For years, the word “hack” has been a mainstay buzzword. It’s easy to see why: “Hack” is another word for “shortcut.” Over time, some people have developed a negative connotation of the word, as its overuse and misuse have given people the wrong impression about what it is.
To be fair, growth hacking is an industry term with a somewhat loose definition, but you can apply its concepts in very specific ways. In the right hands, it’s a way to take a business from zero to 60 in practically no time. If you’re curious about growth hacking and how it differs from traditional marketing, we’ll look at the definition, why it works for any sized brand, and how to best adapt the principles to your business.
What is growth hacking?
Growth hacking refers to the rapid growth of a company through original, creative, and cost-efficient tactics. Almost any marketer on any budget can implement strategic hacks for optimizing KPIs. Growth hacking’s accessible baseline makes it attractive for startups and growing businesses alike.
Growth hacking strategies are popular among well-funded companies like Airbnb and Dropbox as well as scrappy upstarts like Gymshark. Because growth hacking emphasizes the stickiest elements of products or services, it gives marketers an excuse to strip down their messaging and get to the point.
Ideally, you’ll first tease out the most exciting and engaging parts of your brand before assessing the product-market fit for different channels and platforms. Growth hacking has enjoyed particular esteem in the e-commerce space, though again, the principles are flexible enough to fit any organization.
An example of growth hacking
Growth hacking approaches marketing differently than traditional marketing efforts. For instance, if you were starting a food delivery app in a market with five similar services, traditional marketing might begin with market research, logo design, multichannel advertising, and partnerships with established restaurants in the area. With traditional marketing efforts, marketers invest significant time and resources into running focus groups, designing advertising campaigns, and building trust with local businesses.
With growth hacking, you might instead promote a referral program, offering incentives to active users to sign up their friends. You might gamify your delivery app with a reward system. Or you might run targeted social media ads with different messaging to iron out your content based on your target market. Rather than first dissecting the pain points of your competitors, you growth hack your way to brand awareness and an influx of subscribers.
Key components of growth hacking
The right growth hacks for your brand depend on your target audience, budget, and business model. However, you should set strategies for the following:
Creative problem-solving
Growth hacking encourages out-of-the-box thinking. That may mean testing and evaluating new technology on the market, experimenting with content, or asking friends to post product testimonials as social proof.
Analytical thinking
While growth hackers need to be creative, they don’t have months on end to find a viable strategy. This is where data and analytical thinking can quickly guide you toward better digital marketing decisions. When you have the right details at your fingertips, you can measure success and pivot on poorly performing tactics.
This is why both the general marketing community and growth hackers have embraced A/B testing. These side-by-side comparisons illustrate which variation inspired customers enough to click, sign up, subscribe, or buy.
So, if you’re marketing new coffee beans, you might run a social media ad that promotes their unique chocolate flavor while a different social media ad demos how to make the perfect mocha with the beans. Once you measure the clicks and conversion rates from both variants, you’ll know what matters to your audience.
Technology and automation
Technology and automation support growth hacking efforts by streamlining the growth team’s workload. With tools such as CRM systems, search engine optimization (SEO) platforms, social media management tools, email marketing platforms, and other free marketing tools, marketers get more done in less time.
For example, Bitly helps marketers manage links and QR Codes across campaigns on both online and offline platforms. Our metrics, which include engagement details and scanning devices, provide instant feedback on the audience’s interest levels.
Our tools make A/B testing a snap so you can see what content resonates. When you combine Bitly’s tools with automation software, like Zapier or Hootsuite, the marketing team can run more experiments without the endless iterative process overwhelming them.
Customer-centric focus
Growth hacking starts with the customer’s needs and expectations. Whether that’s fulfilling a basic necessity or speaking to a personal cause, growth hackers require a deeper understanding of customers to create relevant and personalized marketing strategies.
So, let’s say your brand donates a small portion of profits to global charities to fight childhood hunger. If you speak to an audience that cares more about supporting local food banks, the social benefit may not hit home. A/B testing can help marketers untangle the more nuanced aspects of the audience so they can use more inclusive language.
Why is growth hacking important?
For a growth hacker, every touchpoint matters. Americans have an average of 21 connected devices, and the average U.S. consumer spends 11 hours a day interacting with media across those devices.
In a landscape with decreasing attention spans and higher barriers to building loyalty and trust, it’s all the more important to implement a cross-channel strategy that works.
With growth hacking, you can:
- Reveal new market opportunities through testing: For example, an A/B test might show that one email subject line drives 30% more opens and 50% more conversions than another.
- Squeeze more out of the budget: Drive growth with creative strategies and a wider set of marketing automation and management tools.
