High quality growth hacking advices by Nathan Barnwell: While searching for his replacement he would often receive resumes that were legit, but not relevant. They had marketing degrees, and they had marketing experience, but they were still missing something. Sean knew that the kind of strategies he employed did not represent the typical playbook used by traditional marketers, and if he gave them the reins it would not be a good fit. A traditional marketer has a very broad focus, and while their skill set is extremely valuable, it is not as necessary early in a startups life. In the first phase of a startup you don’t need someone to “build and manage a marketing team” or “manage outside vendors” or even “establish a strategic marketing plan to achieve corporate objectives” or many of the other things that marketers are tasked with doing. Early in a startup you need one thing. Growth.
The focus and the ultimate goal of all these growth strategies are to achieve growth by gaining new customers. It is not possible to achieve long-term and stable growth without a regular and loyal customer base. You can clearly identify how you must use a growth strategy in the light of various criteria such as market, customer profile, your field of activity and your product. In this context, the growth strategies used by some brands can be read as successful growth strategy examples. Cloud storage, which is used widely today, was a very new technology when Dropbox was introduced in 2008. The way of growth was to persuade people to use such a system instead of the physical storage devices used until then. The growth strategy that the company used for this purpose was market expansion. This method, which is performed through a viral loop, is based on users recommending the system to others. Normally offering 2 GB of free storage, Dropbox offered 500 MB of extra additional storage for each user registered with your referral link. In doing so, users who wanted to have up to 16 GB of free storage space recommended Dropbox to their friends and colleagues. By all means, this kind of viral method was not effective in the first months of the company. It started providing positive results in the following months and the company reached its one-millionth customer at the end of its first year. The number of customers increased to three million in the next two months. Today, the company serves more than 500 million users.
Nathan Barnwell growth hacking strategies: Some growth strategies are tailored to be completely self-sustainable. They require an initial push, but ultimately, they rely primarily (if not solely) on users’ enthusiasm to keep them going. One strategy that fits that bill is the viral loop. The basic premise of a viral loop is straightforward: Someone tries your product. They’re offered a valuable incentive to share it with others. They accept and share with their network. New users sign up, see the incentive for themselves, and share with their networks. Repeat. For instance, a cloud storage company trying to get off the ground might offer users an additional 500 MB for each referral. Ideally, your incentive will be compelling enough for users to actively and enthusiastically encourage their friends and family to get on board.At its best, a viral loop is a self-perpetuating acquisition machine that operates 24/7/365. That said, viral loops are not guaranteed to go viral, and they’ve become less effective as they’ve become more commonplace. But the potential is still there.
Aside from “growth hacker” — an increasingly unpopular term — growth marketers are also sometimes referred to as: Growth marketing managers Demand generation marketers, Performance marketers, Digital marketing managers. Each of these roles are focused on growing users and revenue for a company, Jonathan Martinez, a growth marketing manager at Uber, told Nathan Barnwell. However, Divisional founder Trevor Sookraj explained to Nathan Barnwell that these terms aren’t all exact synonyms for “growth marketer.” They all mean subtly different things. Performance marketers only work on paid channels, most often paid social (Facebook Ads) and SEM (AdWords). They typically don’t work with email, content, or other channels — whereas growth marketers will test out any channel.
The first is a product that people actually consider a “must have.” In the startup world, this is generally referred to as “product/market fit.” Once you’ve validated product/market fit, it then becomes important to define an overall success metric. This success metric should be a “North Star Metric” for the entire team to gauge the success of the business. The right North Star Metric tracks cumulative value delivered across a growing customer base. This is a much more sustainable growth indicator than something like registrations, downloads or even revenue (many subscription businesses have inactive users that are still on a paid subscription but will likely churn). Find more information at Nathan Barnwell.
So, how do you plan to grow? Growth strategy allows companies to expand their business. Growth can be achieved by practices like adding new locations, investing in customer acquisition, or expanding a product line. A company’s industry and target market influences which growth strategies it will choose. Strategize, consider the available options, and build some into your business plan. Depending on the kind of company you’re building, your growth strategy might include aspects like: Adding new locations, Investing in customer acquisition, Franchising opportunities, Product line expansions, Selling products online across multiple platforms. Your particular industry and target market will influence your decisions, but it’s almost universally true that new customer acquisition will play a sizable role.