You may have heard that many startups shut down shortly after they open.
The primary cause of their failure to achieve enough growth to make a profit in initial years with minimum investments.
Here, Growth hacking comes into play.
In the internet marketing industry, the term “growth hacking” has gained popularity, but not many people are still sure of what it is or how it functions.
What is Growth hacking?
Growth hacking is constantly experimenting with various marketing strategies, public relations efforts, web design decisions, and other activities to speedily convert leads and produce sales.
Sean Ellis, the founder, and CEO of GrowthHackers, first used the term “growth hacking” in 2010.
It is typically applied to startups with tight funds and a desire for rapid growth.
It is attracting as many users or customers as possible while spending the least money is typically the purpose of growth hacking strategies.
What are growth hacking strategies?
Growth hacking strategies may include:
- Social Media
- Content Marketing
- Inbound Marketing – incentives schemes, discounts on goods or services
- A/B testing
- Website analytics
- Search Engine Optimization
- Other Digital Marketing Strategies
Who is a Growth Hacker?
A growth hacker is a person whose primary goal is to achieve the company’s rapid growth and improve the customer journey.
Their creativity is often their strong point.
Brands like Ola, Flipkart, Zomato, Airbnb, Uber, Twitter, and LinkedIn owe their expeditious growth to the strategy referred to as growth hacking, states Entrepreneur.com’s writer Sandeep Soni.
There is no denying that brands cannot survive fierce competition by relying just on marketing methods.
Rather than being necessary, brands must understand how to use various hacks to accelerate their growth rate.
This can be achieved through gaining adequate knowledge of growth hacking.
“Growth hacking can be seen as a jugaad technique. However, the objective is not limited to lowering the cost.
Digital marketing begins when you have a product ready but growth hacking begins at the product development stage itself,” says Pradeep Chopra, CEO & Co-founder, of Digital Vidya in an article on ‘Is Growth Hacking the New Growth Frontier?’ in Entrepreneur.com
Examples of Growth Hack
- LinkedIn: One-click recommendations for connections you already have.
- YouTube – Making embed codes available to users to make it simple for users to upload YouTube videos.
- Twitter – Automated email notifications
Here are some growth hacking case studies
Some of the brands that shared their stories on they hacked their growth are substantiated as follows:
1. Airbnb
Airbnb, an online renting platform, showed an option to those who wanted to list their properties on Airbnb through which their listings would get posted on the popular online classified portal Craigslist.
This cross-posting helped Airbnb get more people to view listings and boosted their SEO with heavy growth.
2. Hotmail
In the late 90s, every email sent using Hotmail used to read towards the end, “PS – I love you,’ which was linked back to the Hotmail homepage.
This led to massive growth, where 12 million Hotmail accounts were created. In 2007, Hotmail was acquired by Microsoft for $400 million.
3. Ola
Ola’s referral program, similar to Uber, has worked out great.
Through the referral program, the user gets a free ride every time someone (friends/family/others) signs up with Ola using the user’s referral code and takes the first ride.
In the process, a new user also gets a free ride coupon.
4. Twitter
To reduce high customer attrition during its initial days, Twitter added a step in the signup process for users to select 5-10 people to follow.
This increased their chances of returning to Twitter and becoming regular users.
Moreover, this gave Twitter insight into user behavior by which it could send users tweets of people they were following, which would also redirect them to the Twitter app or website. This way, Twitter now knows you before you use it.
5. Tinder
To increase its original user base, Tinder also used some interesting strategies.
They planned exclusive frat parties at campuses, and only students who downloaded the app were allowed entry.
6. Dropbox
The Dropbox hack is often referred to as the referral hack.
Anyone who joined Dropbox could increase their storage capacity by inviting more people to use the service.
Using this easy trick, they successfully raised their signups by 60%.
Growth Hacking Benefits
- It has a variety of benefits.
- It can help boost customer lifetime value, decrease acquisition costs, and even bring in new business through reliable referrals from existing customers.
Conclusion
Most small startups lack significant funding. That is why growth hacks are essential. It could take some time to show results, but patience is also required to build a long-lasting company.
You can become the next success story by applying growth hacking strategies.
FAQ
1. What is a growth hacking process?
Growth hacking is the process of rapidly experimenting with various product development and marketing strategies to get results quickly.
2. What is growth hacking in SEO?
SEO growth hacking is a type of digital marketing that helps companies improve their ranks in Google and other search engines. Growth hacking in SEO is typically used by businesses whose ranks in Google’s SERPs become stuck or whose organic traffic stops increasing.
3. What is a growth hacker in digital marketing?
Hackers examine every sale funnel aspect to find the most effective growth techniques. As a result, they discover—and occasionally invent—new strategies for drawing in and keeping clients.
