Growth Hacking: How to apply it in Business

Companies have a clear objective: to grow and increase their profits. The increase in competitiveness over the past decade might seem like an impediment. However, when crises loom, creativity is enhanced, and new strategies have emerged that allow a company to increase its growth at the lowest cost. It’s known as Growth Hacking, and we want to tell you what it is and how you can apply it to your business right away.

What is Growth Hacking?

All beginnings require an initial explanation, so let’s start by defining what exactly Growth Hacking is. This concept was coined in 2010 by Sean Ellis, who in addition to its creator, is the first perfect example of how to be a growth hacker. He worked in sales, but gravitated towards marketing and the opportunities it could generate and then applied it to companies such as Dropbox and Eventbrite.

In his own words, Growth Hacking is a type of marketing that is based on experiments. But this technique doesn’t focus so much on tactics, but on processes and best practices.

These are constructed through hypotheses and experiments, which are elaborated and carried out, respectively, by the teams involved. During the tests they carry out, they discover the gaps or opportunities that could make the business grow faster and smarter.

Where do these hypotheses come from?

There is no single path to follow in Growth Hacking, but each company must find its own. Since marketing has a multitude of channels, you must know the particularities of each one and work with professionals who are experts in them. Investing in these professionals makes it easier to identify those channels that have the greatest potential and that would offer better results, as well as to carry out experiments in them.

These profiles are known as growth masters, who, thanks to their learning time and experience, have acquired very deep knowledge. These are the ones who are then in charge of directing the Growth Hacking teams, since not only one person is involved. In addition to also having a very high level of knowledge of the products or services and their clientele, they must closely observe the practices of direct competitors, looking for interesting proposals that can be adapted to the company in question.

How a Team Works in Growth Hacking

The best ideas don’t usually appear as such but are the result of combining others that have been presented before. Therefore, it is important that those who are part of a Growth Hacking team have dynamic profiles that can perform multiple tasks and, at the same time, could solve problems that may appear along the way, even if they are very specific.

As for their technical profile, although the concept includes the term “hacking” that we relate directly to computing, they do not have to be IT personnel. Usually, they are marketing professionals with a vision of growth, who are clear that it is not only about increasing profits, but that the key in Growth Hacking is to achieve it quickly and at the lowest possible cost.

They are, therefore, creative people with an innate curiosity that leads them to explore. In addition, they must be analytical and have an agile approach, so that they can use data when testing whether their hypotheses are viable. Other knowledge includes processes, technology and development, experimental methodology, and consumer behavior.

As for the positions to be filled, they are, in addition to the growth master, the following:

• Growth marketers. Specialists in email marketing campaigns, SEO positioning, social networks, etc., and who oversee proposing KPIs.

• Growth analysts. They are responsible for data analysis to assess the feasibility of experiments and the performance of the strategies being implemented.

• Engineers, programmers, and designers. Their job is to develop software, tools, or products from the experiments conducted.

How to apply Growth Hacking to a company?

The application of Growth Hacking is not only used to develop a new product, it can also be applied to existing ones or even if it is not even a tangible product. For example, social networks or service websites do not offer anything material, but they do have tools that allow them to increase their goal of having more users. The phases of Growth Hacking are as follows:

Study your product

This phase is known as Product Market Fit because it consists of identifying a product that can work in the market. No matter what it is, you need to make sure that consumers are going to demand it because it will be able to meet their needs.

Analyze the market and the Growth Hacking funnel

With the product ready, it’s time to focus on shoppers and data analysis to learn about their behavior, location, interests, etc. Different creative strategies and ideas are used to capture their attention and get conversions. This is where the Growth Hacking funnel comes into play, which are the phases that every customer goes through from the moment they get to know a brand or its product. They are attraction, conversion, recurrence, billing, and recommendation.

But in addition to actions for each of these stages, this is when the different hypotheses are formulated. What would happen if you acted the other way, add or remove elements to the product, or use new tools in the process? It’s about identifying opportunities that allow you to grow with little effort.

Set goals and go viral

Once you’ve identified the best ways forward, set very specific, short-term goals so you can check if you’re on the right track. Again, it’s time to use creativity to look for channels that allow you to go viral and attract many customers. As you grow and scalability becomes palpable, you need to automate so you can continue to better study your audience.

Here the strategies are multiple, but the usual thing is to include options that allow the users themselves to share with you, encourage distribution through limited content or samples that they can expand in exchange for something or looking for partners with whom they can earn mutual benefits. A well-known strategy is piggyback, with a collaborative competition alliance.

Continuously analyze

Finally, you need to re-analyze, but in this case, the performance of the campaigns and the success of the product itself, using metrics and KPIs. The mindset should be one of continuous improvement.

Do you want to apply Growth Hacking in your business? At Ideafoster we maintain the same principles when working to maximize the growth of the companies we work with. We seek innovation at all costs, using our ecosystem of cutting-edge partners in multiple areas and continuous data analytics. Do you want to grow? Contact us.