Growth Hacking has become a relatively popular term since being coined by Sean Ellis in 2010. Of course, not all of us are going to be overly familiar with the term and just what it entails.
If you are getting into digital marketing, though, it is a term (and practice) that you should be intimate with. Especially if you’re not a million dollar company willing (and able) to dump tons of money into your marketing efforts.
In this article we’re going to get into 8 growth hacks that have been around for some time, and will still be relevant in 2017. But before we talk about all that, let’s discuss what growth hacking is, starting from the roots.
Defining a Growth Hacker
In Find a Growth Hacker for Your Startup, Sean Ellis describes a growth hacker as “a person whose true north is growth. Everything they do is scrutinized by its potential impact on scalable growth”.
First, I’ll narrow it down into a context. If we are talking websites and applying the growth hacker mentality to creating a website — this means nothing can be done at random. Especially if you’re looking to make some waves, do it as quickly as possible, and on a budget of wood.
Questions you might want to ask yourself:
- Who is my target audience?
- What are the habits, hang outs, likes and dislikes of my target audience?
- Does my website appeal to those qualities?
- Could my website be improved, and thus, improve conversion rates?
If you are focused on every decision you make in terms of how it affects ‘scalable growth’, naturally you will only make moves that add to your website and brand. Things that take your branding strategy to the next level.
Growth Hackers are Marketers that Push Boundaries
For some time, many people considered ‘growth hacker’ to be a fancy term for ‘marketer’. But that’s really not the case. Be clear, I’m not saying they are not the same to a degree. Essentially, a growth hacker and traditional marketer have the same goal in mind — to get customers — which is marketing in a nutshell.
Where they differ (growth hackers and marketers) is in the ‘how’. In the Guide to Growth Hacking, Linkody gives shares over 100 potential avenues to elicit growth.
Naturally, some of these ‘avenues’ may not be advised by the temple of traditional marketing. But this is in fact, what sets a growth hacker a part from a traditional marketer.
The words ‘ingenious’ and ‘technology-based’ can make it sound as if growth hackers are being placed on pedestal, but I doubt that’s the intention. The point is — growth hackers find means of eliminating the need for a mega budget. If someone saved you millions, while making you millions — you’d call their methods ‘ingenious’ too.
Traditional marketers tend to have a broad focus (developing marketing teams, and overall marketing strategy), while growth hackers are fixated on growth. Where traditional marketing is centered on commercials, publicity, and money, money, money! Growth hacking goes straight for the users. If done right, this leads to more users, and more users. And it won’t cost anyone a kidney.
Growth Hacking Thrives off Innovation
So, growth hacking is ‘user-focused’. This means there is no one way to go about achieving your goal. Growth hacking is based on what your customers want, after all.
Some of the techniques you can use include:
- (Organic) SEO
- Content marketing
- Niche market targeting
- Private email lists and email marketing
- Podcasts
- CRM automation
- A/B Testing
- Google and Facebook ads
- Guest blogging and link building
Why Would You Use a Growth Hack?
Remember, traditional marketing tends to focus on huge budgets, which entail commercials among other costly elements that play into a (traditional) marketing campaign. So let’s say you or your company don’t have hundreds of thousands (or maybe millions) of dollars to take the traditional route — this is where you might find growth hacks useful.
Another reason is that a lot of startups or small businesses simply lack the experience to plan and pull off marketing campaigns of a certain scale.
This means, smaller businesses may need a bit of creativity on their side if they are going to achieve the same stellar results without the super-sized budget. Through these innovative means (growth hacking) smaller businesses can maximize their efforts, and make strides within their industry no less than they would through traditional means.
Some small business owners may feel skeptical about implementing a growth hack to help their business grow. But consider that there are cases where traditional marketing campaigns will run company millions, and barely show results regardless of their gargantuan budget.
Remember, there is no one way to achieve a goal—the same applies in the world of marketing. Good marketing, at the end of the day, is about getting customers. The industry is always changing, the moment you become unwilling to learn and try new methods is the moment your business begins to lose.
