How to use growth hacking to attract and retain customers

Leonid Zverugo

wrote this on Авг 13, 2015

Neil Patel will tell us about growth hacking today.

We are surrounded by a great many of tools, resources and information today. And it’s very important that we take advantage of them to grow our businesses.

So what do growth hackers do? They find innovative ways to get things done in order to achieve a definite result.

 

Step 1: Getting Started with Growth Hacking

Growth hacking at its most basic level means looking for highly creative strategies and tactics in the service of growing business.

It’s impossible to ignore growth hacking: there’s a growing community for growth-focused marketers and a special hacking conference was held in 2014.

It was Sean Ellis, founder of Startups-Marketing, who coined the term “growth hacker”.

Being a growth hacker differs a lot from being an ordinary Internet marketer.

So, what’s Growth Hacking? Growth is increase and expansion. To hack is to cut away through obstruction, to find an effective and creative solution to a problem.

In one sentence, growth hacking is a combination of technical skills and creativity in order to develop and execute marketing practices with a primary focus on growth.

Who should use it and can benefit from it?

• startup business.
• B2B marketers.
• B2C marketers.
• content marketers.
• social media experts.

 

Step 2: Growth Hacks in Practice

All companies (both large and small ones) use growth hacking in order to increase customer bases. If you want to make this customer-centric practice work for you, focus on measurable goals.

Many startup websites still focus on engaging their customers and making them sign up for email lists as it’s easy to measure these actions. Is this the only way?

The old marketing rules are long gone and forgotten.

Here are some growth hacking tactics you can use:

Content upgrades. It’s a strategy for increasing the number of your email subscribers. Include an opt-in subscription model within the content. You can make it work for you by:

i). Writing a clickable and benefit-driven headline.

ii). Sharing a case study. It should be relatable and many users will respond to it. For each case study:

• capture screenshots explaining facts and data.
• offer some steps readers can take.
• make sure your data and statistics are accurate.
• link out to authoritative sites that are relevant to your topic.

iii). Using a relevant content upgrade module. The lead magnet you give away in a blog post should be related to the topic.

iv). Writing in-depth content. It increases the value of your content.

v). Activation. Take a simple idea and make it bigger.

 

The effect will be even greater if you will implement these factors with content marketing and blogging:

1. Desirable product. Make sure that your product is the most desirable.

2. Add an image to your content. More people share blog posts when they contain visual information.

3. Trends. Think of what’s happening right now?

4. Creativity. Being creative means turning obstacles around and find innovative ways to overcome them.

5. Tools.

 

Step 3: The Growth Hacker

“A Growth Hacker is someone whose true north is growth,” – Sean Ellis, Grandfather of Growth Hacking.

A growth hacker’s goal is to use various techniques in order to extract insights for pulling people in. He/she should be able to funnel new customers into the relationship pyramid, in order to reduce or totally eliminate the objections that would keep them from buying again and again.

Here’s a list of necessary skills for a growth hacker:

1. Team leader, not a developer. He/she should be able to lead a team: form, organize, and lead to a plan execution.

2. Obsession. Good ideas take time to get off the ground. So obsession is a must for any growth hacker.

3. Strategic marketing plan. He/she should love testing and finding out what works and what doesn’t.

 

4. Extremely analytical. Growth hackers must love analytics.

 

Difference between marketers and growth hackers:

• The Actual Difference Between Growth Hacking and Marketing
• The Difference Between Growth Hacking and Traditional Marketing

 

 

Step 4: Growth Hacking Process

Growth hacking process is a series of actions taken in order to grow a business.

It can be broken down into 4 smaller processes:

1. Define actionable goals. Actionable goals are definite. They should be easy to understand and achievable. Also, make sure your goals are S.M.A.R.T.

2. Use analytics to track your goals. Use Google Analytics, or KISSmetrics to gauge your daily visitors and their behavior on your site, as well as to set up advanced goals and segments.

3. Leverage your existing network. If you leverage your existing network, you’ll get an initial boost for your product/content/event.

 

4. Utilize A/B Tests. According to Optimizely, 87% of companies run at least one A/B split test every month.

 

Conclusion

If you’re having difficulties with attracting new users, consider growth hacking as it’s a proven strategy. It will help you to get new leads and retain your users.

Read the full version of the article here in order to find out myths about growth hacking, interesting case studies and real life examples.