Cˋmon, I am an entrepreneur, not an engineer.

“This article about growth hacking is for those working on their tech startups and digital projects. Enjoy!”

So you have just built the best software-based product in the world and now your customers have queued up for a few blocks, haven’t they? A common misconception is to think that you should build your solution, and make it perfect, just the way you envisioned. Then having a big launch party and your product will fly. And why would it not? After all, the perfect solution was built for an existing often critical problem. It would be absolutely logical that everyone having desperately waited for this to be solved would come running. Why wouldn’t they?

Sorry to say but this type of logic is completely flawed. Two principle mistakes were made here. The first one is that building a product without testing your product market fit in a very early stage will lead to a product that nobody wants, no matter how convinced you are of the opposite. Unless your name is Steve Jobs, people are not going to be interested in your software product, because brand sells half of the product.

The second mistake is that most companies still rely on traditional, old-fashioned marketing tactics, school book stuff… Need I say more? This causes most products to fail. Not because people didn’t have the right mentality or there was a lack of money, or because it wasn’t a good product, not even because they were unlucky, they fail because they forgot to present their product in a way that will intrigue and benefit people from the start.

What the ˋhackˋ!

Growth hacking isn’t a techie thing, so what is it?

The principles underlying Growth Hacking are an inherent part of the digital tech industry. Growth hacking is certainly not just some new form of marketing. It is a very all-inclusive methodology aimed at building a self-perpetuating development and marketing machine to make your software or technology successful by achieving user growth, hopefully reaching millions.

It is complicated for sure, and yes you need lots of imagination. The objective is to find the ‘hack’ that will accelerate growth. You have to realise that product development should be an inherent part of the growth hacking strategy. This is because You must build what your users want, not what you want or what you think they want.

The best way to build the user-base is by getting them involved at a very early stage allowing you to learn and understand what they are looking for. Then switch the focus on continuously optimising the product through short development cycles and testing in the real world. Yes indeed, that is what I said. You will have to go through as many creative product iterations until you find “the thing” that makes it spread. Without involving the early audience that tells you what kind of solution they need and what they would be willing to pay for it, you can’t establish a presence in any market.

Growth hacking is developing – or perhaps better said utilising – a continuously evolving mindset to approach the challenges involved in building success.

 

Growth hacking typically means the start of using online strategies because of reach, budget and agility, but it is certainly not limited to that. Any trick that gets you traction is accepted. Your strategy must be based on a tested and proven understanding of your potential clients.

The US Vogue is probably the first to post the name Growth Hacker in 2002 after which it was suddenly picked up in the USA. Even though it’s been practised by the best internet marketers and product managers from Silicon Valley the term is still unknown to many. In Europe, the term is barely used, let alone understood. Let’s change that. Better products not only benefit the business itself, the users benefit equally as well.

Growth Hacker you say? Nah never heard of it.

How to spot a Growth Hacker

Get some binoculars and find the most crowded beach you can find. It’s the guy or girl sitting under the large umbrella, clothes on, a laptop and a cooled soda, some variety of magazine and a phone next to it… Just kiddin. But it is the person you can find anywhere, he/she rather works from a cafe then from an office although he/she typically manages a business unit or a team to achieve the desired success.

So who is this growth hacker?

A growth hacker is that person with multiple talents that threw away the playbook of traditional marketing for a new, logical one. Know your users, and build according to them! This is the most important thing.

He/she is a master of many disciplines, and leverages across them, “pulling” information from behavioural economics, sociology and other disciplines. You could say that growth hacker is the ultimate empathic person regarding the customer desires and the feel of the market, to truly grasp the market and the consumers and then go in for the kill, making them fall in love with the products. It is that mindset and creativity that makes them approach these challenges, and not the playbook full of tools. Growth hackers are to described to be:

• Passionate about achieving success
• Obsessive about product design
• Sensitive about user behaviour
• Possess talent to make a noticeable difference
• Creative in resolving problems
• Bold in trying new things
• Innovative in coming up with solutions
• Curious about understanding user motivation
• Fast thinking ready for any challenge
• Confident to push the limits
• Eye for details understanding the data and analytics
• Knowledgeable about every part of the product
• Satisfied only when users are happy… 😃

A growth hacker relies on using creativity to find a strategy for growth, he/she uses scalable and repeatable methods that are driven by product and inspired by data. Every growth hacker understands data, product, and marketing and lives within the product team with a technical vocabulary and skills to implement whatever he or she wants. Their growth goal is based on marketing but it is driven by product design and their instincts.