Now that we’ve covered a bit of the history of growth hacking, let’s get into how you can implement these methods and help your website grow exponentially.
8 Growth Hacks to Use in 2021
Growth Hack #1: Social Login
Social login is a useful and simple enough alternative to sign up forms. It is reported that up to 86% of users prefer social login (back in 2013) and it won’t cost you much time to implement it on your website.
This is hardly a surprise; filling out complex forms is not exactly a delightful pastime.
A signup form is no more than a barrier, preventing you from converting more users. Social login eliminates that, by making users log into your website with less hassle.
Consider that social login is known to increase conversions by up to 90%. Think of what it does for user experience, which ultimately leads to less bounce rates.
Naturally, this also increases repeat visitors.
Growth Hack #2: Video
You don’t need anyone to tell you — video is everywhere. I mean YouTube is one of the most visited websites ever, and it’s not because of the fonts.
Bottom line is — a lot of times people aren’t coming to your website to read an epistle about how awesome your company is, or appreciate the effort you put into selecting just the right typography that appeals to them.
Mind you, solid content and the appropriate typography play HUGE roles in conversion.
Video on the other hand, is a great alternative to text, and an effective means to maximize your marketing efforts, particularly when you combine video and text. So your typography may be out of this world, but throw some video into the mix and you’re likely to see some great results.
That is providing you do it right.
You may give your audience a taste of your video content within your blog and then host the rest using an online tool. Ask them to sign up to get more in-depth content while growing your mailing list. You can also promote your services and products through videos. There are many promo video maker tools available where you’ll get pre-defined templates to create customized videos for your website or CRM initiatives. Additionally, a professional video editing company can also be a great solution for creating promotional videos, as it will ensure your videos are of the highest quality, engaging, and effective in achieving your goals
Video has been rampant online for a few years, and we’ll be seeing more of it. Why? Because it’s a passive medium that can seamlessly enhance user engagement. See what I had to say about video and other web design trends here.
By the way, here are some more benefits of implementing this growth hack:
- Video can help build credibility among customers
- It can impact SEO significantly and positively
- It can be very persuasive
- Video enables you to display your personality and thus be more relatable to prospective customers
- It can help enhance other aspects of your marketing campaign (social media marketing, email marketing, etc.)
Growth Hack #3: Learn the Needs of Your Target Audience
Photo credit: Unsplash – Brooke Cagle
Here are a few things you’ll want to know about your target audience:
- Where do they hang out online
- How do they interact with content, websites and other users
If we look at marketing from another angle, it is, essentially, giving your audience what they want. Successful growth hacking (in a nutshell) is understanding what your audience wants and acting on it appropriately.
It’s not like you have to swim through shark infested waters, and wrestle a killer whale within an inch of its life to get this kind of info. That’s why there’s Google Analytics, and social insights (from your social media).
There are other tools, however, that you may not be so familiar with. Such as CrazyEgg and Optimizely.
Here’s what they’re about:
CrazyEgg
This helps marketers understand how users interact with their website, courtesy of ‘heatmaps’.
These ‘heatmaps’ display a visual representation of areas visitors click on the most.
Optimizely
With Optimizely, marketers, and site designers can test run changes to their website before making a final decision.
Needless to say, tools like these can help you understand how visitors are interacting with your website. With this knowledge, you are better able to tweak the necessaries and improve upon user experience where needed. In other words, you give visitors what they want, and meet conversion goals in the process.
Growth Hack #4: Add Some ‘Color’ (Personality) to Your Marketing
Marketing is a big part of a business. The business should be taken seriously. That said, it’s hardly as serious as a heart attack. Unless your business happens to be about heart attacks.
What I’m trying to say is — showing a bit of personality can go a long way for your website/product. People want a product that can help them fix a particular problem, or meet their needs in whatever way necessary. Showing them that this product is being sold by an actual human being isn’t likely to hurt your marketing efforts.
