A new year brings new challenges and opportunities in the online marketing industry. It is a great time to evaluate what strategies your company is executing and their results. It does not matter matter how big or small your business is. You should always be open to taking risks in order to generate growth. If you are distraught trying to turn a profit, consider growth hacking. All it takes is a little ingenuity and a willingness to take risks. With a little bit of hard work, you could see a tremendous payoff.
What is growth hacking?
Growth hacking is a term coined by a blogger named Matt Ellis in 2010. It refers to the practice of using information garnered from your users to find ways to secure positive results in relation to web traffic, revenue, and/or users. When growth hacking, it is important to focus on improving a single part of your business and accumulate the right data to make the best decisions.
Questions to ask yourself
In order to collect the right data, you need to ask the right questions. Your execution should be based on the data you receive from your customers. Here are a few sample questions to start with.
- Why are users accessing particular features of the site?
- What motivates them to convert?
- How much time does it take them to convert?
- What are they looking at before converting?
Get familiar with your product or service
Whether it is a product or service that you are trying to enhance, every detail of what you are trying to market must be second nature to you. Establish a correspondence with everyone involved so you know the answer to every possible question. This will help you craft an execution strategy. If you are selling a physical product, know every detail about its fulfillment and distribution. This way you will know what to do when you reach each new level of growth.
Get familiar with the customer
Trying to understand the buying habits of your customer is essential. In correlation with growth hacking, it is a useful strategy when building a customer persona for the potential demographics of your product.
Here are some questions to ask yourself about your customers:
- What are they motivated by?
- What part of the site do they spend the most time?
- Why are they interested in the product?
- What will convince them to buy?
Consider your experience as a customer. Recall times when you were both impressed and surprised by a particular promotion or campaign and think if a similar tactic would work for you.
How all of that data collection benefits you
All of the time spent collecting data from customers and trying to map out the motives of potential customers will help you find the best market fit. As a result, you will have an easier time creating a product best meets the needs of your audience. If you are just starting out, this strategy allows you to release a minimum viable product. This refers to a product with enough features to gain initial support from an audience.
All of the data you receive from your customers is qualitative. You will get a sense of what the strongest feature or product on your site is. You will gain further understanding of what is not “working” on your site. This allows you to pull the plug on failing ideas. All of this data will ultimately help you improve your user experience.
How to successfully use growth hacking
One way to promote your company or product through growth hacking is to create exclusivity. When Gmail launched, it started out as an invite-only application. This enhanced its popularity. People are naturally drawn to products and sites that are not easily accessible to them. Receiving an invite can make people feel special enough to pay for an invitation online.
Another method is to build anticipation for a particular event. Whether it is the introduction of a new product or a new website or application launch, building anticipation will help you remain in a potential client’s thoughts.
Referral bonuses and promotions are a tried and true method of growth hacking. People are incentivized to share these with their friends when it stands to benefit them. Uber, for example, gives out specific codes for users to share with their friends so that both they and their friends can save money on their ride home. Promotions like this made Uber the largest ride sharing company in the world.
How your UI can help your company grow
Having an effective, user-friendly interface will help customers see the value in whatever you are selling. You should build some sort of walkthrough or create an FAQ page to help answer questions they might have. Being able to answer customer questions immediately is another component you should implement in your plan. Having readily available support will enhance the functionality of your site, which is incredibly valuable to the customer. The faster the gratification a customer has, the better
.
Retaining customers
There is an obvious appeal in driving traffic to your site, but you need to focus on conversions and retention. Retaining even a small number of customers can be very profitable. Read on to learn some of the benefits of customer retention.
- They are inexpensive channels for marketing
- They might share your message or product with their friends
- They might participate in social media contests or giveaways
- They might share online reviews
Learn from leaving customers
Your company is bound to have customers that leave. When that happens, find out as much as you can as to why they are leaving. Here are some steps to take when trying to garner from information from former customers:
- Implement a survey question
- Make a list of reasons for cancellation
- Have users provide insight
- Alleviate pain points
- Start a conversation
Again, data collection can only help you further understand your customer’s motivation. An essential component of growth hacking is taking risks while having the proper information to back your moves up. You need to instill unconventional thinking while not making these decisions impulsively. You can have the proper data and still take risks. Do not be afraid to innovate, and soon enough you’ll find others following in your footsteps.
References:
“The Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking.” Quick Sprout, www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking/.
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