Growth Hacking – An Overview

So, in a nutshell then, what is growth hacking?

Growth hacking is a type of marketing strategy, which focuses solely on growth. Whereas traditional marketing or digital marketing promote a product or build brand awareness, growth hacking is all about measurables.

For example, a successful growth hack will drive customers to a website. It could also drive sign-ups for a service. Or, similarly, be measured on number of meetings booked. In addition, it will nurture visitors to a website, convert into them clients and also retain them. The end goal of growth hacking is usually to increase revenue. Crucially, it should be done with as little spend as possible. This makes growth hacking an attractive proposition for start-ups, particularly, who are usually short on both time and money. 

We’re not re-inventing the wheel..

We should also emphasise, that we are not re-inventing the wheel. In other words, the services we use, are also traditional digital marketing services. So, there’s nothing particularly new here. Where we differ is how we put these services together. The term “hacking” can sometimes put people off. However, in our view, it is a descriptive and accurate way to describe what we do. We are trying to find the easiest, quickest, cheapest and most efficient route to our goal. Which is always growth!

The term growth hack is relatively new. It was first used by the original growth hacker, Sean Ellis, (Founder and CEO of GrowthHackers), in 2010. This is his definition of a growth hacker:

A person whose true north is growth. Everything they do is scrutinized by its potential impact on scalable growth

Sean Ellis

This secret, now known as growth hacking, was a catalyst for the explosive growth of the top 5 Silicon Valley giants. At Veksa, we follow this principle and it underpins everything we do.   

How do you achieve the core principle of growth? 

The key to growth is to constantly test what works and what doesn’t. Right from the outset, question and test everything. Nothing should be taken for granted. It is crucial to run A/B tests, analyse data and conduct experiments. At Veksa, our mantra is ABE – Always be Experimenting. This is at the essence of what we do. It is worth noting though, that this is not as easy as it sounds. Finding the “holy grail” takes a heavy mixture of genuine business experience and success. This should be coupled with innovative digital expertise and creative thinking. Analysis can include AI (artificial intelligence), algorithms and as well as interpreting analogue audits. Similarly, we use our interpretation to drive the right traffic to your platform and also to retain and leverage existing business. Of course, we don’t always get it right first time, which is why we are always experimenting. 

Successful growth hackers are innovative, free thinkers and curious “mavericks”. They are open minded and always open to change. Veksa has been founded by such individuals.  

The AARRR Funnel or Pirate Funnel by Dave McClure

Many start-up businesses consider the AARRR funnel when starting out. The AARRR or Pirate Funnel is also the framework we use to create a successful growth hack. Whereas a pure marketer will likely just concentrate on awareness (before acquisition). As well as the first couple of elements of the funnel, namely acquisition and activation.

A true growth hacker will look at the whole funnel. And create a strategy or hack, which utilises every element. Now let’s look at the whole funnel and explain each element or metric. In some instances Awareness is included as the first metric. However, as growth marketers, we tend to start with Acquisition. (Awareness is not included in Dave McClure’s description of the Pirate Funnel.) Also, there are some variations in interpretation depending on what type of business the funnel is being applied to.

AARRR stands for: 

• Acquisition – this looks at how many people visit your website or business platform or become a paying customer
• Activation – refers to those who take the first step towards becoming a customer, by signing up or eg downloading your app. The “wow” moment.
• Retention – this is the number of people who return to your site and become repeat customers
• Revenue – this is the all important step of generating revenue
• Referral – those who refer your services to friends and family. Thus, starting the cycle all over again

Consequently, the intention is to create a self sustainable cycle and to automate as much as possible.  If you employ the services of a growth hack agency, then ultimately, they should be looking to extract themselves from the process.  

It is important to test at every stage of the sales funnel, not just at acquisition stage. This is a key element to a successful growth hack.

What methods/tools do we use as growth hackers?

Although, digital marketing and growth hacking are not the same thing, they are linked. Digital marketing disciplines are usually part of a growth hack. For example, SEO (search engine optimisation), Pay Per Click, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Email Marketing and Marketing Automation etc can all be part of a successful growth hack.

