What is growth hacking?
According to Wikipedia, Growth hacking is a process of rapid experimentation across marketing funnel, product development, sales segments, and other areas of the business to identify the most efficient ways to grow a business.
It’s not about discovering just one silver lining
Usually, most of the companies think that they could find one silver lining growth hack which will make their company great. Companies like Airbnb and Dropbox have created this misconception in growth hacking that one hack is all you need to ignite growth.
But people fail to understand that these companies were not running just one experiment that ignited growth, but were running multiple experiments which failed and this one succeeded. Also, a lot of multiple small wins from other experiments aided that one hack.
Similarly, you should also focus on running multiple growth experiments and find the one that works out the best for you.
It’s a team effort and not a single person’s job
Many companies believe that they could hire a Growth Hacker with a hat full of magic tricks and expect to grow easily overnight.
Growth hacking is a team effort. The engineering, product, marketing, sales and customer success teams are involved in growth hacking.
The greatest wins in growth hacking require programming skills, expertise in data analytics and backbone support in marketing.
There will be very few candidates who are experienced in all three of these skills.
It’s not just about getting new users or customers
Growth hacking is often characterized as being specifically about acquiring new users or customers. But the growth teams should focus on a much broader perspective.
The growth teams should also focus on customer activation, meaning, making them move on to the next stage of the life-cycle faster than they would on their own. Treat them well enough to turn them into your influencers.
The growth team should also be responsible for finding new ways to retain and monetize customers. Which means, keeping your existing customers and making them come for more, thus increasing revenue and sustain and long term growth.
Too much effort is focused only on the acquisition of new customers and which quickly discontinue using your product because of the lack of focus on engaging and retaining them.
It’s not only about marketing
As I mentioned earlier, growth hacking requires programming and data analysis skills in addition to marketing. Growth teams should also be involved in product development to achieve product-market fit.
They can help decide whether the product is offering a must-have experience to its customers and whether these customers are ideal customers.
The team can focus on generating various ideas that can be added as features inside the product so that it can deliver a better experience. Also, prioritize product improvements that are driving both, growth and revenue.
In short, growth hacking should be involved in all departments and all levers of growth.
What do you think about these misconceptions, and how are you doing growth hacking right?