Growth Hacking Strategies for Startups to Ensure Desired Leads
Growth hacking or growth marketing is an experiment-driven approach to identify the most effective way to promote your brand widely. In order to keep your business always a step ahead, you have to plan something out of the box. And growth marketing can help you with that.
Entrepreneurs always aim to reach their potential consumers and increase their revenue within a short time period. Therefore, you must emphasize your marketing strategies to get quick exposure in today's business world. To establish a unique identity of your business you must come with some creative solutions.
Growth Marketing is not only about traditional marketing or promoting products and services.
Growth Marketing is all about growing your user base by doing continuous experiments, collecting reviews, improving quality and ultimate growth of the business.
You can leverage the power of Growth Hacking to reach a huge audience and increase brand awareness.
Proprietors sometimes get confused to choose the right Growth Hacking strategies to grow fast. Today we will show you 10+ proven Growth Marketing Methodologies that will be worth your expenditure.
What is Growth Hacking
Growth Hacking is a comparatively new and creative marketing technique focused on growth. It is an experiment-driven tactic to get massive growth in a short time period on a minimum budget. The term “growth hacking” was coined in 2010 by Sean Ellis, founder, and CEO of GrowthHackers.
The main objective of Growth Hacking is finding a cost-effective way to acquire a large customer base. In this methodology, all parts of your business will work together and find an effective way to generate more sale.
You would have to mix engineering, data, design, development, marketing, and analytics in order to find the most attractive, cost-effective and quick way to grow rapidly instead of following the conventional techniques.
Who is a Growth Hacker
A growth marketer is someone creative and knowledgeable of technology and analytics. He has a great understanding of buyers' persona, market condition, design, coding, analytics along with traditional marketing approaches.
He must have the power to bring something new and effective from continuous testing and customer feedback. The growth hacker is capable to analyze the data and find out the best way for rapid company growth.
A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth. Everything they do is scrutinized by its potential impact on scable growth
Sean Ellis, CEO and Founder of GrowthHackers
The growth hackers usually follow the techniques of reverse engineering, A/B testing, SEO, conversion optimization, email marketing, viral marketing, and content marketing to get huge growth in the consumer base.
And the main formula that every growth hacker uses is —
Product + Growth = Impact
In short, a growth hacker is a compact package of marketers, programmers, and data analysts to get maximum consumers at a lower cost within a minimal time period.
His aim is fixed on only one thing: Company Growth.
Growth Hacking Strategies vs. Digital Marketing Tactics: Get the Difference
There exists a fine line between Growth Marketing tactics and Digital Marketing techniques. Confusion may arise among the entrepreneurs in which one should be picked or which one is actually beneficial for them.
Actually both of them are important to boost-up your company growth.
Digital marketing often works with the already established strategy of marketing where the outcome is quite obvious and constant. On the other hand Growth Hacking involves finding something innovative by experimenting with different ideas.
The Growth marketer uses these testing data to analyze the consumer satisfaction level and come up with an improved solution to retain more consumers and make them loyal advisor. These loyal advisors will help to take the business to the next level.
Instead of focusing only on driving traffic to a website like traditional marketing, Growth Marketing focuses on the full customer journey. From arriving on site, engage with the product or service, find a WOW moment, come back and buy again and work as a referral, Growth Hacking works in every step to influence the users.
The mindset of a Growth Marketer is the same as a scientist. They continuously test and analyze the data according to their hypothesis and don't stop before getting satisfactory results.
Here, the experiments that fall down are not considered failures, preferably it's a step closer to get the desired output.
Growth hacking emphasizes more on the process rather than the outcome.
12 Best Growth Hacking Strategies Every Startup Should Follow
Every business should have a strong Growth Hacking plan to break the ground and grow the business rapidly. Here we have listed 13-proven Growth Hacking Strategies to boost your user base and drive the growth line upward.
Pre-launch
- Follow Your Biggest Competitors
- Build an Active Social Media Community
- Use the Power of Email marketing
- Leverage Adjacent Markets
- Offer Discounts to Beta Testers
- Create hype or follow the trend
Post-Launch
- Launch on Product Hunt or Similar Platforms
- Leverage Q&A Sites like Quora, Reddit, etc.
- Leverage Referral Marketing
- Focus on Content Marketing
- Use Clients Feedback to Improve Service
- Work with Influencer
Let's start the discussion.