Some of these are quicker than others and some of these may take a little more time. Also, often these can be done for little or no money.

Examples of tried and tested strategies include: 

• Creating a blog which interests people and they want to share 
• Guest blogging 
• Competitions 
• Customer referrals 
• Social Media interaction and influencer promotion 
• Incentivised invite only sign-up system

The list is endless and some of the best growth hacks may not even have been executed yet.. 

To know how Veksa can hack your business growth, let us know your business:

Some well-known successful growth hack examples: 

Airbnb: Listed all new listings on Craigslist. Massively increasing their reach:

Airbnb is probably the most well known and widely quoted of all growth hacking examples. They used the classic growth hacking technique of bringing themselves to their audience. They made sure they understood who their customers were and where to find them. Today, Airbnb are a company worth over $160 billion. But they didn’t start out that way. In the beginning, no-one had even heard of Airbnb. They knew that people looking for find somewhere to stay locally, were likely to use another platform, Craigslist. Airbnb created a clever integration with Craigslist, which set them on the path to stratospheric growth. When someone posted a listing on Craigslist, Airbnb contacted them via email and offered them the chance to list on their platform as well.

Ultimately, Airbnb created something, which was arguably better and more user friendly than the existing Craigslist platform. They tapped into an existing user base and effectively growth hacked their way to success..

Dropbox: Offering more space for users to refer a friend:

Dropbox also created a famous and very successful growth hack. They effectively worked the referral metric of the AARRR or Pirate Funnel to great success. And they achieved exponential growth.

The referral program was mutually beneficial. Customers who were already using Dropbox were encouraged to get their friends and family to sign up too. Offering both sides free space in the process. For every person they signed up the referrer gained 1GB of free storage up to a limit of 32GB. Each friend they referred gained 500MB of extra space.

Critically, Dropbox made it as easy as possible for their users to refer their friends and family. They could simply click on a social media sharing button or they could send the Dropbox referral link via email or SMS etc. To make it even easier for their customers to refer Dropbox’s services, they created a sync button. Rather than having to send out a referral email or message to each of their contacts, they could sync them and send out a group email to everyone in their contact lists. From Gmail, Yahoo etc.

Dropbox created a self sustainable cycle of growth and demonstrated an almost perfect growth hack. Absolutely genius!

One of the key factors in Dropbox’s success, is that their customers were already bought into their product. Consequently, the offer of free space was very attractive. The fact that it was so easy to refer on, made the offer too good to refuse. They really did crack it with that one. And now look at them today. Who hasn’t heard of Dropbox?

LinkedIn: Endorsements for existing customers in one click:

LinkedIn’s iconic growth hack offered its users something of real value to them. By enabling users to created a public profile, it allowed them to rank on Google’s results pages, without having to pay a penny for it. Something very valuable to the users of LinkedIn. LinkedIn were able to use this as another hook for people to sign up to their platform. And it worked a treat. They grew their user base and sign ups from 2 million to 200 million in a few years. Just another example of how something seemingly simple can make a huge difference.

The list above is not exhaustive. There are other great examples of successful and impressive growth hacks: Hotmail, Uber, Tesla, Dollar Shave Club, to name but a few, are big names who have all executed successful and impressive growth hacks.

To Sum Up

The examples above show how a bit of clever thinking in the growth hacking vein can pay huge dividends in the long run. The costs involved in Dropbox offering free space to its users, or LinkedIn promoting the benefits of using their platform past simply just showing up in their searches are minimal in comparison to a full blown, traditional advertising campaign. Growth hacking will always look to get the most explosive growth in the quickest time possible and as cheaply as possible. It is not about big, fancy ad campaigns. It is about growth.

Further reading: 

If you would like to know a little bit more about growth hacking and think it could benefit you or your business, then these books are definitely worth a read:

• Hacking Growth: How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success by Morgan Brown and Sean Ellis
• Lean Analytics, Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster by Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz
• Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising by Ryan Holiday

If you would like to know more and would like to speak to us about how we could help you to growth hack your business then please get in touch.