Awesome growth hacking tips by Nathan Barnwell: Hacker is sometimes used to refer to a software engineer, and while a growth hacker may or may not be a programmer, they use technology based solutions to achieve many of their goals. Growth hackers will use software, databases, API’s, and related tools to grow a startup. If a growth hacker is also a programmer they can sometimes make progress more efficiently, but this isn’t required. However, a growth hacker must understand technology very deeply to be successful. If a growth hacker isn’t a programmer they will still have to understand programming enough to coordinate others who do write code. Remember, products are now technology based, and mastering the technology will be essential for growth.
There are four classical methods called growth strategies. In addition to these four strategies, there are also different growth strategies that can be implemented according to the structures of companies by diversifying them. But basically, all growth strategies emerge and are shaped by these four classical methods. One or more of these may be used together. These are: Product Development Activities such as producing new products and increasing the existing product range with improvements and developments. Market Penetration: The main approach here is customer acquisition. It includes strategies such as product price reductions, product grouping for specific customer profiles, advertising activities. Market Development: It is carried out with approaches such as opening offices and branches in different locations, selling through different online channels and giving dealerships. Diversification: Diversification can be made by starting to operate in a completely different and a new market than your current market by introducing brand new products.
Nathan Barnwell growth hacking strategies: Sometimes the best growth strategy a company can employ is standing out — offering a unique experience that sets it apart from other businesses in its space. When monotony defines an industry, the company that breaks it often finds an edge. Say your company developed an app for transitioning playlists between music streaming apps. Assume you have a few competitors who all generate revenue through ads and paid subscriptions — both of which frustrate users. In that case, you might be best off trying to shed some of the baggage that customers run into trouble with when using your competitors’ programs. If your service is paid, you could consider offering a free trial of an ad-free experience — right off the bat. The point here is that there’s often a lot of value and opportunity in differentiating yourself. If you can “zig when they zag”, you can capture consumers’ attention and capitalize on their shifting interests.
What is a growth marketer? Similar to “marketing managers” of the past, growth marketers know enough about paid search, paid social, CRO, user experience, email marketing, content marketing, and SEO to be dangerous. They’re more focused on strategy than execution, though; you will likely need someone more specialized to 10x the plans a growth marketer puts in place. A growth marketer is someone who runs constant, iterative tests throughout the funnel, and uses the results to craft data-driven strategy updates that lift key performance metrics. Think of them as a CMO-lite, or a modernized marketing manager. Growth marketers look like this T-shaped model of growth marketing skills. They are well-versed in a ton of topics, which is helpful for the entire organization, and go deep mostly in acquisition marketing and conversion-rate optimization.
It is important to instrument for growth so that you can truly understand what is happening. Another important part of instrumenting for growth is testing tools such as Google Optimize, that allow you to implement a/b tests across your website and product. Finally, you’ll need a system to bring all of this information together so that your team can learn how to improve growth. Now you’re finally ready to start accelerating growth, which is level three of the pyramid. In this stage you should focus on building a growth team that can effectively execute a growth process. The purpose of this growth process is to uncover better ways to accelerate growth in the business. Your goal here is just to build a rhythm and habit of testing. Every test you run will lead to additional learning — even if it doesn’t directly drive immediate improvement in growth. It’s important during this stage to catalogue this learning so that the team keeps getting smarter about how to accelerate growth. Read a lot more info on Nathan Barnwell.
Don’t hit the ground running without planning out and documenting the steps for your growth strategy. We recommend downloading this free Growth Strategy Template and working off the included section prompts to outline your intended process for growth in your organization. It’s great that you want to grow your business, but what exactly do you want to grow? Your business growth plan should hone in on specific areas of growth. Common focuses of strategic growth initiatives might include: Growth in employee headcount, Expansion of current office, retail, and/or warehouse space, Addition of new locations or branches of your business, Expansion into new regions, locations, cities, or countries, Addition of new products and/or services, Expanding purchase locations (i.e. selling in new stores or launching an online store), Growth in revenue and/or profit, Growth of customer base and/or customer acquisition rate.