Scann Your Competitors Strategy
You will get competitors in every industry. As a startup business owner, you should keep an eye on your competitors. To run a business successfully you have to identify your business competitors first. Then analyze their marketing plan and other strengths to make your business stand out.
Moreover, you can come out with a better approach in front of your target audience by cracking the potentiality of your competitors.
Your competitors are not only who do the same business, but also who provide the substitute or same type of products. Also with the growing usage of the internet now you may have to fight with the companies from different localities, countries, in fact, all over the world.
Though the scenario does not small anymore. You have to think deep and bring something unique to compete with the rest. In addition, you must understand the tactics and business policy of them and then offer something alluring and tempting to your consumers.
Therefore, by knowing what your rivals are up to you can develop a cost-friendly promotional strategy for your business.
Build a Social Media Community Around Your Brand
Social Media becomes a popular platform for spreading the brand voice to a huge population. Through these platforms, you can introduce your brand, interact with your audience directly, get their feedback, communicate with your industry influencer, understand your competitors, and so on. As a result, it gives you an opportunity to build a community of people who holds the same views.
It's undoubtedly better to scream your voice in a crowd than space.
So before launching your product you can create groups or forums on different social media and promote your business. In order to do this, you can update interesting posts, create any buzz, arrange contests, broadcast ads, create and join similar groups and so on.
Email-marketing: Powerful Tool for Growth Hacking Strategies
Email marketing is an effective way to acquire, engage and retain users for your business. You can create a hype about your products or services even before launch by sending attractive emails to your potential audience.
At first, you have to collect an email list of your target audience with whom you want to introduce your business. Then plan something wisely based on your audience nature, age, geographical area, liking, requirements and others. In this way, you can understand your user's preferences and convey your information in an appropriate way to them.
As it gives you an opportunity to communicate with people directly you should send emails at least once in a week before launch. It will create potential consumers for your business prior to your launch. Also, you can take the email marketing service of Mailchimp to make the email list and send them to users effectively.
Leverage Adjacent Markets
Often people confused the concept of adjacent marketing with white space opportunity. White space opportunity is like innovating a new market for your existing product.
The adjacent marketing, on the other hand, uses your skill and capability to create more sales in your existing channel. While you think about your business's current market, you consider the intersection of Product, Customer, and Application.
Suppose a Software COmpany produces a wide range of plug-in and add-on for WordPress. They have good community of clients. Now they can create some other relative elements like WordPress theme to serve their clients more efficiently and broaden their market. It will create potential sales growth within their skill and ability with less risk.
Giving Discounts to Beta Testers.
Offering promotional giveaways always be an outstanding marketing tactic in the business world. Also, you need to test your product's compatibility before launching it commercially.
Therefore for the beta tester, you can offer something tempting. In this way, you can convince people to use your products or services and collect real reviews from them. Later, you can utilize these reviews to improve your service quality before going widely. It will minimize the chance of customer dissatisfaction and maximize the sale.
Furthermore, it's not always easy to make people ready to use your products especially when they are already obsessed with another one. So, you have to analyze their requirements and bring out something innovative and alluring that they can't refuse.
Create a Hype or Follow The Trend
There is a high chance before you a lot of people are doing the same business and serving the people for years. So, it's not possible to drag all their clients towards you overnight.
You must create curiosity among your target audience first. This also goes the same if you bring something totally new, nobody does before. In that case, you also create an interest among the people for your products or services.
It's a comparatively easy yet productive way to promote your business. However, you must think of something outstanding to draw the attention of your audience. It should be innovative and capable to allure your target audience at the same time.
Launch on Product Hunt or Similar Platforms
Product Hunt is a trustworthy and popular site to share and discover new products. By promoting your business on Product Hunt you can manage 10,000+ web visits per week.
Big shot, Right!
Well, if you want to get introduced with huge traffic and make public exposure overnight this type of platform will be the right choice. But its not a piece of cake to get featured on Product Hunt or this type of other platform. You have to find someone who has already submitted a similar product on Product Hunt. Then, you have to convince him/her to submit your business on the platform.
However, it may seem a little bit complicated to you but expose your business to the global audience it is the best way.
Leverage Q&A Sites like Quora, Reddit, etc.
Now, promoting your business on social media and get interacted with the audience about your products or services has become so common. Undoubtedly it's an effective way to go close to the mass people. But the excessive use of social media marketing for businesses creates a hole in the consumer's mind. They often get confused and can't decide in the crowd of massive advertisements.
