If you have not heard this term yet, you should know that it is one of the words hottest in america and each time more . Even in many job offers in the US they explicitly look for experts in growth hacking either growh hackers. The first to mention the term was Sean Ellisentrepreneur, investor and startup consultant, specifically in this “Find a Growth Hacker for your”.
What is Growth Hacking
Although it is very similar to the world of startups, it could be applied to any Internet company. If we decompose the word we met with “growth” (growth) and hackingwith some implication of the use of technology.
According to Wikipedia, “Growh Hacking is a set of marketing techniques developed by technology companies that use creativity, analytical thinking, as well as web and web metrics to sell their products and gain exposure.” However, I prefer this other definition:
«Growth Hacking is a discipline that seeks, with the minimum possible expense and effort, to quickly and noticeably increase the volume of users, income or impacts of our product/service»
Therefore, we are talking about a different way of attacking the market and promoting our product. In other words, go a little further than traditional marketing and try to break into the market with creativity and innovative strategies that allow do grow the business quickly with few resources.
Precisely the term is usually related to startups because of the viral point and the need to have short-term results that demonstrate the business scalability. In addition, startups are normally under pressure from investors to grow, to see if they are capable of taking advantage of the critical mass of users of a certain platform.
But above all, growth hacking implies that the company is capable of multiply benefits in a short time without large investments.
The profile of the Growth Hacker
If we think of the ideal profile to bring to fruition growth hacking strategies, we could think of the marketing manager of a startup; however, it must meet certain specific characteristics: be constantly innovating and aware of the metrics, learning from mistakes, doing…
Based on this, we can summarize certain abilities common to a good Growth Hacker:
- Analytical: You have to constantly question business situations. Why has my plummeted this week? You must know and not take practically anything for granted.
- Creative: It goes beyond the basics of online marketing. He is curious and considers strategies or tactics that are out of the ordinary. It not only investigates about its sectors, but about others that can be applied to its category.
- Agile: it cannot be recreated with the good data of a stock, but must be constantly innovating and testing. A good growth hacker carries tests in their DNA.
Ideally, like any marketer, you must know all the business processes, from logistics to design, passing through sales. From your growh hacker position, you should propose strategies that touch any pillar of the business, not just Marketing. Back to Sean Ellis: «A growthhacker is one whose true north is growth»
Success stories in Growth Hacking
It is usually easier to establish concepts through the study and analysis of success stories. Here I detail some that are relevant to me. I have even come across an ebook focused on growth hacking.
gmail
One of the hacks that can work very well is to imply that access to a certain platform is limited, with the vip concept.
At the time, Gmail opted for this strategy and only allowed registration to people who had an invitation, giving feeling of exclusivity. Since then, we have seen this strategy applied by other businesses. What about Growh Hacking? With registration by invitation, Gmail increased the interest and expectation of users to be able to access the Google mail service.
Uber
In addition to complying with ABC necessary to be an innovative and disruptive product, it started in San Francisco sponsoring events and giving away trips.
Instead of investing a campaign of traditional marketingan axis of their marketing is to give away a trip. And since you must necessarily leave your bank card to sign up, the free one overcomes that important barrier.
For example, in Mexico City, in addition to giving away the first trip (around €8), Uber took advantage of the demonstrations by taxi drivers for the day of the demonstrations. The action, with #UberNoPara campaign increased downloads by 800%.
What about Growh Hacking? Uber took advantage of the stir of the demonstrations to launch a user acquisition campaign. Unstoppable.
drop box
drop box was one of the first file hosting systems on the cloud. From the beginning, it based its Growth Hacking strategy on offering more storage space to users who invited their friends (an additional 500 MB). With this strategy of member get member (or referrals), in 2 years it went from 100,000 users to 4,000,000 users. Along the same lines, it signed an agreement with Samsung and by installing Dropbox on your Smartphone it offered you free storage. What about Growh Hacking? At zero cost and only giving up server space, the users themselves made Dropbox known by invitation.
airbnb
it is already a threat to hotels without owning real estate. The power of this B2B service was to fill a gap that existed, connecting guests with homeowners. In its beginnings, its main takeoff occurred touching the limit of the legal.
Automatically, the offers of houses uploaded to the platform by the users, were also published simultaneously in craigslista monster classified in the United States. Airbnb hacked the Craigslist system and published massively, becoming known to the Craigslist community, who was attracted to Airbnb’s business model. Today it is present in more than 200 countries.
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