The usual suspect: who did it?

A typical misconception about growth hacking is that it is a marketing strategy. Well, it’s not. It’s a process of rapid experimentation across marketing channels to develop a product that will effectively, and efficiently grow a business.

• A growth hacker is not a coder. Indeed a few of the most successful tech companies were certainly driven by growth hacking developers, but that is certainly not a requirement.
• You do not need to be skilled with tools to start. Growth hacking is about a mindset, mentality and the ability to apply tactics. They are testers and learners because they test the market and users and learn from the feedback. Everyone can learn analytics and different tools.
• The most common misconception is probably that growth hackers only use online and social platforms. Of course, leveraging social platforms is the essence, however, there are different stages of growth, and every stage requires a different approach. In the startup stage, they might use social platforms for what is called vampire traffic. Later on, every startup has to build in loops and grow on their own. Good growth hackers see opportunities everywhere.
• Growth hackers are magicians! Haha, I wish… They use a combination of brilliant user experience (UX) and a focused PR strategy to drive growth, it’s difficult, it requires a lot of creativity, tactics and knowledge but they will always find a unique strategy according to channels and target users. It’s not magic, it’s just special.

The guy who did it is the person who has a deep understanding that he or she actually doesn’t know anything until he/she goes out and figures it out.

How the heck does a Growth Hacker do it?

“It’s a kind of magic”

You are asking yourself how do they do it? Well, every product is different and thus, it is important to be aware that it is the creativity and desire to understand the desires of users and target groups that account for success. There are no magic tricks or proven scripts to follow, it is the mindset we spoke about that provides the so-called “script”. Strategies can’t be copied and pasted from one to another product, they need to be constantly changed and diverted towards the users and the market situation.

You must understand that growth doesn’t happen overnight. It is a process in which a growth hacker approaches problems and manages a whole area of factors and features to ensure growth. Getting acquainted with the product, its market, and different types of target areas and consumers.

The product is built according to the hacker’s ability to understand the users and translate that understanding into UX design. It’s not a magic wand.

The execution of a growth hacking strategy is limited by budget, time, and talent. I already implied that the most important characteristic of a growth hacker is creativity, the mindset of approaching and resolving problems.

The mind is their biggest tool, every growth hacker looks beyond SEO or Adwords. The traditional marketing channels do not work well because they are expensive and do not provide any long-term lasting value. They just don’t work well. We are in the age of social users and this provides us with the opportunity to find the right growth strategy and the right product-market fit leading to success. Growth can be explosive, but it can also develop slowly, depending on the type of business, product, etc.

The end goal of every growth hacker is to build a self-perpetuating business model that will be successful. This model is different every time because it follows the desires of users and of the target market. There are a few general rules you should stick too. Do not throw big launch parties, instead, do early informal releases. This allows you to find and connect with the innovators that can give you direction. The questions to ask are:

• Have I connected to the right people in the right market?
• Am I addressing and focussing on the right issues?
• Does the planned functionality make sense?
• What is missing?
• What specific feature will turn this into the killing application?

Finding the target group is key. Then you make sure to listen to them, understand their desires, please them, and learn what they expect of you to before they will start referring. It is important to take is slowly enough allowing you to test your ideas. This process involves a mixture of skills such as innovation, product building, sales, marketing, data analytics, team management and much more. Although Growth hackers are confident in their process, they are not always sure about their ideas because they try out many ideas until they hit the right spot.

Growth Hackers have one more challenge to overcome these days. It’s getting more difficult to get traction on the web because of the flood of information that is thrown at us. Measuring if something works, bracing on through the mounds of data is getting harder and harder. Users are getting tired and uninterested to try new products, no matter how good they may seem.

