Growth Hacking is hotter than anything on the internet. Many(All) startups ultimately reache a point, where they start funding growth hacks for one night success. At first like first aid, they start doing it by themselves. Unfortunately, only few of them could get anything hardly.
Moreover, I know many founders and CEO, who start doing it even before launching the product.
That doesn’t end there, sometimes people start trying anything they find on Quora or any other marketing websites. Ultimately, they kill their billion dollar idea just because their English is good enough to understand the suggestion.
And so on… list will never last that you know well too.
What’s Growth Hacking Actually?
OK! Lets come to the point. The fact is the actual rule of growth hacking is: There is no rule. So, the hacks behind the growth of any successful startup completely depend on its product and market.
Whenever, any smart marketer suggests any way, they actually mean “this is the TECHNIQUE, now optimize it accordingly to your product and market.
P.S Do This Before Thinking About Growth Hacking.
Do Product Market Fit Research
You have either made a new product or invented something unique in existing product. So, there is very low chance that you can fit your amazing product in the existing market.
So, first thing first go and find the real crowd which may show interest in your product/service. The Most accurate crowd will cut half of your marketing efforts and budget of course.
Take Away: Go and fit your product with most relevant crowd you can.
Market Fit Resources:
It Begins with Product Market Fit
Product/Market Fit: What it really means, How to Measure it, and Where to find it
Optimise The Website for SEO
I personally know 9 out of every 10 startups who don’t consider the power of The Google, Yahoo and other search engines. You know! these have more potential than any other expensive or smart marketing techniques (Growth Hacking) of this universe.
Fortunately, its not a rocket science, or maybe not easy as pie. But, few hours a day effort of your marketing team has power to bring millions of eyeballs in one few months.
It can bet its not bad to try it, almost all startups take at least one calendar year to fail.
Take Away: Go and Optimize your startup website fully for SEO.
SEO Resources:
Build a Solid Social Presence
Yes! I know you can’t ignore “How Super Power Social Media is!” Social media has now reached billions in number of active people per month. Think if you can get just a small fraction!
You can build a large and active audience who can be your paying customer anytime. Strategically, it depends on the selection of perfect social media channels and better content you publish.
Take Always: Finally build an attractive and engaging social media profile of your startup.
Social Media Resources:
Social Media Marketing Resources Kit.
The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media.
The Complete Guide To Global Social Media Marketing.
How To Create A Social Media Marketing Plan In 6 Steps.
Getting Started With Social Media: A Resource Guide.
Create a Perfect Startup Blog
Blog is your just like guest room of your core business. People of different or similar mind set come here. Just like hot coffee, you serve them a great content that actually make them to become your paying customer.
Blog brings some extra and very targeted set of audience who are closely related to your startup/business. They are just few steps before being your paying customers. Just like SEO its not a rocket science, but it requires a dedicate team to build an active and powerful blog.
Take Away: Create your startup blog from scratch and make it the guest room of your business website.
Blogging Resources:
16 Top Tips from Blogging Experts for Beginners.
The Marketer’s Guide to Blogging.
The Complete Guide to Building Your Blog Audience.
Rocket Fuel The Powerful Email Marketing.
Email Marketing is another powerful way to grow your startup. Who doesn’t know email blast used by LinkedIn? Actually, email marketing shouldn’t be avoided anyway.
Sending a better email makes people more personal towards your startup. It has huge potential to take your startup further to the next level.
Take Away: Build a great email marketing strategy and collect real email addresses.
Email Marketing Resources:
A Beginner’s Guide to Successful Email Marketing.
The Ultimate Guide To Successful Email Marketing.
Optimize All Paid Channels even You Don’t Use!
Advertisement has its own power to bring highly targeted and potential rich people on your website. In most cases its dangerous, that can burn all your money without any result. So do it wisely and properly.
But if its done in the right way, this can bring a result better than any other ways. AdWords and Facebook are most popular and both have high optimization space. Optimise and try it before start growth hacking. You can optimise other ad channels before start growth hacking.
I found, in some cases, it gives better and cheaper result than smart growth hacking.
Take Away: Create paid channels to give it a try, but don’t relay on it for your the growth of your startup.
Ads Resources:
How to Create a Profitable Google AdWords Campaign (from Scratch).
The beginner’s guide to Google Adwords.
How to Use Google AdWords: A Simple Setup Tutorial.
Jonloomer An Ultimate Blog to Learn By Doing Facebook Advertising.
Streamline The Content Seeding
Now you have built your own startup marketing machine. This is not enough, that was just first step towards marketing of your startup. Now you will need to fuel up the machine to get actual benefit. And the fuel is highly targeted content written by some smart people. (I never prefer interns for this great job, but its OK if you can’t do it without them)
So, now for the growing marketing results you have to make an action plan to create content to feed all marketing channels.
For SEO: create highly targeted keyword rich content for page.
For blog: Create problem solving copies.
For Email: Create nice email with clickable subject line.
For social media: Create sharable and highly engaging content and so on.
Take Away: Never forget to create marketing content in advance for next one week.
Content Marketing Resources:
22 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue [Infographic]
6 Tips for Creating Content That Spreads Naturally.
30 Tips For Creating Content that Gets Read, Shared and Talked About at Parties.
And last not least thing to do before growth hacking!
Go Offline and Shout Loudly.
Don’t forget to go offline to tell real people about your innovation and hard work. It has fire catching potential to spread word of mouth. It works many time, if not you will not loose anything like you did in case of paid channel last night.
Bottom Line:
So, growth hacking is basically next level of marketing. At first market your startup using above techniques in smarter way. Then introduce your startup with Growth Hacking to take it to the next level.
Moreover, at first build a fundamental marketing machine so that, it would retain all hunted customers and fans of your startup through growth hacking.
How are you growing your startup, are you doing growth hacking with or without marketing machine? Let’s have real people conversation bellow in comment.
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