Growth hacking is a marketing strategy that prioritises business growth over everything else, with a focus on rapid customer acquisition. The basic principle is “prioritizing and testing marketing ideas, and religiously analysing such results to see which tactics worked the best and should be scaled out further,” say Sean Ellis, founder of the marketing platform GrowthHackers and the marketer who is credited with coining the term ‘growth hacking’ in 2010.
Want to give your business a boost? Here are 8 growth hacking quotes from leading ‘hackers’ to get you in the growth mindset.
Use data to lead your marketing strategy
“When people first think about the words growth hacking, they think about silver bullets or quick wins. There are many articles out there created by others talking about how they were able to generate zero to one million users overnight. Growth hacking isn’t about that at all.
“Growth hacking is about running rapid growth experiments, using technology for efficiency, and then reacting based off the data. It is the true interaction between marketing, software, and metrics. Add tracking and analytics to each step of your product itself. Social, advertising, email, content, etc. are just distribution avenues; they come and go. Once you have a tight ship running with your product or service, then you can begin running experiments across different marketing channels.” – Justin Wu, Growth at CoinCircle.com.
The most important part of growth hacking is the idea that growth is a strategic imperative for any company and that the whole company should embrace it
Build a community for real engagement
“Building a community is a way to create real engagement with your potential customers. Create your own forum. Link it to your website. You can answer questions on Quora or Reddit. Post content on Linkedin. Before making any post, do your research about the platform you are going to post to. You can also find forums related to your niche and create engagement. This drives targetted traffic. Try adding a little flavor of your startup product or how it can help customers within your content.” – Deep Kakkad, founder of HireSolve.
Make growth hacking part of your product, not an add-on
“Growth hacking is mandatory. I work a lot in emerging markets like blockchain and cryptocurrency, and I see people instantly pivot to growth hacking when things start to get competitive. As long as you integrate new-customer acquisition into your product itself — and not as some magical add-on to paid marketing — then growth hacking not only works but is also absolutely necessary.
“The trap with growth hacking is to run hundreds of tools and disperse yourself into so many different methods and channels that nothing gets the attention it needs to truly succeed. Dominate one specific platform, instead of going after everything at once.” – Brian D. Evans, founder of Influencive.
Ask customers how you should sell
“Don’t assume you know what your customers want. That’s why the most significant growth hack to increase your mobile conversions is to listen to what your customers want or need from you. Since 81 percent of users research a product online before they buy, use their research period to do your own product-development research. In many cases, customers tell you what they need. All you need to do is listen and implement their requests.” – Neil Patel, co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and Kissmetrics.
In a perfect world, you would combine and balance what is being called “growth hacking” into longer-term inbound strategies
Embrace growth hacking throughout your whole company
“The most important part of growth hacking is the idea that growth is a strategic imperative for any company and that the whole company should embrace it. Instead of having a single “growth hacker,” an emerging pattern is that companies are creating teams focused on growth.
“The “growth practitioners” on these teams come from various disciplines and departments across the company including (but not limited to) product, marketing, data science, and engineering. They are ultimately responsible for growing a product or business by working across a company to achieve its loftiest goals.” – Hiten Shah, co-founder of Product Habits.
Combine technical hacks with relationship building
“In a perfect world, you would combine and balance what is being called “growth hacking” into longer-term inbound strategies. I’d love to see companies pair up people who focus on the data and metrics-driven side of marketing that could give instant feedback to the team who focuses on the content and relationships. You need both!” – Tara Hunt, president of Truly Social.
Invest in existing customers
“Instead of going wide to increase exposure and followers, the new definition of growth hacking should be to go deep with existing consumers. This means investing in loyalty. Loyal customers share, they tag friends and family, write reviews, forward emails, and more.
“To growth hack loyalty, one of the best things companies can do is strip away the divides. For example, before Airbnb’s success, the founders took photos of the host locations themselves, getting to know their target market’s beliefs, pain points, and desires. Other companies can model this by removing the pretense of position and intentionally getting involved in the communities and relationships their customers are invested in themselves — whether digital or physical.” – Rachel Pedersen,founder of Social Media Strategist.
Use incentives to convert trials into sales
“Most SaaS providers only convert about 10 to 11 percent of their trials into paid accounts, which means that you should focus on maximizing your conversion rates. Consider putting together a follow-up email that is sent to every user who activates a trial a few days after they’ve joined with an incentive to convert early. For example: “Convert now and get the first month free.” This gives them a few days to try your product but then gets them converted quickly, before they have a chance to look at alternatives.” – Adam Greenwald, creative consultant at A.Greenwald HQ.
