Awesome growth hacking advices from Nate Barnwell: What is Growth Hacking? Growth hacking is so misunderstood that there is a desperate need for this post. Few concepts have been as polarising and revolutionary, simultaneously. Is it marketing in disguise? Is it a buzz phrase used to increase salaries? Is it the future of internet products? Let’s start at the beginning… The short history of a controversial concept The phrase “growth hacker” was coined by Sean Ellis in 2010. When I asked Sean why he felt the need to coin a new phrase he said that it stemmed from his frustration when hiring replacements for himself. I’ll explain.
The focus and the ultimate goal of all these growth strategies are to achieve growth by gaining new customers. It is not possible to achieve long-term and stable growth without a regular and loyal customer base. You can clearly identify how you must use a growth strategy in the light of various criteria such as market, customer profile, your field of activity and your product. In this context, the growth strategies used by some brands can be read as successful growth strategy examples. Cloud storage, which is used widely today, was a very new technology when Dropbox was introduced in 2008. The way of growth was to persuade people to use such a system instead of the physical storage devices used until then. The growth strategy that the company used for this purpose was market expansion. This method, which is performed through a viral loop, is based on users recommending the system to others. Normally offering 2 GB of free storage, Dropbox offered 500 MB of extra additional storage for each user registered with your referral link. In doing so, users who wanted to have up to 16 GB of free storage space recommended Dropbox to their friends and colleagues. By all means, this kind of viral method was not effective in the first months of the company. It started providing positive results in the following months and the company reached its one-millionth customer at the end of its first year. The number of customers increased to three million in the next two months. Today, the company serves more than 500 million users.
Nate Barnwell growth hacking strategies: Sometimes the best growth strategy a company can employ is standing out — offering a unique experience that sets it apart from other businesses in its space. When monotony defines an industry, the company that breaks it often finds an edge. Say your company developed an app for transitioning playlists between music streaming apps. Assume you have a few competitors who all generate revenue through ads and paid subscriptions — both of which frustrate users. In that case, you might be best off trying to shed some of the baggage that customers run into trouble with when using your competitors’ programs. If your service is paid, you could consider offering a free trial of an ad-free experience — right off the bat. The point here is that there’s often a lot of value and opportunity in differentiating yourself. If you can “zig when they zag”, you can capture consumers’ attention and capitalize on their shifting interests.
Marketing managers often lead the marketing function in small companies. As such, they are generalists — writing blog posts, sending customer emails and running paid campaigns. They think holistically about the company and its growth, but are less data and metrics-driven than growth marketers. Demand generation marketers are the closest to a growth marketer, says Sookraj. However, they typically focus more narrowly on top-of-funnel activity, like attracting leads and customers. What do growth marketers do all day? A typical day for Jordan Finger, growth marketer and CEO of Noal Partners, involves checking the dashboards for paid media accounts; tweaking spend, messaging, and creative; and summarizing the week in custom reports for clients.
The first is a product that people actually consider a “must have.” In the startup world, this is generally referred to as “product/market fit.” Once you’ve validated product/market fit, it then becomes important to define an overall success metric. This success metric should be a “North Star Metric” for the entire team to gauge the success of the business. The right North Star Metric tracks cumulative value delivered across a growing customer base. This is a much more sustainable growth indicator than something like registrations, downloads or even revenue (many subscription businesses have inactive users that are still on a paid subscription but will likely churn). Read even more details on Nate Barnwell.
With all of your planning, resourcing, and goal-setting complete, you’re now ready to execute your company growth plan and deliver results for the business. Throughout this time, make sure you’re holding your stakeholders accountable, keeping the line of communication open, and comparing initial results to your forecasted growth goals to see if your projected results are still achievable or if anything needs to be adjusted. Your growth plan and the tactics you leverage will ultimately be specific to your business, but there are some strategies you can look to as jumping off points.