Growth Hacking is another buzzword to add to the list, as it has become the buzzword in the field of Digital Marketing and specifically in Startups.
If we analyze the meaning of the term growth hacking we can guess what it is about: growth means growth, virality and hacking, it comes from hacking, whose description is as a programmer who provides creative solutions to solve real-life problems.
What is Growth Hacking? Definition of Growth Hacking
Growth Hacking is a discipline that encompasses processes, programming and marketing strategies that has been adapted in startups to seek a rapid and notorious increase in the volume of users, or income, or impacts, of our company, but with the minimum expense and possible effort, using the minimum of resources, so the techniques used must be extremely creative.
But a problem arises and that is that ethics can sometimes disappear, since it is very easy to get carried away and try to get more users, even if the strategies are not entirely legal. Therefore, the price of getting users cannot be any price, it is important not to exceed this line and maintain a balance between what we need and what we must do to keep the reputation of our product or service healthy.
How is a Growth Hacker?
Currently there is no specific certification for the role that growth hackers fulfill, but in practice they are people with a professional profile that combines marketing and programming skills.
A growth hacker must have the ability to flip ideas on how to promote a brand and come up with new ways to observe and engage with the market, and then draw on the ingenuity of the market to grow with few resources.
Common Qualities That Growth Hacekers Must Have
Analytical
A growth hacker is, above all, very analytical. The first thing that a professional of this type does is analyze everything that the startup is doing now, calculate the value of these and what results are being obtained with them.
Then he wonders why some actions work better than others in order to enhance those strengths and make the most of those channels through which the startup gets more downloads, users, registrations, etc. Look for the key metric and target to analyze success and know when to discard something or persevere.
Creative
This characteristic is key for a Growth Hacker because their main intention is to look for new formulas to grow, therefore, if everyone does the same, their growth capacity will be limited, so creativity and the ability to invent are essential new formulas and strategies.
Curious
A growth hacker is also extremely curious. He is always looking for new techniques to achieve better results. He has lateral thinking, which leads him to investigate everything to nourish himself with new ideas.
Multi-disciplinary
He is a multifaceted person, with knowledge in different areas. He is not a programmer as such, nor a designer, nor is he a salesperson, but he knows a little about everything.
Mentally Agile
The growth hacker wants to see if his ideas work quickly. He analyzes everything, but he doesn’t like paralysis and spending too much time on each analysis, he feels that then he loses agility in launching. Namely; analyze, but quickly.
What is the Growth Hacking strategy?
Growth hacking is effective, but it is not a magical solution, in fact, to obtain good results, it is necessary to carry out the following process:
- Investigate if your product fits in the market. This step is essential for a promotion strategy to work. So the first step is to invest in the product to make it as competent as possible.
- Balance between the relationship of functionality and marketing. In this way, the very use of the product is integrated with the promotion strategy.
- Make the product go viral. The next step is to climb positions and try to viralize the product, so that it circulates from word of mouth and more and more people begin to know about it.
- Loyalty customers. For this we must make an improvement of the initial offer. When we already have the first batch of users, we must look for strategies that build long-term loyalty and improve the attractiveness of the product.
- Question everything. Once the process is finished, the next step would be to start over. A good growth hacker is never satisfied, they analyze the results, ask existing users and in general, stay alert to avoid being caught up by the competition.