Growth Hacking: What It Is + 8 Tactics to Speed Up Growth

Growth Hacking: What It Is + 8 Tactics to Speed Up Growth

Written by Johnathan Dane

CEO & Founder

Introduction

Every now and then, there’s a company that manages to take over an industry, despite its newcomer status and a decent playing field of competitors. If you study the graphs associated with such companies, you’ll often find a specific moment when the customer base grew exponentially. And a lot of the time, this inflection point is typically the point at which the business identified a viable ‘growth hack.’

An uncommon marketing tactic that usually allows an advantage to be had - like Dropbox’s referral loop or Airbnb’s Craigslist usage, growth hacking is often the reason many companies experience exponential growth.

What’s Growth Hacking?

Growth hacking is a process of rapidly experimenting with and implementing marketing and promotional strategies that are solely focused on efficient and rapid business growth. According to Sean Ellis, a growth hacker is a person that focuses purely on growth.

How’s a Growth Hacker Different From a Traditional Marketer?

A growth hacker generally has a broader skill set compared to a traditional marketer. This skills expansion allows them to test multiple marketing channels simultaneously, making data-driven determinations on which channels yield the best results. A traditional marketer often relies on tried-and-true methods, focusing primarily on brand awareness rather than direct ROI growth.

Notable Growth Hacking Examples

The Dropbox Story

Dropbox utilized a referral scheme offering incentives for both the referrer and the new user. This unique ‘2-sided incentive’ approach led to incredible growth, generating 2.8 million referral invites in just 30 days.

The Hotmail Story

Hotmail managed significant growth by adding a simple text line in email signatures: ‘Get your free email at Hotmail,’ which resulted in 1 million new users within six months.

The Airbnb Story

Airbnb addressed the challenge of market visibility by creating a tool allowing users to easily repost their listings on Craigslist, therefore effectively leveraging existing platforms to direct user traffic to their service.

The Importance of a Good Product

A solid product is crucial for successful growth hacking. Poor product quality leads to high customer churn, negating the impact of growth strategies. Churn prevention requires achieving a good product-market fit to sustain user retention.

Decide On Your Company’s “North Star”

A company’s North Star metric is a guiding benchmark - a single metric that drives growth and aligns the entire team towards a common goal. For example, Uber's North Star is “trips completed.”

Growth Hacking Tactics

  1. Use Channels Your Competitors Aren’t Using: Identifying underutilized marketing channels can allow for increased audience capture.
  2. Focus on Automation: Creating automated systems can drastically improve lead conversion rates.
  3. Create a Free Tool: Offering a free tool can draw substantial traffic and attention to your main offerings.
  4. Incentivize Critical Events: Motivating users to perform key actions, like referrals, can lead to viral growth.
  5. Build a Community: Engaging a community enhances product development and fosters user loyalty.
  6. Become Invite Only: The exclusivity of an invite-only product can generate buzz and anticipation.
  7. Objectively Measure The “Bar”: Improving upon what competitors are doing leads to better marketing practices.
  8. Look At Differentiation as a Strategy: Highlighting what makes your brand unique can strengthen customer loyalty.

Conclusion

Taking the next steps in growth hacking often requires trial and error. However, the potential for achieving significant growth is there if you maintain a scientific approach and continue to refine tactics based on results.