Growth hacking literally means hacking the growth of a startup company through various marketing, initiatives and they are called hacks. Growth hacking process is step by step creation and testing of hacks that will lead to growth.
Known examples of growth hacking
The companies we all know used to be small startups with no users or revenue, They now have millions of dollars in revenue and a huge customer base. Here’s an example:
Airbnb
Airbnb has no users or reputation as a reliable rental and search service. They need to amass a client base in no time and establish themselves in the market. To do this they gave users the ability, in addition to publishing on Airbnb to quickly and easily post their accommodations on Craigslist (a popular electronic classifieds site at the time). So they get access to a very large target audience base.
Dropbox
Dropbox puts forward a hypothesis about the referral program that if a user and his friends he invites to the service, are each given 500 MB. So by using this referral method Dropbox can quickly increase the number of new users. Links can be shared in two clicks, and this accelerates growth. Thanks to this referral, the number of registrations has increased by 60%. The hypothesis was confirmed, and now we all know what Dropbox is.
Facebook
Facebook now has more than 2 billion users. They managed to reach that number with the help of their own hacking engine. One hypothesis is an email notification that the user was mentioned in a post or posted a photo with him. This helps increase the number of returns to the account.
Why is growth hacking necessary?
Growth hacking helps companies achieve some growth due to continuous hypothesis testing. Double growth is the growth of the company by two, three, five, ten times, and so on. How fast a company develops depends on the number of hypotheses and experiments tested. The more tests, the more likely it is to multiply growth.
A hypothesis is an assumption that requires proof. In the case of growth hacking, this assumption is aimed at rapid growth. Experiments are carried out to confirm or refute the hypothesis. That is, a hypothesis is an assumption, and an experiment is a process of confirmation or refutation.
Suppose if we install online chat on the site to communicate with customers, our sales will grow by X, this is a hypothesis. Next, we experimented with setting up a chat and monitoring demand and sales. Sales increased thanks to chatter, which meant the hypothesis was confirmed.
A hypothesis is a risky assumption that a metric will behave in a certain way if we change something. Most often these are statistical experiments.
The essence of the growth hacking process is formulating multiple hypotheses and rapidly testing them through experimentation.
Growth Hacking is a trend in modern marketing that is responsible for the growth, expansion and progress of enterprises, as a rule start-ups due to unusual solutions and innovative developments ( Hacking ). In other words, it is a search for non-standard ways of development and scaling that can quickly increase the demand for the product and stimulate its demand.
The term was coined by Sean Ellis in 2010, he described the current situation in business, “Explosive growth” has become a real trend, and the number of startups and new ideas is growing rapidly, the need for specialists who can produce extraordinary product promotion methods will increase.
One might compare this trend to “guerrilla marketing”, as there are techniques such as spreading information or product reviews on forums, blogs, and other resources. However, the concept itself is much broader, and the methods listed above are only a small part of the techniques that are commonly practiced.
Principles of Growth Hacking
Growth Hacking Being a kind of hack to hypnotize customer awareness, each new trending technique is an ingenious invention, which precisely because of its originality and novelty makes it possible to “hook” consumers to new products. In this case, growth developers keep their secret until a bold idea proves its effectiveness and gains public recognition.
The main difference between Growth Hacking and conventional marketing is the technique and systems approach. While conventional marketers are busy thinking about long-term strategies, extending functionality, planning sales, advertising and interacting with partners. while the main focus in Growth Hacking is constant experimentation and analysis of the results obtained.
So split testing is one of the basic Growth Hacking tools that allows to quickly check the performance of an idea and if it fails, throw it away and move on. Another way to increase the popularity of the product is to monitor the most active users to understand what really attracts them to the product in order to maintain existing functionality and make it more accessible.
All that Growth Hacking is interested in is creating the most popular products to quickly attract a target audience, as well as retain attention, or constantly engage existing users.
Growth Hacking is something that reminds companies of the need for sustainable growth, without which companies would be drowning in a sea of equally interesting projects.
The meteoric growth of a company through growth hacking can be done by, for example, a very fast increase in members or subscribers which will initially be a question of support, before finding a second solution for monetization. Having more followers on social networks is a very important principle in influencer marketing and some people use growth hacks to successfully grow their community.
To perform growth hacking, access analysis tools such as Google Analytics and survey tools such as SurveyMonkey are used to collect data that shows the type of behavior a user has taken, verify it, and formulate action. It’s best if you have the ability to master these analytical tools, but at least you need to understand them.
Statistics show that articles about growth hacking are read en masse. Content related to this subject is also disseminated on social media networks, because it is a theme that attracts a lot of readers’ interest. Decision makers, entrepreneurs and business leaders are constantly looking for new techniques that can enable them to improve their turnover, margins, number of clients, consumers and in general the overall performance of their business in society.
