What Is Growth Hacking? How to Grow Faster With It

Growth Hacking is a familiar term for strategies that help businesses grow dramatically. However, growth hacking is often confused with marketing strategies. This leads to wrong assumptions when implementing growth hacking, costing businesses effort and money. With that in mind, in this article, Mona Media will cover the key points about growth hacking to help readers understand it clearly.

Overview of growth hacking

What is growth hacking?

Growth hacking is a term for strategies that Marketing deliver sales results, build the brand and raise customer awareness quickly while keeping costs optimized. Growth hacking is typically used by businesses with limited budgets that still want to attract many customers fast, especially small businesses and startups that are growing.

What is a growth hacker?

Growth hackers are people responsible for developing and carrying out creative, low-cost growth hacking strategies that help a business win and keep customers. They are sometimes called growth marketers. But a growth hacker is not simply a marketer. Anyone involved in developing a product or service, including product managers and engineers, can be called a growth hacker. Growth hackers know how to set growth priorities, identify customer acquisition channels and measure results. ->See more: Above The Line what they are, and ATL vs. BTL vs. TTL in marketing compared

Benefits of growth hacking

Growth hacking is a set of strategies that help a business grow at an exceptional pace while keeping the budget under control. In short, the benefits of growth hacking are:

• Makes it easier to develop new business models and product ideas
• Builds better products and service quality
• Fits all of a business's short-term and long-term goals
• Finds new strategies based on existing data
• Saves budget and improves rates ROI.
• Reveals product growth cycles and new strategies for expanding marketing.

Growth hacking examples

Dropbox Dropbox is known for its creative growth hacking. It attracted many new users by giving them extra free storage when they linked their Dropbox account with their social media accounts. Dropbox also gave users free storage bonuses for completing each task it set. As a result, Dropbox now has more than 500 million users. Hubspot HubSpot built its reputation by offering free tools for marketers. These tools let users assess their website's SEO, page load speed, mobile friendliness and more, so they can optimize it better. Because users must register to receive the report on their website, HubSpot built a high-quality email list.

Growth hacking vs. marketing 

Many people think growth hacking is marketing, but it isn't. The only thing growth hacking shares with marketing is the goal of encouraging more people to use a specific product or service. However, growth hacking is mainly used by star-up and focuses on tactics that don't need big spending like the marketing campaigns of large companies.

How growth hacking works

Growth hacking works on the AARRR funnel developed by Dave McClure. The AARRR funnel is based on a consumer's journey with a product or service and their mindset throughout that journey. It has these elements:

• Acquisition (first contact): Users learn about the business and come into contact with it for the first time.
• Activation (engagement): Users interact with the business's product, for example by viewing and checking product/service information.
• Retention: When the product/service is good and interesting, users keep engaging with the business.
• Revenue: Customers pay for the business's product/service, generating revenue for the business.
• Referral: When customers find the product appealing, they recommend it to friends and family.

The goal of the AARRR funnel is to attract and keep as many customers as possible at the Referral stage. This requires quality products and services that leave a strong impression so customers buy again and again. ->See more: What is a marketing funnel? How to build a marketing funnel for your business

Common growth hacking strategies today

Most growth hacking strategies businesses use today fall into 3 main areas:

Content Marketing

Content Marketing are effective ways to promote a product and increase brand reach at the lowest cost. Digital development has made content marketing much easier and more effective. Here are some ways to promote your product with content marketing:

• Create content that is truly valuable to customers on your blog and website, and improve its visibility through SEO.
• Build content on social media.
• Write books and give away ebooks.
• Make a podcast.
• Use influencer marketing.
• Hold seminars on topics related to your business's field.
• Run gift programs for customers.
• Encourage bloggers to review your products and services.
• Join forums and groups where your target customers are, to promote your brand.
• Use email marketing to build closer relationships with customers.

->See more: SAVE model What is the SAVE model? Why is SAVE more effective than the 4P marketing mix?

Product marketing

Product marketing is a set of strategies that make your product stand out and look more attractive, increasing the number of customers and users. Here are some ways to market a product:

• Create fear of missing out (FOMO) with a discounted sign-up system or big offers for invited people only.
• Run mini-game programs and gift programs on special occasions.
• Offer deals for both new and existing customers.
• Apply Affiliate Marketing (affiliate marketing) to spread the word widely.

Ads

Growth hackers can also set up ads on social media platforms or pay-per-click advertising (PPC) to promote the product and increase brand reach.

Common misconceptions about growth hacking

Whether it's growth hacking or marketing, you need to understand the basics before applying it. Misconceptions about growth hacking hurt the strategy's results and waste time and money. Common misconceptions include:

• Growth hacking is not about hacking computers or software to create customer engagement. It is the whole process and strategy optimized to attract users to view and buy a business's products.
• Growth hacking is not the same as traditional marketing. It includes strategies of Marketing Online, but carried out more easily and efficiently to drive better growth.

Tips for effective growth hacking in your business

Focusing only on growth hacking strategies is not enough for a breakthrough in a short time. Businesses should combine marketing strategies to grow faster and promote products and the brand as quickly as possible. Tips for effective growth hacking:

• Analyze and choose customer channels that fit your business model and brand positioning strategy. Then pick a suitable metric to measure the growth hacking process.
• Combine sales strategies with Inbound Marketing to attract customers effectively.
• Run mini-games with prizes, referral rewards, offers when existing users refer new ones, affiliate marketing campaigns and more, so your product is marketed and introduced to many users.
• Use social media ads and paid ads to promote the product and increase brand reach.
• Channels to prioritize: SEO, social media, content marketing, Email Marketing.

->See more: What Is Pitching? What a Successful Pitch Needs, A to Z By understanding Growth Hackingthoroughly, growth hackers can find many ways to drive natural, sustainable growth for the business. We hope this article from Mona Media has answered your questions about growth hacking and the growth hacking strategies in marketing that help businesses grow rapidly. Mona Media is the A leading agency in the website field, where we specialize in providing website design service and SEO services to help businesses reach the top of Google and expand their presence on the Internet. Check out ngay SEO services from us in the section below.