Using 'Growth Hacking' techniques to grow your business

[Ryan000001]

Growth hacking is now a hot hot topic in the world of customer acquisition and business growth. Have you heard of it or do you use growth hacking techniques to grow your business?

Definition: Growth hacking is a marketing technique developed by technology startups which uses creativity, analytical thinking, and social metrics to sell products and gain exposure.

Examples of great growth hacks:

• Dropbox gave an extra 500mb of storage space to customers that referred their service and brought in a new member.
  
• Give away a premium product to the readers of influential blogs in exchange for an article written about you. Blog's love to give things away and you gain exposure... win win.
  
• Use the 'Rapportive' social media plug-in for Gmail. Type in an Email address and it will display direct links to all of their social accounts. Always follow up an Email with a quick hello on Twitter or Linked In.
  
• Some companies use a 'Tweet' to sign up button.
  
• A number 1 spot on 'Growth Hacker News' will usually send between 10-50k visitors to your site almost instantly.

Growth Hacking - Learn from the best

I am in no way affiliated with these guys but they have been such a huge help to us in the lead up to our launch that I recommend you check them out if you are involved in online marketing.

They are called Growth Hacker TV and feature one on one interviews with some of the best tech startups and the ways in which they scaled their business using growth hacking techniques we can all implement.

 

[Ryan000001]

A great hack for us was to simplify the sign up form on the homepage of our site. We almost doubled conversion instantly although sacrificing some of the data we capture but it's worth it just to grow our list pre-launch.

 

[superdooper500]

Interesting stuff. I guess its a fancy name to cover a variety of tricks and tips, but interesting none the less, thanks for the link

 

[Ryan000001]

Interesting stuff. I guess its a fancy name to cover a variety of tricks and tips, but interesting none the less, thanks for the link

Not a problem at all. There's some real good learning in the 'Growth Hacker' community at the moment.

You are right, it's just another fancy name but it's what all the 'hackers' that grew hugely successful companies like 'DropBox, Facebook and Twitter are calling it at the moment, so it's a great term to search for the right communities to become involved in if you run a start-up tech company.

 

[garyk]

Kissmetrics have alot of great content on their site and have this article about growth hacking

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/learn-growth-hacking/

Gary

 

[fisicx]

A great hack for us was to simplify the sign up form on the homepage of our site. We almost doubled conversion instantly although sacrificing some of the data we capture but it's worth it just to grow our list pre-launch.

It's not really growth hacking though, all you have done is a bit of optimisation.

The sort of examples you provided are the samething people have been doing since long before the internet. A simple example of an old world tweet was the 'I've seen the lions of Longleat' car sticker.

 

[Ryan000001]

It's not really growth hacking though, all you have done is a bit of optimisation.

The sort of examples you provided are the samething people have been doing since long before the internet. A simple example of an old world tweet was the 'I've seen the lions of Longleat' car sticker.

Yes you are right, 'growth hacking' is a simply fancy new name for online marketing that focuses predominantly on customer acquisition and more importantly retention, without having to spend money on traditional advertising or PR.

I am still grasping the basics but there are many examples of companies that have been hugely successful using new techniques made possible by the shift in modern technology and platforms.

A great example was the success of 'AirBnB' who developed a set of tools that made it possible for their users to seamlessly cross-post their listings on Craigslist. As a result they went from nothing to one of the most popular sites in the world overnight.

The same with 'Apple' who turned their devices into advertising engines by adding 'sent from my iPhone' to the end of every message sent.

 

[fisicx]

I get the concept, it's just that the only reason these techniques haven't been used in the past is because the technology wasn't there.

Sports companies sell you a tshirt with their brand on the front. So you end paying more for a bog standard product that then becomes a walking bill board. Double the win for Nike!

 

[Ryan000001]

I get the concept, it's just that the only reason these techniques haven't been used in the past is because the technology wasn't there.

Sports companies sell you a tshirt with their brand on the front. So you end paying more for a bog standard product that then becomes a walking bill board. Double the win for Nike!

Yup absolutely spot on! I once saw a plain black Gucci T-shirt with no logo on sale for £200! Maybe they wanted to make up for the lack of free publicity ha!