Last time we have talked why growth hacking is so important.
On a side note, I have seen questions in Quora asking if they can outsource growth hacking. Like, the only feature which has any value in the early startup and you would like outsource it? I am wondering what could go wrong.
But the question is still here, we know our startup has no value without users, but how to get them. And the even more important question, when to get them. Should we build the app first and then push to users or should be get users first and them build the app.
And any startuper (with not enough experience) would say, there is no question, we need to build it first, polish, make it shiny and great and then users will come. Unfortunately not. You might heard stories about Instagram and how they get 100k users overnight, however they were struggling, writing and rewriting for months. And it only flew high when they had a list of waiting customers and finally built what customers want.
OK, we have talked about why and when. But how?
There are few channels you can get to your users:
- Blogs (CodeAcademy and Reddit have done it with blogs);
- Community building (Wikipedia and Stack Exchange are famous for that approach);
- Viral marketing (dude, everyone talks about viral, but how to make it for yourself is the very BIG question, however you can pickup something from Andrew Chen of 500 Startups and we will talk about it later);
- Content marketing (blogs, blogs, blogs. OkCupid and Unbounced had done it that way);
- Email marketing (you might think it is dead, but Customer.io doesn’t think so);
- Existing platforms (Evernote had concentrated their efforts on Apple iStore and got millions of customers);
- Affiliate programs (why work yourself when you affiliates will do it for you. DigitalOcean and GoDaddy has proved it);
- Engineering as Marketing (HubSpot have built its empire with its Marketing Grader)
And of course don’t forget the more traditional approaches like
- Search Engine Marketing (@archives.com did it before it was acquired);
- Social adds (Youtube is one of the most powerful backlinks provider);
- Business development (KAYAK early partnership with AOL.COM);
- Speaking engagement (famous Eric Ries hit the bestseller list in weeks through those engagements).
We will get in details in later installments
And see how we are doing at https://www.virgo360.com
#startup #growthhacking #growthchannels
