You have probably heard the phrase “growth hacking” when you talk with your friends who are conducting business, especially those in the America.
So what is growth hacking?
Growth hacking can be defined as a marketing strategy from startups which use critical thinking, creativity and social metrics to sell their products and gain exposure in the shortest time as possible.
Growth hacking sounds a lot like marketing in disguise, but most of the time growth hackers are focusing on “growing the business” instead of “marketing” the product and service.
As a new startup, what growth hacking you can do for your business?
1. Integration with established business
If you start small and you are alone in your business, you know that it will take a huge amount of time before your company can grow to become a big one.
Hence, you should go out and seek opportunity to integrate to other already successful businesses and resource. Partner with them, use their resources for your business but do not become overly dependent on them.
2. Sell before your product is complete
A good example of company using this method is Plastc.
They made you to pre-order and pay for their product even before the product is complete. This method is also getting popular in video games industry whereby game developers will release and start selling the game even it’s still in ‘Beta’ or ‘Alpha’ stage.
By using this strategy, you will get a better cash flow and the capital you need to keep your business going and not wasting too much time and resources in developing alone.
3. Use user-generated content
Take a look at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Amazon. Is most of the content in their website generated by themselves or the users? The answer is – their users.
You know the limit of yourself and your company, you can never generate so much content on your own in a short time. So this is how you can utilize others to get as much content as you want.
4. Social campaigns and virality
Thing spread faster than disease is viral news. When you are investing in content, try to aim for virality. If your products or content goes viral, your business will get very popular in a short time.
Videos, infographics and decent blog posts can be your valuable viral materials. Keep sharing it and posting in social media, expose your content to as many people as possible.
To get people to share your content, other than posting interesting topics, you can also offer some incentives.
When you get them to share, the spread of message will go very fast.
5. Invest marketing budget into users’ benefits
Instead of spending a lot of marketing budget in pay per click or newspaper ads, you can use this money to cover up sales losses, such as selling your product below the cost price, or giving coupons that give huge amount of discount.
Make sure you limit those discount or coupons to a specific number which is tally with your budget. Those who get to enjoy the discount will spread the news like mad, and those who didn’t get will learn about your business and company name. Either way, you win.
Success doesn’t happen overnight. With growth hacking, you also need determination, persistence and passion to take your business onto a whole new level.
Sanz Teoh
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