In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
You don’t want to go too far to the point where your business website is transformed into an online journal or personal blog. But throw a little personality around here and there.
People will appreciate it.
Think about it, industries like banking, technology, or insurance can be dry topics to get into. That’s why it wouldn’t hurt to spice things up by sprinkling a bit of humor over your message and making people smile once in a while.
Companies like GEICO and State Farm do a really great job at this. Not to mention Farmers. I love their commercials, they’re hilarious. Am I interested in what they’re selling? Hardly. But I stick around every time those ads are on.
I doubt (based on insurmountable evidence) that I’m the only one who feels that way.
Growth Hack #5: Bring a Consultant on board
I’ll admit, this isn’t the fanciest growth hack tactic in the world. But no matter what it is you are doing — a little bit of advice can go a long, long way.
Remember, startups tend to lack experience. In fact, that lack of experience is what tends to hold some of them back. By bringing someone a bit more knowledgeable onboard, you can eliminate a lot of the frustrations that are just waiting to happen.
Collaborating with growth hackers, marketing coordinators, startup marketing agencies, or a marketing consultant can help you bring your ideas to life much faster, by helping you polish the execution of these ideas.
Growth Hack #6: Write Longer Posts
I’m sure you already know this — but I still have to say it, because I still see 300-word blog posts pop up every now and again. Sometimes, they’re even shorter. Don’t get me wrong, if that’s what suits your website/blog perfectly then go for it. But the truth is — those 300-word blog posts are a thing of the past.
Longer posts give you a better shot at ranking, courtesy of the Googlebot that peruses every bit of content you’ve shared. Including words, titles — basically anything that’s on page.
When you have longer posts (more content on page) you have more flexibility keywords, and you aren’t as limited. Moreover, it will be easier to get quality backlinks and rank your content higher since there’s more room for flexibility. But a longer post does not mean that you should not care about your keywords. Google scraping will help you to find the top keywords which will be relevant to your niche.
Growth Hack #7: Podcasts are in right now
Podcasts have become super popular over the past few years. Seriously, they’re all over the place. It gives you a few opportunities that can spur your business to grow exponentially. It almost doesn’t even matter what niche you’re in and I can prove it:
In the Hip Hop industry, there are rappers like Joe Budden who is almost more known for his podcasts as opposed to his ‘bars’ these days. Look at another Hip Hop figure like Taxstone, who went from being a nobody to a Podcast personality almost overnight.
Now let’s look at gaming, Streamers/YouTubers like the Black Hokage have been known in gaming circles for years. I haven’t been keeping up with his content like I used to back in the day, but the last time I checked his material, his account was LITTERED with podcasts. Two – three hours apiece.
If in this ADHD-ridden generation, people are sticking around to hear 3-hour long conversations, you know you’re onto something.
Let’s narrow this down to a more appropriate context. Podcasts, similar to videos, allow people to see to have a grasp of your personality and (possibly) relate to you; which makes it ideal for user engagement.
Thus, it can be a great asset to your website.
Growth Hack #8: Social Proof
Social proof entails a number of things that help to build credibility and trust with your users. It could be anything from:
- Testimonials
- Quotes
- Statistics
- Or ratings
These let people know you’re not all talk and that past customers/clients actually think you know your stuff. A pretty simple formula.
By implementing social proof on your landing pages with social media influencers, you can help users decide whether they’ll support you or not.
Final Thoughts
Growth hacks are hardly new when it comes to online marketing.
But when I dig up posts like Growth Hacking is Bullshit, you might see why I think it’s still worth talking about. Especially for people who might be skeptical about the topic. Growth hacking is just another means (a less costly one) for you to achieve conversion goals. Best part is you don’t have to code to make use of some of these tactics.
Whether you’re a hardcore advocate of growth hacking or not, it’s hard to deny that it goes hand in hand with inbound marketing.
