try providing your audience with the answer and solution they are looking for.

• Create Referral Customers

Not all business can relate to this.

Yeah, if you have read the article from the beginning, you should probably know why Referral customers are important to your business. Even if you don’t know, Cool, I will explain it to you. Dropbox used this strategy to grow its business, and therefore it’s known to us that this strategy works. And after knowing it, not using it will be the most foolish thing we will be doing.

Actually, we are all familiar with strategy as most apps provide us with a referral bonus.

What we can do is either you can come up with an idea of how to make your current customers invite others to join your community, or you can offer some discounts or freebies for a referral.

• Get Feedback from Customers

Feedback is the most valuable thing a business can get from its customers. You can use the feedback from your customers for several purposes. You can use it to know whether your customers are having a good experience with the brand. With that info, you can make some changes to the system, etc. There is no better way to find out what’s working for your business or not. So ask your customers to provide you with their feedback which in future serves many purposes.

• Provide Proof

What’s the first thing you do before purchasing a product/service online?

Yeah, that’s right! You read the review of the product/service you are planning to buy. That review there is proof of the product/service/business being genuine or not, like that we can provide proof to our customers that our business is genuine and not fraud by any means. 

We can do that by providing the feedback of your current customers on the homepage or product/service page. Slack has mentioned its high customers who are using the app on their website. This is to show proof to their audience that they are worth it.

• Use Exit Intent offers/coupons.

We know about sites showing a popup for subscribing to their newsletter while going to close the website.

Have you noticed it?

So instead of such subscription popups, we can provide offers or coupons on the same popup. Therefore when your audiences are going to leave, they will see this popup with an irresistible offer. This will keep them stuck to your website, reduce your bounce rates, and convert them into customers because of the irresistible offer you have provided.

Conclusion

Thank you for completing the article on growth hacking and growth strategy. We hope you have gained some valuable info about growth hacking. If you have any problem relating to this, feel free to contact us.

Key Takeaway

Growth Hacking Strategy

6 strategies you can follow to grow your business and reach the next level. They are:

• Create an Online Presence

• Focus on Content Marketing

• Create Referral Customers

• Get Feedback from Customers

• Provide Proof

• Use Exit Intent offers/coupons

We hope that you and your loved ones are doing good. Thank you and have a nice day.