Growth Hacking is a digital marketing technique that help start up technology companies acquire users rapidly. Company like facebook, Airbnb, Tinder, Spotify, Uber, Dropbox and Evernote, l have used this technique.
Growth Hacking is pretty simple, the idea is to take customers from other establish network. For example Facebook users, initially was Harvard students, Spotify users , came from the Facebook community and Uber users came from people's smartphone.
In Growthacking, this method is call OPN (other people network) .
Start-up Technology company, like any start up, always lack funding and to receive seed capital, they will need to prove that their product will work in the technology sphere. One way they do it is by going after the customers where they are, and for most of them, they customers are on social media, Amazon, Craigslist, Google. Hence the term OPM, they have to leverage other people network to get their customers.
Growth hacking is like guerilla marketing but done online.
AirBnB, in order to find users, had to hack into Craigslist, and allow their user to simultaneously list their house on both network. At the time, Craigslist has about 10 million users. For Spotify, they allow they users to sign in with their facebook account and to show to their friends what music they are currently listening too.
Growth Hacking have been around for about 20 years on the internet but they were not a name for it. According to Wikipedia, Sean Ellis state the term for the first time in 2010 and the term went viral. Sean Ellis has help a lot of start-up with this practice, the notable one are Dropbox and Evernote.
He also came up with another idea call product/Market fit which is the base for successful growth hacking campaign.
To be successful at growth hacking, company need to build a product that solves a customer problem. The product needs to fit the market. The idea is great products will make happy customers which in turn will refer to other friends.
When a company find a product that customers actually want. They will move on to the next phases of grwothacking. In other words they will have to find creative online tactics to acquired and retain new users. Some techniques are simple to implement, but others techniques might require more technical know-how. A growthacker wear two hats one for marketing and the other for engineering.
Marketer who used growth hacking technique is called growth hackers. They usually are software engineer who have a marketing mindset or a marketer who know about computer programming. It can also helps to know about the human sciences, like psychology and sociology, since users are mostly people.
Marketer can learn a lot from growth hacking. For example, In the past, Marketer use to make marketing plan for products or services that were already design by the research and development department without their inputs. Growhacking have shown that it is very important for marketer to participate in the design of the product with the R&D department by telling them what the customers need.
Many customers are spending a lot of time online and we will need new tools to market to them and I think growth hacking is an important marketing technique for the digital consumers.
References
AARSTOL, STEPHAN. "Growth Hacking 101: Leveraging Other People's Networks." Inc.com. INC, 31 Oct. 2014. Web. 03 Nov. 2014.
NEWLANDS, MURRAY. "4 Unbeatable Growth Hacking Strategies for Startups." Inc.com. INC, 6 Aug. 2014. Web. 3 Nov. 2014
Zahid, Mohamed. "What Is Growth Hacking? PART II: Growth Hacking Grows Up by HootSuite." Hootsuite Social Media Management What Is Growth Hacking PART II Growth Hacking Grows Up Comments. Hootsuite, 2012. Web. 03 Nov. 2014.
Frantz Augustin is a marketing Student at Wichita State University.
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