“Growth Hacking” has been one of the most widely used terms in the online marketing space in recent years.

Most of today’s social media giants achieved their phenomenal growth using this model which caused the initial buzz and new startups, in particular, are keen to know what it is and how to leverage it. So what is it that made the term a buzzword among young entrepreneurs and why is it still trending in the year 2019?

But before we dive into the Growth Hacking definition and other kinds of stuff, here are a few quick facts about growth hacking.

Sean Ellis is the first official Growth Hacker and he coined this term in 2010. He then expanded its potential and is now the CEO of GrowthHackers. But it was Andrew Chen, who took this term to a wider audience through his blog post “Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing”. Growth Hacking techniques are best applied to products that are scalable, to realize their full potential.

Now, moving onto its definition.

Growth Hacking – the Definition

It is a process of experimenting rapidly across marketing channels and product development to identify the most efficient ways to grow a business.

As the name suggests, the idea behind this model is to attain high accelerated growth but not at the expense of age-old advertising, rather through creative, innovative marketing strategies.

The person that creates growth hacking strategies is a Growth Hacker and he is ideally someone with marketing acumen and technical skills (coder, mostly but not necessarily). Growth Hackers are quite obsessive about the growth and how they can scale their business.

Speaking of which, one of the basic requirements for this model to be successful is that the product/business should be scalable.

How does it work?

But that is not everything to it. We still have to dig deeper into terms like Growth Funnel and AARRR to comprehend how Growth Hacking actually works?

Over years, companies used sales and marketing funnel to attract customers and make sales. Growth Funnel is a similar funnel but it is more aggressive in achieving the target than the other models. Just like a scrum master closely monitoring the software product development, we have a growth hacker who would be closely watching the “pirate metrics”.

‘Pirate metrics’ is a 5-step startup metrics model that was developed by 500 startups founder Dave McClure. The idea here is to count only on fewer, most important metrics and ignore the rest. Yes, all those old-school metrics are no longer needed to grow!

Acquisition – How do you get to your target audience

Activation – Getting users to signup for their first experience

Retention – How to make them come back to your page

Revenue – How to monetize them?

Referral – How to get your customers to tell others

Yes, that’s all matters to see your growth and not the old-school (dare I say!) metrics like FB likes and shares, page views, e-mail open rates etc. as far as Growth Hacking is concerned.

Pre-requisites for Growth Hacking

Pretty much like any online marketing campaign, the pre-requisites to start building your marketing strategies for Growth Hacking are based on,

Not all ideas are great. Make sure your idea reflects on people’s need and your product is something they want.

Not everyone is your customer. So it is imperative to identifying and clearly defining your target audience

Structure your customer journey

Six Growth Hacking Strategies that will work in 2019

Among plenty of digital marketing strategies, there are few that needs to be cherry-picked for this model.

Acquiring E-mail lists is quite basic and will always remain our favourite. Pre-launch e-mailing has proved to save tons of money for startups and it can do wonders when you get it right

Creative marketing is a trending technique. Create contents that are both creative and intuitive for your audience. Your content headline should always speak volume and it really helps the promotion

Build trust and focus only on delivering an excellent product

Experimentation is in the DNA of Growth Hacking model. Adopt A/B split testing and identify what works the best for you and what best to avoid

Work together with influencers in your niche

Always looks for opportunities to scale your product/business

Conclusion

Now that you have read through our take on Growth Hacking model and its strategies, there is one more we’d like to add and that is, Growth Hacking is not a fixed model (unfortunately) and it is a mindset.

These Growth Hacks may be a few years old now and you might be a little sceptic over adopting them for your business. Hence, it is apt to reiterate the word ‘mindset’. When you know your audience inside out and have identified what they like and look out for, you are pretty much a Growth Hacker and you are in the right path for growth.

Moreover, there is thinkweaver team and we are at your service for all software development, deployment and digital marketing needs! Thanks for reading and we hope you found this concise article useful.