What is growth hacking?

Growth hacking is devising and implementing clever ways to drive new sign ups as well as retention with little to no marketing budget. Growth hacks are not tricks but rather ways to draw attention to great products.

A growth hacking strategy is centered around experimental testing and iteration. Growth hacking is most relevant for tech startups with a relatively cheap or free product (more on this here).

A classic example from LinkedIn

A well-known growth hack is the LinkedIn email address book uploader. LinkedIn would and still asks new users to upload their email address book, so they can connect with people who are already on LinkedIn (see image below). If some of the contacts you upload are not on LinkedIn, those contacts will receive an email invite to join the platform. As mentioned in this review of LinkedIn’s growth hacking strategies, address book uploading is a common practice now but was more novel when LinkedIn first began using it. This was a great tactic because it simultaneously drove growth and retention.

Sean Ellis and the customer journey

Sean Ellis, a famous growth hacker, talks about how growth hacking is about optimizing the customer journey so that users can get the value they are looking for from your product as fast as possible. He also stresses that you should figure out exactly which features your current users actually care about and focus your onboarding process and even marketing copy on those features.

Sean mentions a few examples in this podcast. Basically, if a new user doesn’t get what they need from your product soon after signing up, they will likely never return. If this is happening with a high percentage of new users, you are dead in the water. Sean recommends focusing on improving the new user experience, because if this is wrong, then other growth hacks will be useless in the long run.

Content marketing can be a form of growth hacking

Personally, I consider content marketing as a type of growth hacking, because it can be used to grow your user base with little to no money. Content marketing works when you write about things your potential user base cares about and when you connect with them about their lives and the problem you are solving for them. Once they are excited about your product and feel connected to it, they are likely to try it out.

An important part of content marketing is the distribution of the content. You can create Hemingway-level content, but if no one reads it, then your work is wasted. Typical distribution channels include social media and email newsletters and these work well if done right. What is most critical is to find channels that are relevant to your potential users and where people are actually engaged. Sometimes smaller, more focused channels like online messaging boards work really well.

The best growth hack

If you’ve created solid content and placed it in relevant distribution channels, then you will be able to drive people to your product. Once they try your product, it’s important to have your customer journey ironed out so that users get what they are looking for out of your product and tell their friends. After all, the best growth hack of all is building a great product that people can’t help but to share.

Share your thoughts

What are your thoughts on implementing a growth hacking strategy? What are some successful growth hacks you’ve done?

Originally published at www.quora.com.