Growth Hacking 101

The term “Growth hacker” was a term given by Sean Ellis in the year 2010. He is the co-author of the famous book named “Hacking Growth” with Morgan Brown. Sean Ellis is also the creator of Growth Hacker. Growth hacking is all about creative research, experimenting and optimizing. The workings of an experiment until a solution is found. Which solution will work for the growth of the start-up. The growth hacking is a simple initiative about trying out new things, monitoring, examining and altering them. It is mainly about achieving growth, by using different techniques and strategies necessary.

Growth hacking provides a clear structural approach to accomplish growth goals for the companies. Growth hacking is basically a way to shift from traditional marketing strategies to new one. It requires a different perspective to understand the goals and their reverse business process. Growth hackers depend on word of mouth marketing on a larger scale to accomplish the growth rates. There are some aspects to review before setting the priority of the ideas. They include funds needed for investment, marketplace, calculations, alliance with traditions and goals.

In Growth hacking either the start-ups develop fast or die earlier and that is the only concept the growth hacker is concerned about. Growth hacking is a way of thinking which educates people about the various ways of perceiving things and ideas. These people by nature are known to be testers, experimenters, and learners. To a growth hacker having skills or not is a low priority. They only value instincts, facts, and methodologies. They have a deep analysis of their products with an organized mind.

For growth hackers, social media is an essential channel with influential platforms, but the growth of the start-ups comes in different stages. Few good examples of Growth hacking organizations are Airbnb, Uber, Facebook, Dropbox, Instagram, Twitter, etc.  There are numerous examples of the online organizations which are creating immense opportunities for distribution of products, but the actual point is those with an accurate idea about the movement of people online will have the growth advantages which seems hard to be calculated.

The common characteristics of a Growth hacker are as follow:

  • Stable Organizer
  • Insistent at making a significant difference
  • Passionate with making the difference
  • Take pleasure in achieving goals
  • Devoted to their products
  • Innovative Achiever
  • Dedication about Expansion
  • Attentive observer

Growth hackers can narrow down their ideas and thought process with the guide and help of a growth hacking funnel. A growth hacking funnel mainly comprises of five steps which are given as follows:

  1. Acquisition: It is the first step where the people visit the sites to check the offers given by the site. It solely depends upon the growth hacker to earn the trust of the visitors and pull them into the business.
  2. Activation: In this phase the visitors are impressed with the offers and are ready for registration. This is the phase where a relation is formed between the customer and the business.
  3. Retention: Retention is also named as the holy grail of growth hacking. This is where the visitor becomes a follower of the company by becoming a member of the business.
  4. Referral: This is the step when the customer is already satisfied and then they automatically refer it to their family and friends which helps in gaining new visitors.
  5. Revenue: This is the last phase where the growing customers will lead to more revenue collection thereby helping the growth hackers in achieving their growth goals.

There are a few reasons below explaining the use of Growth hacking:

Thinking out of the box: Growth hacking encourages one to think out of the box and also keeps a score of the random ideas one has created only to have a sense of direction. For the better understanding of the targeted audience, a qualitative and quantitative research is preferred so that the growth hackers learn the behavioural characteristics and viewpoint of the audience.

Small Start-ups: To save time, money and effort one has to experiment with their ideas on a small start-up business before applying it on a full-fledged scale. Start-ups include high rates of failure, but the minority of the achievement includes organizations that have become huge and significant.

Broaden your outlook: Growth hackers can create more ideas because they come from different backgrounds and can help to broaden the perspectives to different problems. The members of the teams usually come up with various ideas along with written detailed descriptions.

Prioritize: To get a clear perceptive of the success rate of each idea, a growth hacker helps in prioritizing the ideas by evaluating each idea into a spreadsheet. To prioritize the ideas score wise one has to go through the most critical part of Growth hacking which is Analysis. Analysis of data and ideas comes through feedbacks from the customers using different methods like the survey form, firsthand research, etc.

Decision making: Growth hacking lays down the foundation for an efficient decision making system for the future. The decision making totally depends on the analysis process which helps the team to decide whether to accept or reject the idea. By keeping in mind about the budget, resource and time management one is able to decide on the particular idea.

A traditional sales person focuses on a particular idea and with their extremely valuable skill sets for managing and establishing marketing plans. Whereas a growth hacker is improved and extremely different from a salesperson. Even in the start-ups the only focus they maintain is on the growth of the company. Each and every decision taken by a growth hacker is influenced by growth. Even the strategies, methods, initiatives and every innovation taken into account is an effort in expectation of Growth for the company.

The growth hackers are known for their compulsive focus on a particular target. Because of their ignorance of the other existing things they can easily accomplish the one target that matters most. The absolute focus which growth hackers have on their growth have given rise to a number of new techniques. This simply didn’t exist in the traditional advertising system.

From so many years products have been displayed as physical merchandise, but now they have completely transformed into invisible layers in the form of software products. The transformation from physical to the invisible form is mostly responsible for the innovative year of Growth Hackers. The internet has provided the world with a new kind of product which demands a new approach to thinking.

 

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Author: Susan MillerSusan is an accomplished graphics designer, published author, and writer with 2 different publishing companies, & over 5yrs of experience. She is Elevatie's online content manager and graphics designer.