How to Design a Growth Hack Strategy
We have looked at the difference between digital marketing and growth hack marketing in a previous post. What makes your agency different from every other digital marketing agency out there? Clients often ask us this question. The answer lies, not in the techniques or disciplines we use, but in how we design our growth strategies and the where the emphasis lies. Our emphasis is always on growth.
A digital marketer creates online strategies to promote a service or a product. They might use SEO, PPC, email marketing or social media. We do too, but we look at all the services and disciplines holistically and how they can work together to create the best possible “hack”. So, in other words, it is the combination of these elements, which determines the success of the growth hack.
The purpose of a growth hack is always growth. How that is measured will depend on the individual growth hack and business. But there must always be a measurable to determine the success of the growth hack. The measurable could be the amount of purchases in any given time. It could be the amount of sign-ups to an email list. Or meetings booked or sign-ups to a service you are offering.
When we use the term “hack” we simply mean that we will find the quickest, cheapest and simplest route possible to reach our end goal of growth. You have probably heard of a life hack. Just something very simple you can do, which makes life much easier. A little shortcut, which increases productivity and efficiency. That’s what we are aiming to do here.
Not just Marketers
Our team at Veksa goes well beyond just marketer. We are digital marketers, business veterans, data analysts, AI specialists, engineers and more. Every growth marketing team, in every agency, will have its own strengths and will be able to look at a problem differently. One of our team has a master’s degree in the internet of things. This means he understands intrinsically how the internet works. It goes without saying, this gives a huge edge when designing a growth strategy. As one of our main aims is almost always to drive traffic to a website. Utilising all the skills of the team is crucial when designing a growth hack.
Just as every business is different and will need a different solution. There is no one size fits all and no fixed strategy. It is up to us to brain storm amongst ourselves and to come up with a hypothesis to analyse and test.
Where to Start in Growth Hack?
Firstly, at Veksa, we ask our clients to fill in a SWOT or Big Picture analysis. We want to understand everything about your business. What is it about your product that makes it outstanding? To perform a successful growth hack, you need a great product or service. There may be work to do, before we even start with the growth hack.
What is your goal as a business? Where are you going and what do you want to achieve? Where are your clients? Who are your clients? Who are your competitors? It’s important to have as much of an overview as possible when designing a growth hack. Why do your clients need your product or service? When is their Aha! moment? Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown, explain this in their book “Hacking Growth”. They say this moment is when “the utility of the product really clicks for the users; when the users really get the core value – what the product is for, why they need it, and what benefit they derive from using it.” This helps us understand why your customers can’t be without your product or service. And will help us to design a successful growth hack for your business.
The next thing we do is analyse your website, so we can understand the current flow of traffic, to and from the site. There may be small tweaks we can make, here and there, which will enhance the user experience, based on this information. We always have conversions in mind, when looking at this data.
How do we use this Information?
We look at the business as a whole and start to form a picture of the client, the customer journey and an ideal experience for that customer. Key to performing a successful growth hack is also having a clear view of your customer’s persona. How old are they? What do they look like? What are their interests? It all helps to form a view of who we are targeting and how to target them. We look at all the information with a view to finding the “holy grail” or untapped customer base within the information we have garnered. By narrowing down, we make our approach very targeted and specific and “exclusive”. Consequently our chances of success are higher.
How does AARRR Fit into the Growth Hack?
We look at the AARRR or Pirate funnel in greater detail in this previous post:
The AARRR sales funnel represents the life cycle of a customer. When we design a growth hack we look at the whole sales funnel. We look at it from start to finish. A digital marketing strategy usually concentrates its efforts on the beginning of the sales funnel at acquisition and activation. It may also look at the stage before the sales funnel – Awareness. Growth hacking concentrates on the whole customer journey and the whole funnel. It is not focused on brand recognition or awareness. It is focused on growth, starting at acquisition.
A Self Sustainable Cycle
A key element of a successful growth hack is the creation of a self sustainable cycle. Ultimately, we want to create a cycle, which is self propagating and requires as little input from outside as possible. To first create a self sustainable cycle, you must ensure that you have a product people want or a service, which is useful. Then work on incentivising your customers to share.