- Promote cross-team collaboration between marketing, product, and engineering departments: When teams work together (and everyone agrees on a creative/analytical strategy), it’s easier to craft impactful messages that won’t overpromise and underdeliver.
- Drastically reduce scalability snags: When you prioritize a viral loop and new user acquisition, you’re more likely to successfully build an empire.
We’ll look more at how these important benefits break down in today’s climate.
Fast business growth
Achieving rapid growth in less time is the crux of growth hacking. With every success story born of rapid testing and scaling strategies, more marketers pivoted to growth hacking over more traditional efforts.
For some brands, the numbers have been truly phenomenal. Harry’s famously took a multichannel approach to promote its grooming accessories with personalized emails, an intriguing splash page, and referral marketing. These low-cost methods led to the astonishing accrual of 100,000 email addresses in a week.
Cost-effective marketing
While growth hacking isn’t just for shoestring startups, it does stress smarter spending. With the right low-cost technology, you can implement incremental testing to build brand elements that drive users down the funnel.
You might use Bitly’s marketing tools to track engagement so you can see which language, graphics, links, and offers your audience favors. Or you might focus on micro-influencer marketing, such as podcast authorities in niche markets (ideally those who value authenticity over PPC). Both of these strategies can expand your audience and enhance the customer journey without breaking the bank.
Market changes
By definition, growth hacking must be adaptable to account for current market conditions and consumer behaviors. It stands in direct contrast to traditional marketing, which may take months to develop and even longer to change course.
This is part of why growth hacking has enjoyed popularity across the board; it solves a common problem that all businesses face. Even the biggest conglomerates can remain light on their feet by introducing the right growth hacks. With growth marketing, the strategies are flexible enough to allow for faster course correction.
How does growth hacking work?
Marketers can adapt the growth hacking process for nearly any company or cause. Here, we help you break it down.
Using the growth hacking funnel
Growth hackers often represent the metrics as AAARRR (sometimes seen as AARRR):
- Awareness: The number of people you reach.
- Acquisition: The number of people who visit your website.
- Activation: The number of people who take the brand’s initial action step.
- Retention: The number of people who come back again.
- Revenue: The number of people who pay and how much they spend.
- Referral: The number of people who refer your brand to someone else.
AAARRR starts with defining each stage. For instance, the activation stage could mean posting a comment on social media or providing an email address. The best way to move new customers through the funnel is to speak directly to their concerns or sensibilities so they can’t help but take the next step.
Setting and testing hypotheses
If rapid growth is the destination, testing is the vehicle. Before anything else, you have to define the goals and compile the data. From there, you can start methodically testing each hypothesis, documenting the results, and learning as much from the failures as you do from the successes.
For example, if your target demographic is largely budget-conscious young adults between the ages of 20 and 25, you might stress that your new product is a worthwhile investment in long-term productivity and well-being. If you’re aiming for conversion rate optimization, this may help them justify a purchase when they’re counting their pennies.
Developing iterative processes and scalability
Growth hacking techniques are iterative processes that include testing, measuring, learning, and scaling. Most growth hackers introduce continuous improvements to strategies based on direct and indirect feedback.
Let’s say you offer a loyalty program with a straightforward point system and achieve a 20% sign-up rate. Your next iteration might gamify the program, requiring more work from customers but offering more enticing rewards. If this iteration results in more sign-ups, you can deduce that your customers don’t mind a challenge.
As you iterate, keep scalability in mind. Ask yourself whether the business (including the marketing department) can realistically scale alongside the rapid growth. This can help you keep your growth hacks aligned with business goals and brainstorm how to meet the needs of an expanding customer base.
Integrating with the overall business strategy
Growth hacking strategies need to align with the overall strategy and objectives of the business. While it can be tempting to capitalize on trending topics, you can confuse your audience if they only loosely connect to the brand. Instead, use your creativity and analytics to connect with customers while staying true to the company’s lifetime values.
You should never undertake growth hacking efforts in a vacuum. From product managers to engineers, each team has their own unique perspective about what the company can offer a customer. Bringing in different team members ensures unified growth initiatives that are as cohesive as they are informative.
Take charge of your business growth with creative yet data-driven processes
Growing your business involves more than just growth hacks, but with the right strategies and data-driven processes, you might be surprised at how far you can go.
If you don’t have the time or budget for traditional marketing, it’s important to learn the steps of growth hacking so you stand a better chance of success. If you’re looking for growth hacking tools that support your efforts across platforms, Bitly provides the functionality to assess the efficacy of your campaigns for effective growth.
If you’re looking for long-lasting growth in a short timeframe, get started with Bitly today to give yourself a boost.