5.5 Key Components of Growth Hacking for Non-StartupMarketers

Posted by Lindsay Tjepkema on Wed, Apr 29, 2015 @ 07:05 AM

Growth hacking is more than a buzzword. It's aninnovative, sensitive approach to increasing revenue in the startup world. However, like manytrendy terms, it's often misunderstood. What is the act of growth-hacking, and what does it entail?

Entrepreneur Gigan Biyani points out that a "growth hacker is really just a marketer." However,these experts aren't traditionally working with well-established brands, market positioning andbudgets, a growth hacker is faced with the unique challenge of achieving "astronomical growth"with extremely limited resources amidst an environment filled with uncertainty.

Does Growth Hacking Actually Work?

In short, yes. Growth hacking isn't a one-size-fits all strategy, but organizations who manage to towrap their hands around truly effective plans have experienced absurdly fast, accelerated growth.Online education platform Treehouse is an oft-cited example of a successful growth-hackingstrategy, thanks to the efforts of founder Ryan Carson.

Carson's growth-hacking tactics included the creation of a blog that served as a tool for "marketingthrough thought leadership." Carson also participated in idea validation via Twitter, sharing hiswireframes directly with high-profile web professionals for commentary. Perhaps most importantly,Treehouse implemented an aggressive approach to combating normal customer churn. Byintroducing a gamification element to the learning system and allowing students to unlock badges,Treehouse effectively increased engagement, increasing their revenue 38% in just 7 days!

In short, growth hacking is sharp marketing for startups. The principles used to run a highlyeffective growth hacking campaign can benefit well-established brands. In this blog, you'll learn howreal-life brands have applied digital marketing principles to exceptional ends:

1) Content Marketing

The tactic of "start a blog" isn't always sufficient for effective growth hacking, especially for brandsin highly saturated niches. While high-quality blog content is absolutely crucial, organizations shouldconsider a slightly more innovative approach to content marketing.

A famous example is the fitness brand Crossfit, who directly asked their blog readers years ago to

"post their scores" from daily workouts in the comments section of the blog. This transformed postsabout daily workouts into leaderboards, introducing elements of competition and viral engagementwith the brand's content marketing.

Some other, innovative approaches to a content marketing strategy could include:

Introducing required shares for your highest-performing content assets

Use HARO to connect with press for free PR

Directly ask high-quality guest bloggers for expert content

Investing in fewer, higher-quality blogs with a higher word count

2) Search Engine Optimization

It's crucial to be pretty aggressive when it comes to SEO, particularly in highly saturated niches.One of the best SEO tactics we've encountered comes via personal finance site Mint's lead designerJason Purtoti, who shared some of the brand's tactics via Quora.

What was their approach? They built "a lot" of landing pages. In fact, they built an absolutely insaneamount of landing pages. Mint developed a landing page around "every personal finance-relatedquery on Google," and tailored their content to cater towards young professionals, a market segmentthey felt was being neglected by their competitors.

Other viral or highly-aggressive SEO tactics can include:

Required social sharing to read content or gain free trial access

Rewards or contests revolving around social shares of content

Viral content marketing

hacking case studies/content for different user segments

Continual optimization/updates to existing content assets

3) Email Marketing

Many growth hacking success stories revolve around the smart utilization of email marketing forcustomer retention and acquisition. Virtually all entrepreneurs know and understand that it's muchcheaper to retain a customer, even an unhappy customer, than it is to generate new revenue.

Max Teitelbaum, the co-founder of online advertising service WhatRunsWhere, poured an excess ofeffort into customer retention via email in the early days of their business. Spending an estimatedtwo hours a day on the efforts, Teitelbaum handled all customer support, with a particular focus onfinding out who was cancelling and why. As a result, the organization managed a 25% retention rate.

Not all companies can afford such personalized customer retention efforts, and it's simply not ascalable solution for many of the rest. However, your email marketing efforts should take a similarfocus on being as personal as possible, with particular effort towards maintaining high satisfactionwith your existing customer base.

4) A/b Testing Analytics

Great growth hackers understand that everything is iterative, which is why they use A/B testingmarketing analytics to maximize conversions like a never-ending cycle. Ensure your website, emails,and landing pages are optimized for viral customer acquisition, and never cease testing forconversions.

Refer to Neil Patel's infographic on the anatomy of the highest-converting landing pages to ensureyou've got your basics down before you begin testing. The world's most effective landing pagesshould always include:

A "clear and concise headline"

A descriptive hero image or video

Easy-to-consume benefits of your offer

A call-to-action

Testimonials and trust elements

Remember, you only have 5 seconds maximum to convince your prospects to become leads beforethey "bounce" away from your website. Growth hacking means optimizing relentlessly forconversions, and continually A/B testing to ensure you're converting the maximum percentagepossible of website visitors into leads.

5) Viral Customer Acquisition

Not every growth hacking success story involves a viral campaign or a highly-popular piece ofcontent that spread across social media like Wildfire. However, many of the sharpest growth hackersattribute their success to achieving virality in one or more pieces of content.

One particularly famous example is Dollar Shave Club, the razor home delivery service who came

out of total obscurity in 2011 after their humorous promotion video racked up some 4.75 millionviews on YouTube in just three months. Within 12 hours of the deeply funny video's debut, theservice had 12,000 subscribers. Even more astoundingly, the musical video commercial was thebrand's only attempt at marketing the new service.

While not every startup can even dream of the same success Dollar Shave Club saw from their singlevideo clip, the lesson is pretty clear. Viral marketing can work extremely well, and your chances ofsuccess are much greater if you're willing to invest in absolutely top-notch content. Case and point:Dollar Shave Club's commercial was directed by advertising expert and professional Comedian LuciaAniello.

To go viral, your chances of success will probably be significantly greater if you're willing to pay fortop talent, even at the risk of a greatly diminished marketing budget for other forms of outreach.

Common characteristics of viral-ready content can include the following:

Extremely intriguing or eye-catching titles or headlines

Bite-sized; packaged in a highly-consumable format like video

Ready to evoke emotion, such as humor or warm feelings, in the viewer

Broadly appealing; relevant to your ideal customer but able to be shared broadly

5.5) Paid Acquisition

Growth hackers aren't opposed to paid acquisition, but they're incredibly smart about how theyapproach this tactic. Within the space of growth hacking, paid acquisition is often tied to influenceroutreach, and paid promotion of the product or service by individuals who already have the rightaudience.

PPC doesn't make fiscal sense for all organizations, but that doesn't mean it's out of the question.Exceptional growth hackers consider pay-per-click advertising as one means of paid acquisition,while exploring other, more viral methodologies that may resemble one or more of the followingstrategies:

Paying for social influencer promotion via Triberr

Providing deep discounts to industry influencers

Participating in co-branding partnerships for advertising/promotion exchanges

Paid placement in high-profile email newsletters

Promotion of paid advertisement and deals via additional paid advertisement

Placement in daily deals sites, like AppSumo or Rewardli

Paid reviews

What works for one startup certainly won't work for another. The world's best growth hackers areendlessly shrewd, aggressive about finding unusual opportunities for organizational promotions, andabundantly creative. Hacking your company's growth may require a far different SEO strategy thanthe explosive landing page build outs that accelerated Mint's revenue. However, the right mix of themethodologies listed above is almost sure to help grow your brand.

What are some of the more fascinating growth hacking success stories you've encountered online?Share your favorite case studies and related tactics in the comments!

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