Growth hacking

Growth hacking is a process of rapid experimentation across a range of marketing channels to identify the most effective ways to grow a business. The term is typically applied to customer acquisition, retention and monetization strategies used by newly-formed companies, which don’t have the resources to employ standard corporate marketing strategies. Growth hackers are marketers, engineers and product managers that are trained to specifically focus on building and engaging the user base of a business.[1] Growth hackers often focus on low-cost alternatives to traditional marketing, e.g. using social media and viral marketing instead of buying advertising through more traditional media such as radio, newspaper, and television.[2]

Those people who specialize in growth hacking use various types of marketing and product iterations — rapidly testing persuasive copy, email marketing, SEO and viral strategies, among others, with a purpose to increase the conversion rate and achieve rapid growth of the user base. It can also involve on-line community management and social media outreach, driving brand experiences on social media outlets to improve performance metrics such as driving customer acquisition and selling products.[3][4] It can be seen as part of the online marketing ecosystem, as in many cases growth hackers are using techniques such as search engine optimization, website analytics, content marketing and A/B testing.

Growth hacking is particularly important for startups, as it allows for at the early-stage launch face, when they focus on lowering cost per customer acquisition, whereas aiming to facilitate word-of-mouth advertising and increase customer life-time value [5][6]

History

Sean Ellis coined the term "growth hacker" in 2010,[7][8] with Everette Taylor as co-founder[9]. In the blog post, he defined a growth hacker as "a person whose true north is growth. Everything they do is scrutinized by its potential impact on scalable growth."[7] Andrew Chen introduced the term to a wider audience in a blog post titled, "Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing" in which he defined the term and used the short term vacation rental platform Airbnb's integration of Craigslist as an example.[4][10] He wrote that growth hackers "are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of 'How do I get customers for my product?' and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph."[3][10] In 2012, Aaron Ginn defined a growth hacker on TechCrunch as a "mindset of data, creativity, and curiosity."[4][11]

In 2013, the second annual "Growth Hackers Conference" was held in San Francisco set up by Gagan Biyani.[12] It featured growth hackers from LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube among others.[12]

Methods

Fast Company[3] defined the marketing problems facing many startups as:

  1. don't have budget allocated for "marketing", and
  2. don't have a traditional marketing background.[3]

To combat this lack of money and experience, growth hackers approach marketing with a focus on innovation, scalability, and user connectivity.[13][14] Growth hacking does not, however, separate product design and product effectiveness from marketing.[15][16] Growth hackers build the product's potential growth, including user acquisition, on-boarding, monetization, retention, and virality, into the product itself.[17] Fast Company used Twitter "Suggested Users List" as example: "This was Twitter's real secret: It built marketing into the product rather than building infrastructure to do a lot of marketing."[8]

The heart of growth hacking is the relentless focus on growth as the only metric that truly matters.[18] Mark Zuckerberg had this mindset while growing Facebook.[19] While the exact methods vary from company to company and from one industry to the next, the common denominator is always growth. Companies that have successfully "growth hacked" usually have a viral loop naturally built into their onboarding process.[20] New customers typically hear about the product or service through their network and by using the product or service, share it with their connections in turn. This loop of awareness, use, and sharing can result in exponential growth for the company.[21]

Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox, Pinterest, YouTube, Groupon, Udemy, Instagram are all companies that used and still use growth hacking techniques to build brands and improve profits.[10][22][23][24]

Examples

An early example of "growth hacking" was Hotmail's inclusion of "PS I Love You" with a link for others to get the free online mail service.[25] Another example was the offer of more storage by Dropbox to users who referred their friends.[25][26]

Online worldwide independent lodging company, Airbnb, is an example of growth hacking by coupling technology and ingenuity. Airbnb realized they could essentially hack the Craiglist.org scale and tap both into their user base as well as their website by adding automated listing generators from Airbnb with the feature called "Post to Craigslist". The company's growth was a combination of clever thinking and technical know-how.[27]

One of the easiest examples of "growth hacking" is to add “?sub_confirmation=1” at the end of your Youtube channel URL. Everybody will see a popup “Confirm Channel Subscription” (works only on desktops). This growth hacking tactic increases YouTube subscribers by 400%.[28]

Noah Kagan's submission form had four fields: Name, Email, URL, Revenue. He decided to remove the “revenue” field altogether, leaving only three fields — Name, Email and URL. This small change meant an improvement in his conversion rate of 26%.[29]

