Growth hacking can’t be that simple…can it?
3 Steps to Growth hacking
We’ve all heard the term “growth hackers”, and secretly idolized those who call themselves that.
Contradictory to this idolization, “growth hacking” is a set of processes, not some mystical veil that magically turns companies into cool organizations.
Now, where I come from— I’ve driven fast paced growth in multiple organizations, for those who don’t know, see here.
Based on at least these 3 successful growth stories, I have a good grasp of where to look for when a service wants to grow — and here they are:
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Step 1: Nail-down foundations
-Align on core customer value and KPIs (upcoming article to come on KPIs)
-Create and execute content strategy
-Start SEO, drive organic traffic before investing heavily in performance marketing
-Launch commission-based affiliates / partnerships that can bring your awareness up
-Start the process of CRO (for ecommerce sites)
-Focus on site load speed
-Ensure logistics/operations delivers on the promise of the service (products delivered on time, service is accessible, media entertaining)
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Step 2: Prepare to scale, set data-driven marketing in place
-Personalize user experience based on user behavior, many 3rd party tools
-Fully utilize Google Analytics and integrate into Google Ads
-Integrate basic custom segments and integrate with Facebook
-For media companies / publishers, serve ads to non-core audience (upcoming article to come on ad serving)
-Launch CRM to improve value of a customer after acquisition
(For larger corporations, implement large scale martech tools)
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Step 3: Scale with PR buz, offline marketing, TV, M&A, etc
-See headline, pretty self-explanatory
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Simple, right?
All 3 steps can be done within a month or 2 , if teams focus on their tasks at hand.
Now this is a full list, with each step requiring high levels of execution, but you can see there is no magic anywhere, as you can find books and articles regarding any one of the actions on the list.
So, the larger question is — why don’t more companies do this?
My take on this is that usually, organizations put little effort into Step 1 Nail-down foundations, and move onto Step 2 and 3, which can be disastrous, i.e. — when you’re trying to do mass marketing without aligning on core-audience nor KPIs.
Or, I’m sure you’ve seen a company do mass marketing, but when you visit the site users are shown a page that takes few seconds to load.
Or, some organizations invest heavily in performance marketing, without closely segmenting audiences — leading to inefficiencies.
All common fails that we see everyday.
So, that’s it. The mystical steps to growth hacking.
By the way, what’s Step 4? you ask.
There is none, you just keep improving Steps 2–3.
Ideally though, investments in innovation and product improvement (i.e.-voice search) should expand reach / impact of Steps 2–3 before companies reach a saturation point.
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