In this circumstance, sites like Quora and Reddit can help you out to introduce your business in an innovative way. You can search for queries related to your business and join the conversation. Make sure that your product is capable to serve their demand. In addition, you can explain broadly how your products will meet their needs.
On the other hand, Reddit will allow you to expand your network in your desired community. It's a big chance to get connected with your audience where you can introduce your business globally.
Leverage Referral Marketing
We usually love to get reviews from our family and friends. You can adopt this mentality to elevate your promotional activities Therefore, you have to make people convinced to use your products and scream the reviews to others.
Use your clients as your referral. In order to do this, you can offer some discount coupons or anything beneficial for them. Big companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, Uber all use referral marketing to promote their services.
As it's like a chain reaction and also trustworthy, it can bag you huge traffic for your business dramatically.
Focus on Content Marketing
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach involved with creating and distributing informative, relevant, and consistent content to attract, interact and retain a specific group of people. Content can be a piece of article, image, infographic, audio or video to create profitable customer action.
The CMI says content is one of the most effective ways to promote a business. Almost half of all marketers plan to use content to reach their customers.
You can increase your brand awareness, leads, and conversion rate by designing useful and valuable contents for your clients.
At first, you have to analyze your buyer persona and then develop your content team strategy according to their preference. Always try to keep your content straight, simple, attractive and beneficial for your audience.
Use Clients Feedback to Improve Service
If you can tap into what hooks your audience you will get a flood of appreciation for your products or services. In order to improve the quality of your product, it is the best way to get reviews from real users.
You can conduct events, online contests, google forms, surveys to get the thoughts of your clients over your services. Later, it will lead you to generate next business strategies to acquire and retain more users.
Moreover, it will help you to build up a sustained relationship with your customers.
Work with Influencer
Influencer Marketing can increase brand authenticity to build trust among the users. That is the reason global brands like Adidas and Colgate-Palmolive have been using this marketing tactic for years and working with many social influencers accordingly.
According to a Linqia study, 86% of marketers have used this methodology to grow their business, and 94% of them found it effective.
You can work with influencers who have huge fan followers from your target audience. They will promote your business to those people online or offline. Marketers from all industries are working with influencers to boost their social activities on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and other social platforms.
For local exposure of your brand, you can enroll with local celebrities who will throw your brand voice broadly.
There are so many alternate ways to expand your business largely. Here, we mentioned the 12-best potent tools for your brand exposure.
Live Growth Hacking Examples That will Make You Amazed
There are a lot of well-known companies who have used the Growth Hack Marketing strategy to drive incredible growth.
DROPBOX: Dropbox offered extra storage space to customers who referred them, giving their customers an incentive to complete tasks on Dropbox, offering existing users more free space for linking their Dropbox account to Twitter and Facebook. They have now more than 500 million users.
PAYPAL: They offered 10$ for each customer sending an invitation to a new user and he/she accepted that. The new user also received the same amount as a welcome bonus. This company increased its business by 7% to 10% daily and gained 5 million users by 2000.
REDDIT: The owner created an illusion of being popular and populated by uploading huge content under fake user accounts.
FACEBOOK: They planned to encourage users to add their contacts and send emails to those contacts if they were mentioned or tagged on any Facebook post. Now, they have more than 2 billion users worldwide.
DOLLAR SHAVE CLUB: They used the video marketing strategy to promote its new service of sending people new razor blades monthly for just $1. The video got viral and become popular overnight. The video has more than 25 million views until today.
Hence, you will find so many examples like these on the web.
You can follow the proven Growth Hacking strategies cracked by well-known global companies or bring something out of the box by analyzing your user perspective.
Here’s a great growth marketing guide with tons more ideas to follow
Final Verdict
For reaching out to a huge audience and increase your brand value you would plan for strong Growth Hacking Strategies. Especially entrepreneurs should emphasize growth marketing to introduce their products or services widely.
The Growth Hacking Strategies we have discussed above will help you to expand your business within a short time period. You can leverage the power of growth marketing to upward your profit margin and amplify user experience.
Furthermore, we live in this digital world technology makes us a handful of productivity tools that are helpful for any startup. Hence now it becomes easy to develop any strategy, analyze the data, getting feedback and implement them accordingly.