Convincing users to sign up is the biggest problem faced by every product and startup in the world. There is so much going on, you are not only competing with direct competitors anymore. You are competing with the mass of products that are available and being released every day. Here is where growth hacker stands out of the mass and sends wrapped messages figuring out and reaching the very essence and thoughts of users. He or she finds the best way to present and grow your product by understanding the desires of people and the target consumer.

You too can learn the skills and acquire the experience, just make sure you possess the talents to make users try your product and make them fall in love with it. To some people this just comes naturally, others need to put more effort into it, and some just better find themselves a damn good Growth Hacker to help out.

I like to do some Hackin.

What kind of stuff can I Growth Hack?

A lot of professions can benefit from learning how to growth hack. Entrepreneurs for their Startup businesses; Marketers and product managers in B2C and B2B, Social media experts; Content marketers. Growth hacking can be used in startup businesses when your goal is to grow rapidly. Growth hacking is about optimisation as well as lead generation, it is about long-term perpetual growth. That’s why a true growth hacker cares about keeping his customers happy.

Growth hacking can be used almost everywhere if done properly and by skilled individuals. You could growth hack startup businesses and new tech products. This is the most common use because a startup needs to amaze users and draws them into the story making them trust the brand. Here growth hacking is of utmost importance because when you start a business you need to build a brand, good product plus satisfied users equals a sure thing.

Essentially you can use growth hacking strategies for any type of business. B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer), tech or non-tech. Growth hacking can be applied broadly or very focused. For example, you could just growth hack using just marketing, your content alone or just the engineering of the product. Heck, you can even growth hack your sales by developing a strategy that just makes your sales work much better.

You can growth hack to provide a great customer experience to close bigger deals. Or use it to make it easier to find, define and convert your ideal user and convert them into loyal customers. You can try to define your ideal customer before finding him, but the reality is you don’t really know what your ideal target group is until you try. Use social media to get answers to your questions that will allow you to convert leads into customers or use content to increase awareness and drive traffic of potential clients. Growth hacking can be used almost everywhere, but it has to be done properly by getting to know your users and their desires.

A business goes through two main stages, the startup phase, and the growth phase. Growth hacking is failing a lot of companies because they are using the wrong type of growth hacking in a particular timing. You should not apply the same techniques to the company with a growing customer base and the company that is in its early stages.

In the early stages of a company when you are still searching for the best market fit, and your investment isn’t substantial you need to engineer your product and engage with your potential clients. Forget about the data mining… it is of no use to you. Your user-base is not big enough and growth is engineered through finding your product-market fit.

Later on, you can start to acquire skills to excavate datasets. This works for growing businesses or larger businesses to find new ways of turning those insights into further growth. Make sure to get it right, using the wrong growth hacking strategy can destroy your company.

DIY Growth Hacking.

If you want to be a growth hacker just start… Implement a strategy, learn from it and iterate from there on. You will continue to learn along the way, there is no ultimate knowledge nor a set of books, you need aggressiveness, good knowledge and creativity. As you develop and learn you will encounter new challenges where you will need to learn more, because most growth hackers learn out of a necessity, that is part of the strategy.

True growth hackers will tell you that they work on growth but that they are merely a part of a team. A team that is focussed on increasing growth by combining design, analytics, engineering and marketing. Remember you do not need to be a coder. The hacker part refers to the ability to solve growth problems and not the ability to code. Of course, understanding of how products are engineered is a big plus.

I am guessing you were hoping for lists of todos in this article and perhaps names of tools that you could use to start growth hacking yourself. The thing is, that list doesn’t exist. It’s all about the mindset.

Growth hackers inspire growth by building a growth engine that can’t fail because it’s the users who are growing it.

 

Once you understand that you can start building a strategy, thinking about how you could implement a growth hacking and the tools you use to execute and measure strategies.

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If you want to know more, send me a message. I will be writing more on growth hacking by looking at individual skills and roles, techniques, and how to enable that mindset that is much needed. This is just an intro blog, see you soon for more on learning to growth hack.

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