Growth Hacking: 5 Key Techniques

Growth hacking is a methodology that uses digital technology to grow your business. There are five key techniques for successful growth hacking:

• Hack the news cycle.
• Hack your product.
• Hack your customer acquisition.
• Hack your messaging,
• and finally hacking PRs through content marketing.

1. Hack the news cycle

Growth hackers are always looking for new ways to use content marketing to get their product out on Reddit, Hacker News, or Inc.com – platforms where many early adopters hang out and look for new products and services. By getting an article published in one of these places, you’re able to tap into a whole new audience who may have never heard of you and grow your business.

The Great Debate: Word Count for SEO vs Content Quality?

2. Hack your product

Growth hacking is best suited to tech-based products or can benefit from an online community (think about how Snapchat works). By looking at other successful companies in the same industry and then devising innovative ways to improve their model.

“Product marketing [growth hacking] is taking a lean startup approach,” says Andrew Chen, growth hacker at Uber and former blogger on growth issues for three years. “Never rest on your laurels – always test new ways to get more users.” Growth marketers must stay one step ahead of everyone else in the market, refining their product before their competitors do.

3. Hack your customer acquisition

Customer acquisition is one of the most crucial parts of growth hacking – making sure that you don’t overlook it means that you could be missing out on thousands of potential customers. By leveraging social media, content marketing, and SEO, you can double down on winning users interested in your product.

“The best growth hacks are the ones that simultaneously make a product better and expose it to more people, said Sean Ellis, first marketer at Dropbox and Inbox.

How To Effectively Use Quotes In Blog Posts

4. Hack your messaging

Your messaging is fundamentally limited by your ability to get eyeballs on your content (thus exposing others to it). You can use growth hacking to improve your messaging to get it in front of the right people. Airbnb’s pitch deck to raise money from Paul Graham is a good example of this – they re-appropriated an existing slide deck and added their twists to stand out and get attention.

“Some companies like Dropbox have had success with PR, but it’s not always going to be the right strategy,” says Chen. “Growth hackers need to think of creative ways to get users without spending on marketing and PR.”

5. Hack your PRs through content marketing

Last but certainly not least is using content marketing as a way to boost press for your product or service. By creating content that adds value and is targeted at potential customers, you have a chance to grow your business by tapping into the blogosphere. In addition, by submitting articles regularly (and using SEO to get them ranked), you can drive traffic through from Google or other major search engines, thereby exposing yourself to more potential users – it’s all about getting your product in front of people who aren’t aware of it yet.

SEO That Pays Off: 7 Easy Steps To Successfully Ranking Your Website

“What this hack entails is being ubiquitous,” said Chen. “It’s important to engage with the community and create a dialogue – responding on sites where your users are spending time, like Facebook and Twitter.”

Conclusion

Growth hacking is a methodology that uses digital technology to grow your business. Successful growth hacking can be used to grow your business and is especially effective for tech-based or online companies. By getting published, you can expose your business to a whole new audience.