Growth hacking is one of the hottest buzzwords in the marketing world, yet it's one of the most misunderstood methods of marketing. Born out of the ever-evolving world of online and mobile marketing, it holds some common denominators with traditional marketing. My experience consulting for over 500 companies, including a dozen Fortune 500 companies, has given me a great amount of insight on which practices actually deliver results in the marketing arena. Here's a closer look at what growth hacking actually means, and how you can use it to your benefit.
What Is Growth Hacking?
The term “hacking” has become a common buzzword across many aspects of life— one of the most popular being "life hacking." Unlike computer hacking, which is a criminal act, life and growth hacking provide you with alternatives to traditional means of doing everyday tasks, but with improved efficiency and performance.
When speaking specifically of growth hacking your brand, the goal is to experiment across a multitude of marketing channels in order to find speedy ways of branding and increasing conversions. In most cases, this is achieved via hyper-targeted campaigns executed on less traditional channels, like social media, online and mobile. While traditional media (radio, print and television) may still be a part of the equation, growth hacking is less expensive, and therefore accessible to all marketing budgets. This isn't to say major brands with substantial marketing budgets cannot or should not growth hack, but rather that growth hacking has created a new avenue of branding and growth for startups and mid-sized businesses.
The Endless Options In Online And Mobile Content
With the growing number of options in online, mobile and social media marketing, there are endless new ways to market your products or services. This doesn't mean every option will be suitable, but brands simply have more ways of engaging with their target audience. One advantage of digital marketing is that it's accompanied by in-depth analytics that not only measure key performance indicators, but deliver more in-depth data about your consumers. Since it's online, it can be accessed 24/7.
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Not every digital strategy will work for your business, so testing is a must. The goal is to drive an immediate and measurable spike in traffic to your website, sales page or social media platform. This can be achieved in multiple ways, just a few of which include increases in:
- Email marketing open rates
- Engagement on social media profiles
- Both new and return traffic to targeted pages and posts
- Online sharing of videos and content
- Likes, followers and views
- Time consumers spend on your website
- Conversions
These are only a handful of the goals you might be looking to achieve with growth hacking. And while not all of the performance goals above lead to conversions, they do lead to an increase in brand awareness and word-of-mouth marketing.
Hyper-Targeted Content
Every marketing campaign is designed to speak to and address the needs of a primary target audience, but growth hacking brings this to a whole new level. For example, commercials are expensive, so they're rarely targeted to a secondary audience. Even if one is geared towards a primary target audience, it's designed to meet the needs of the average consumer. While this is certainly effective, it's somewhat limiting.
Growth hacking, on the other hand, is far more cost-effective, meaning that it's possible to produce multiple pieces of content that are each hyper-targeted to a subsection or niche within each target audience. For example, an infographic could be geared towards dog owners with puppies, and a second, toward a specific breed of dogs.
Another example of a noteworthy growth hacking method comes from a startup I recently co-founded: Within a month of us creating a targeted video advertisement, our newly-formed website generated over 20,000 visitors a day. To date, the video has over 10 million views. Ultimately, the use of content has made our startup one of the fastest growing in my city. Simply put, growth hacking isn't just a trend; it's a strategy that can drive actual results.
Data-Driven Content
Growth hacking is achieved by developing marketing growth tactics via data-driven decisions. This goes beyond general industry keywords to “of the moment” keywords. For example, a brand could find a way to capitalize on a trending hashtag that will likely only be hot for the next week or two. Or, because the content is less expensive to curate and market, more energy can be invested in marketing for seasonal or industry trends that would often be neglected for more general campaigns. Take things one step further and search for ways to link online and offline marketing. The goal is to give your consumers what they find appealing.
Sponsored content and social media posts are also a popular method of growth hacking your brand. For example, you could create an article related to your product and have it posted in an online publication that your target audience frequents. While your product won't necessarily be front and center, your content can link back to it. Instead of writing specifically about your facial moisturizer, for instance, write an article about summer skincare or beauty tips. Each social media platform has its own version of sponsored posts, but generally speaking, they are designed to blend in with the news feed.
Growth hacking-inspired content comes in many forms, some of the most popular being articles, blogs, images, infographics and videos. This goes beyond just creating or posting such content, but taking a creative and strategic approach and driving traffic and engagement with paid marketing.
We're operating in a digital world, so you need to know how to get out there and create a voice in a very crowded space. Using a strategy like growth hacking could mean the difference between thriving or being left in the digital dust.
