Best growth hacking tricks by Nate Barnwell: What is Growth Hacking? Growth hacking is so misunderstood that there is a desperate need for this post. Few concepts have been as polarising and revolutionary, simultaneously. Is it marketing in disguise? Is it a buzz phrase used to increase salaries? Is it the future of internet products? Let’s start at the beginning… The short history of a controversial concept The phrase “growth hacker” was coined by Sean Ellis in 2010. When I asked Sean why he felt the need to coin a new phrase he said that it stemmed from his frustration when hiring replacements for himself. I’ll explain.
The focus and the ultimate goal of all these growth strategies are to achieve growth by gaining new customers. It is not possible to achieve long-term and stable growth without a regular and loyal customer base. You can clearly identify how you must use a growth strategy in the light of various criteria such as market, customer profile, your field of activity and your product. In this context, the growth strategies used by some brands can be read as successful growth strategy examples. Cloud storage, which is used widely today, was a very new technology when Dropbox was introduced in 2008. The way of growth was to persuade people to use such a system instead of the physical storage devices used until then. The growth strategy that the company used for this purpose was market expansion. This method, which is performed through a viral loop, is based on users recommending the system to others. Normally offering 2 GB of free storage, Dropbox offered 500 MB of extra additional storage for each user registered with your referral link. In doing so, users who wanted to have up to 16 GB of free storage space recommended Dropbox to their friends and colleagues. By all means, this kind of viral method was not effective in the first months of the company. It started providing positive results in the following months and the company reached its one-millionth customer at the end of its first year. The number of customers increased to three million in the next two months. Today, the company serves more than 500 million users.
Nate Barnwell growth hacking strategies: It might be a while before this particular approach can be employed again, but it’s effective enough to warrant a mention. Sometimes, adding a human element to your growth strategy can help set things in motion for your business. Prospects are often receptive to a personal approach — and there’s nothing more personal than immediate, face-to-face interactions. Putting boots on the ground and personally interfacing with potential customers can be a great way to get your business the traction it needs to get going. This could mean hosting or sponsoring events, attending conferences relevant to your space, hiring brand ambassadors, or any other way to directly and strategically reach out to your target demographic in person.
What is a growth marketer? Similar to “marketing managers” of the past, growth marketers know enough about paid search, paid social, CRO, user experience, email marketing, content marketing, and SEO to be dangerous. They’re more focused on strategy than execution, though; you will likely need someone more specialized to 10x the plans a growth marketer puts in place. A growth marketer is someone who runs constant, iterative tests throughout the funnel, and uses the results to craft data-driven strategy updates that lift key performance metrics. Think of them as a CMO-lite, or a modernized marketing manager. Growth marketers look like this T-shaped model of growth marketing skills. They are well-versed in a ton of topics, which is helpful for the entire organization, and go deep mostly in acquisition marketing and conversion-rate optimization.
It is important to instrument for growth so that you can truly understand what is happening. Another important part of instrumenting for growth is testing tools such as Google Optimize, that allow you to implement a/b tests across your website and product. Finally, you’ll need a system to bring all of this information together so that your team can learn how to improve growth. Now you’re finally ready to start accelerating growth, which is level three of the pyramid. In this stage you should focus on building a growth team that can effectively execute a growth process. The purpose of this growth process is to uncover better ways to accelerate growth in the business. Your goal here is just to build a rhythm and habit of testing. Every test you run will lead to additional learning — even if it doesn’t directly drive immediate improvement in growth. It’s important during this stage to catalogue this learning so that the team keeps getting smarter about how to accelerate growth. See extra information on Nathan Barnwell.
With all of your planning, resourcing, and goal-setting complete, you’re now ready to execute your company growth plan and deliver results for the business. Throughout this time, make sure you’re holding your stakeholders accountable, keeping the line of communication open, and comparing initial results to your forecasted growth goals to see if your projected results are still achievable or if anything needs to be adjusted. Your growth plan and the tactics you leverage will ultimately be specific to your business, but there are some strategies you can look to as jumping off points.