The University of Alberta increased email subscribers by 500% using a popup survey by Qualaroo that asked anyone who spent more than 10 seconds on the site: “You seem interested in UAlberta news. Would you like to sign up for the Daily News email?”.[29]

References

  1. ↑ "B2B Marketing Buzzwords: Growth Hacking Vs. Inbound Marketing - MLT Creative". MLT Creative. Retrieved 2016-03-26.
  2. ↑ Biyani, Gagan (May 5, 2013). "Explained: The actual difference between growth hacking and marketing". The Next Web.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Holiday, Ryan (December 17, 2012). "Everything is Marketing: How Growth Hackers Redefine the Game". Fast Company.
  4. 1 2 3 Ginn, Aaron (September 2, 2012). "Defining a Growth Hacker: Three Common Characteristics". TechCrunch.
  5. ↑ Hockenson, Lauren (May 18, 2013). "Growth Hacker: A Buzzword Surrounded by Buzzwords". Mashable.
  6. ↑ Ginn, Aaron (September 7, 2012). "Defining a Growth Hacker: 5 Ways Growth Hackers Changed Marketing". TechCrunch.
  7. 1 2 Ellis, Sean (June 26, 2010). "Find a Growth Hacker for Your Startup". Startup-Marketing.com.
  8. 1 2 Holiday, Ryan (July 8, 2013). "The Secret That Defines Marketing Now". Fast Company.
  9. ↑ "Marketing Maven Everette Taylor on the Best Strategies for Startups". Fortune. 2016-03-16. Retrieved 2016-05-07.
  10. 1 2 3 Chen, Andrew. "Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing". AndrewChen.co.
  11. ↑ Ginn, Aaron (n.d.). "What is a growth hacker?". Aginnt.com.
  12. 1 2 Griggs, William (May 10, 2013). "6 important lessons from this year’s Growth Hacker Conference". Venture Beat.
  13. ↑ Ginn, Aaron (October 21, 2012). "Defining a Growth Hacker: Building Growth Into Your Team". TechCrunch.
  14. ↑ Ginn, Aaron (October 28, 2012). "Build it and they won’t come: How and why growth hacking came to be". The Next Web.
  15. ↑ Holiday, Ryan (June 11, 2013). "Here’s Some Marketing Advice: Your Product Is Terrible". Medium.com.
  16. ↑ Ginn, Aaron (October 20, 2012). "Defining A Growth Hacker: Growth Is Not A Marketing Strategy". TechCrunch.
  17. ↑ Jarvis, Chase (February 22, 2013). "From Obscurity to Internet Sensation — How Creatives Can Win the PR Game with Ryan Holiday". ChaseJarvis.com.
  18. ↑ Ellis, Sean. "Sean Ellis On Growth". medium.com. Medium. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  19. ↑ Kagan, Noah. "How My Blog Homepage Redesign Increased Email Signups By 300%". blog.hubspot.com. Hubspot. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  20. ↑ Chen, Andrew. "What's Your Viral Loop? Understanding The Engine Of Adoption". andrewchen.co. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  21. ↑ Ellis, Sean (June 24, 2014). Startup Growth Engines: Case Studies of How Today's Most Successful Startups Unlock Extraordinary Growth. Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  22. ↑ Ginn, Aaron (December 8, 2012). "Defining A Growth Hacker: Debunking The 6 Most Common Myths About Growth Hacking". TechCrunch.
  23. ↑ Johns, Andy (May 11, 2012). "Facebook Growth and Traction: What are some decisions taken by the "Growth team" at Facebook that helped Facebook reach 500 million users?". Quora.
  24. ↑ Johns, Andy (April 30, 2012). "What is Facebook's User Growth team responsible for and what have they launched?". Quora.
  25. 1 2 Holiday, Ryan. "Don Draper Is Dead: Why Growth Hack Marketing Is Advertising’s Last Hope". BetaBeat.
  26. ↑ Kehr, Alex (October 13, 2015). Hacking Growth: The Modern Marketing Mindset to Create Fast Growing Companies (First ed.). Wander Press. p. 122. ISBN 1515090019.
  27. ↑ Needleman, Sarah. "Growth Hacking' Helps Startups Boost Their Users". The Wall Street Journal.
  28. ↑ "TOP 3 simple growth hacker marketing ideas on the internet, that you can put into practice right…". Medium. Retrieved 2015-11-18.
  29. 1 2 "TOP 10 proven growth hacks for 2016 [examples, case studies]". Medium. Retrieved 2016-01-08.
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