The AARRR or Pirate Funnel Metric’s explained:
- Acquisition – the acquisition metric of the sales funnel looks at how you acquire new customers and how they find you
- Activation – activation refers to the first experience your customers have with your product and service and how you make it positive
- Retention – are your customers coming back again & again? Are they re-visiting your website after their first positive experience
- Referral – you want your customers to tell all their friends and family about your product or service, so the cycle begins again
- Revenue – the key metric in the funnel. How to get your customers to pay for your product or service and create revenue
Every part of the process needs to be considered from the product itself, through to product referral. Data analysis forms a large part of what we do and we look at gaps and drop offs and really get to the nitty gritty of the whole customer journey. If something looks to be working, we might try to maximise that potential. If something isn’t working at all we look at how we can change it, to make it more successful.
Where is your business getting it right & where does it need to improve?
A full analysis and understanding of the customer journey is key. For example, is your business good at acquiring new customers, but failing to entice them back again and again? There may be gaps where you can build on what is already working and improve where necessary. Listening to your customers is key. We recommend regular customer satisfaction questionnaires. A lot of information can be garnered by simply listening to your customers. Retention is a key metric in the funnel, so a happy customer is essential.
Hands up, we don’t always get things right first time round. Our hypotheses are based on figures and facts and we prioritise the ones we think will be the most successful. However, if they don’t work, we quickly change tack and go in a different direction.
How do we get to the End Goal?
The tools used by growth marketers are not new inventions. We use content marketing, product marketing and paid promotions, just like everyone else. What we do differently is look at the whole machine holistically and tailor them to create the “hack”. We use SMART goals to keep us on track:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
There are a lot of techniques we consider when creating a growth hack. Simple things like FOMO, referral offers, reducing cart abandonment, can make a big difference to conversions and in the end, revenue!
Some Examples of where these Techniques have been used to Great Success:
Dropbox:
Dropbox’s referral programme is an iconic example of a well designed and successful growth hack. Dropbox optimised every metric in the AARRR sales funnel to create the ultimate self sustainable and scalable cycle.
They knew they had a product, which people wanted, needed and found useful i.e. storage space. So they incentivised people to share it. Their referral programme was beneficial for both sides and was also offered as part of the onboarding process. 250 MB of free space was offered to the initial user as well as to the person they referred, which they received when accepting their invitation.
By making it extremely easy to share, Dropbox optimised their growth hack. Users could email their friends and family, using a specific link. To make it even easier for users, Dropbox offered them the option to download their email contacts from Hotmail, Yahoo etc. They could also share by using social media share buttons.
Dropbox worked both the retention and the referral metrics of the sales funnel simultaneously. They created customer loyalty by offering free space to existing customers. And they signed up new customers from their customer referral scheme. The Dropbox viral loop, saw them grow their user base exponentially. Over 10 years after its initial launch, the Dropbox referral scheme is still going strong.
Groupon:
The growth hook of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), is used successfully by this e-commerce website. Groupon connects local businesses and subscribers to their website, who are looking for deals and special offers. In order for a deal to be activated it requires a minimum number of sign-ups. This is a great incentive for users to invite friends and family to first join the website and also to activate the deal.
Another excellent example of the referral and activation elements of the AARRR funnel in work. New customers are onboarded and become part of the self sustainable growth hack cycle.
Airbnb:
Airbnb is perhaps the most famous of all growth hack examples. They started from very humble beginnings and really highlighted the value in understanding a customer persona. Before they became the multi billion dollar company they are today, they had to literally go to where their customer base already was. Airbnb needed more property listings and more sign-ups. They knew their potential customers were listing their properties for rental on Craigslist, a website for online classifieds, with a dedicated accommodation section. Initially, they emailed any new listings on Craigslist, manually, and asked them if they also wanted to sign up to Airbnb. It worked.
Once they had tested their hypothesis, they built an automation to email anyone listing on Craigslist. Airbnb followed the growth hack principle of automating where possible and creating a self-sustainable cycle. Eventually, Craigslist cottoned on to what Airbnb were doing and stopped it. Not before they achieved their goal of explosive growth though.
The Ultimate Goal
Ultimately, our goal is to create a repeatable and scalable process, which is as automated as possible. And to create revenue for your business!
None of the examples above involved expensive advertising or marketing budgets. They did involve some clever lateral thinking though. And they all applied the principle of getting from A to B as quickly and cheaply as possible, in true growth hacking fashion.
We have technicians, marketers and engineers on hand to create whatever process or API is necessary to achieve this. We’re here if you want to talk.