Growing and scaling a business has become a monumental task for entrepreneurs. Competing with established companies on a limited budget presents a host of challenges, however, embracing some growth hacking tips can significantly increase your chances of success. Unfortunately, many people are still unaware of what growth hacking is and how it works.
To help you understand the relatively new concept, we have compiled this post where we will share some strategies that can help businesses scale and move forward. Before we walk you through the process of growth hacking your business, it is important to define this concept and eliminate the confusion around it.
What is growth hacking?
The phrase ‘growth hacking’ was first coined by Sean Elis in his blog in 2010. It refers to experiment-driven techniques and the most effective ways of growing a business. Growth hacking involves a mix of marketing, design, innovation, engineering, and analytics.
Growth hackers look for innovative and cost-effective methods to attain growth instead of resorting to traditional methods. Growth hackers use a combination of tools, including content marketing, SEO, A/B testing, and leverage their strategies to achieve the desired results.
Below are some of the most important growth hacking tips and strategies that you can follow to expand your horizons:
1. Focus on quality
Although growth hacking can maximize your revenue to a great extent, you would never succeed if your product or service does not add value to your customers’ lives. A great product or service helps businesses build trust, which is imperative for success in today’s competitive environment.
Quality also results in satisfied customers and retains their loyalty so that they get back to buy from you again and again. Customer satisfaction is quickly overtaking price as the key factor in customer’s decision making. Additionally, satisfied customers tend to stick around for the long term and contribute considerably to a company’s revenue and profitability.
2. Automate your tasks
One of the ways to maintain high levels of productivity is to automate all your manual and time-consuming processes. This is probably the most critical growth hacking practice both for small and large businesses. Assess your needs and implement software that will fulfill your business’ requirements. Two of the most widely used automation software are customer relationship management (CRM) software and marketing automation.
CRM automates manual tasks and allows the teams to access the same data. It also provides project management services, improves collaboration within teams, and saves time and money. Many all-in-one CRM software offers a built-in marketing automation solution; however, you can also acquire the service separately.
The marketing automation solution streamlines marketing processes, increase brand awareness, and makes it easy for brands to attract new leads. With built-in features like email marketing, lead generation, and metrics, the solution offers excellent growth hacking services for early-stage startups.
“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” – Bill Gates
3. Have a referral program in place
Dropbox jumped from 100,000 users to four million users in just over four months by implementing a simple referral program. That is a growth of 3900% or doubling its user base every three months. Similarly, Airbnb grew and tripled their daily bookings with their referral program, which brought in millions of dollars in revenue.
These two examples highlight the importance of referrals for the growth of a business. Dropbox offered more storage space to their users while Airbnb provided cash bonuses to referrers after they went on their first trip or hosted a guest for the first time.
4. Offer a freemium model
An effective way to hack your growth is to offer basic services for free. Users have the option to apply for a premium membership to access advanced features. This was the hack behind the success of Spotify. The company earned money from cash subscriptions and in-app ads. Users were offered free streaming services for which they had to listen to ads.
The freemium model also contributed a lot to Slack’s overall success. They offered a freemium option which allowed users to use the platform before deciding whether or not it was right for them. The users could upgrade to a feature-rich platform that offered more storage and deeper message archives. Today, the platform has over ten million daily active users.
5. Focus on content marketing
Content marketing is a long-term process that has the potential to grow your business over time. Research of “Kapost” revealed that companies that have a business blog generate 97 percent more leads as it enables them to reach billions of users that use the internet. Blog regularly and create content that solves the problems of your readers. Use content creation tools to produce content that drives engagement and social sharing.
Also, make sure that your blog includes a subscription form so that new users can sign up and receive your blog posts via emails. This not only increases your readers’ club but also provides an opportunity to maximize lead generation.
“We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.” – Craig Davis
6. Influencer marketing
Influencers are industry experts who are considered as authorities in your space. They have already garnered huge followings, so if you have good connections with them, you can potentially increase the reach of your content exponentially. You can use tools like BuzzSumo to get a list of influencers who take an interest in content similar to what you produce. Collect the contact details of relevant influencers and try to contact them. You may send personalized emails explaining why your content will appeal to their followers.
These are some of the tried and tested growth hacking strategies that will set you apart from the competition. Follow these tips and see what your brand can really do in the highly competitive market.
