Growth Hacking is a term widely used nowadays, but what does it really mean? Growth Hacking allows us to identify the company’s growth levers and develop business generation. Such an objective requires an understanding of marketing, technical, and sales mechanisms.
What is Growth Hacking? What are its objectives? How to implement a good Growth Hacking strategy?
In this article, we will define what Growth Hacking is, understand how it works, and grasp its various limitations.
What is Growth Hacking?
Growth Hacking is a term that refers to an innovative marketing approach focused on growth. This concept was popularized by Sean Ellis, former marketer at Dropbox and LogMeIn.
The term is to be distinguished from Growth Marketing, which is a more global marketing approach and includes Growth Hacking. To put it simply, the Growth Hacker implements operational strategies focused on efficiency, performance, and short-term results. The Growth Marketer, on the other hand, will prefer a long-term vision, also focused on sustainable and lasting growth.
Growth Hacking is based on the use of unconventional methods borrowed from technology, marketing, and sales to optimize the sales pipeline and achieve the goals of companies or startups. We talk about growth “hacks”.
Growth Hacking techniques aim to rapidly increase the number of users of a service or product and generate more customers.
To achieve this, the Growth Hacker must be creative, ingenious, and possess an analytical mind.
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What are the objectives of Growth Hacking?
As seen previously, the main objective of Growth Hacking is to rapidly increase the number of customers for a service or product. To achieve this, it uses original and unconventional methods.
To reach its macro objective, the Growth Hacker must set sub-objectives:
- Set the right KPIs;
- Develop original and effective marketing campaigns;
- Establish their targeting, segmentation, and positioning strategy;
- Maintain a short-term, ROI-driven approach.
Growth Hacking therefore accelerates a company’s growth based on a scientific approach, reliable data sources, and by testing different scenarios: this is why we talk about test & learn and A/B testing.
Quick tip 💡
At LaGrowthMachine, our tool guides you throughout your strategy with advice and techniques such as defining your objectives, best practices for B2B prospecting, etc…
For this reason, the concept and profession are often associated with the startup model, which aims to be agile and seeks innovative solutions for rapid growth, generating business at the lowest cost.
How to implement a good Growth Hacking strategy?
Implementing a Growth Hacking strategy is often very effective. However, one must know how to go about it. This is what we will explore in this section.
Establishing a good Growth Hacking strategy generally involves a few key steps:
1. Identify objectives
2. Determine distribution channels
3. Target the right users
4. Find the right message
LaGrowthMachine supports you throughout your campaign: from setting up your sequences to copywriting, you can ask for help from our support at any time:
5. Activate the acquisition strategy
Don’t panic, we will go into detail on each of these steps to explain how to proceed.
Step 1: Identify objectives
This step involves defining your scope of action. To do this, you will need to select several KPIs to track. These KPIs will depend on your objectives, your websites, and your business model.
The most common KPIs are: acquisition rate, retention rate, conversion rate, revenue, or the number of active users.
Once you have identified the KPIs to track, you will need to set achievable short, medium, and long-term goals based on the resources available.
Be careful, as Growth Hackers, don’t forget that your objective will necessarily be short-term.
Step 2: Determine acquisition channels
The choice of acquisition channels depends on your target audience. Your goal will therefore be to reach them in the right place, at the right time, and with the right message.
To do this, you will need to:
- Identify the needs and habits of your target audience;
- Determine which channels they are most likely to use;
- Analyze the presence of your direct and indirect competitors on these channels;
- Test different scenarios to find the most effective one.
The main acquisition channels are:
- SEO: it allows for generating sales leads effectively and securely, but it is a very long-term channel. Therefore, we do not recommend opting for SEO in a performance and speed-oriented strategy.
- SEA: it allows for generating traffic quickly and in a targeted manner, while controlling a budget quite finely. It is a very effective strategy, but some sectors are saturated in terms of price.
- Emailing: programmed automatically or personalized, these strategies allow for generating B2B leads with little effort and at different levels.
- Social media: between social ads and customer prospecting (like prospecting on LinkedIn, for example), social networks represent very good opportunities for implementing a Growth Hacking strategy.
- Display Advertising: it is mainly used for brand image or awareness objectives, and less for conversion. Not necessarily easy to fit into the sole objective of short-term conversion. However, it can be activated in parallel with the other channels mentioned above to improve their performance.
- All outbound channels: telephone prospecting, purchase of lead databases, automated prospecting bots, etc. Unlike the channels mentioned above, the goal is not to attract the prospect to you, but to go to them.
LaGrowthMachine can help you combine actions from multiple channels at the same time (Email, LinkedIn, Twitter, …).
To do this, you can create your sequences manually, or use predefined templates.
Step 3: Target the right users
The principle in this step is to avoid wasting your time or budget. Therefore, it is essential to find the best prospects, i.e., those most likely to convert.
To do this, you will need to:
- Define acceptability criteria;
- Sort prospects according to these criteria;
- Qualify leads based on conversion potential.
These criteria will depend entirely on the business model and objectives you have determined previously. Thus, they will differ from one industry to another, and even from one company to another.
Step 4: Find the right message
The goal of this step is to capture the prospect’s attention by offering them an offer that interests them and meets their needs.
To do this, it will be beneficial to:
- Determine the prospect’s needs;
- Analyze existing products/services on the market;
- Develop a compelling pitch to highlight your offer;
- Test different message formats and iterate as you go.
Quick tip 💡
The message you send to your prospect must be impactful, clear, and precise. It should make the prospect want to know what you have to offer, without discouraging them with an overly commercial pitch.
Depending on the channel you use, the message will not be the same. At LaGrowthMachine, we regularly advise our clients on copywriting, and based on our findings, here’s what we’ve observed:
- If you send a message by Email: you can write longer messages, a bit more formal and structured (signature, subject, multi-part development)…
- If you send a message on LinkedIn: you can write shorter messages, a bit less formal, but a bit catchier.
Step 5: Launch your acquisition strategy
Once you have determined the first four elements of your growth hacking strategy, it’s time to take action! To do this, you will need to implement a solid and effective acquisition strategy.
To achieve this, make sure to closely follow the various objectives and budgets you have set beforehand.
While multichannel is very effective (which is what we do daily at LaGrowthMachine), we recommend not launching on all acquisition channels at once. It is indeed preferable to start with one or two channels, and gradually add others as your strategy evolves. Similarly, it is important not to hesitate to test different messages and formats to find those that work best for your company.
Conclusion
As we have seen, Growth Hacking is therefore an effective strategy for rapidly developing your business. However, it requires a certain investment in terms of time and money. Thus, it is important to carefully target the different elements before launching.
The most important thing is to test all your actions such as cold calling or emails to find the best combinations for your business. Indeed, what works for one company will not necessarily work for another. It is therefore by testing and iterating that you will be able to develop the most effective outbound sales strategy for your business!