What are the most effective ways to build a growth hacking team?

1 Define your growth objectives

Before you start hiring or forming a growth hacking team, you need to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve and how you will measure it. You need to define your growth objectives, such as increasing revenue, conversions, retention, referrals, or engagement. You also need to identify your key performance indicators (KPIs), such as cost per acquisition, lifetime value, churn rate, or net promoter score. These objectives and KPIs will guide your growth hacking team and help you prioritize your experiments and initiatives.

2 Hire or train growth hackers

A growth hacking team needs people who have the skills, mindset, and attitude of a growth hacker. A growth hacker is someone who can combine data analysis, creativity, and technical skills to find and test innovative ways to grow a business. A growth hacker is also someone who is curious, agile, and willing to learn from failures and feedback. You can either hire growth hackers who have proven experience and portfolio in your industry or niche, or you can train your existing employees or partners who have the potential and interest to become growth hackers.

3 Build a cross-functional team

A growth hacking team should not be isolated or siloed from the rest of the organization. It should be composed of people from different functions and backgrounds, such as marketing, product, engineering, design, sales, customer service, and so on. A cross-functional team can leverage the diverse perspectives, skills, and knowledge of its members to generate and execute more ideas and solutions. A cross-functional team can also collaborate and communicate better with other stakeholders and departments to align the growth strategy with the overall business vision and values.

4 Establish a growth process

A growth hacking team needs a structured and systematic process to run experiments and measure results. A growth process typically involves four stages: ideation, prioritization, testing, and analysis. In the ideation stage, the team generates and collects as many hypotheses and ideas as possible to achieve the growth objectives. In the prioritization stage, the team evaluates and ranks the ideas based on their potential impact, feasibility, and resources required. In the testing stage, the team implements and launches the ideas as minimum viable products (MVPs) or prototypes to test their validity and effectiveness. In the analysis stage, the team collects and analyzes the data and feedback from the tests to determine the success or failure of the ideas and learn from them.

5 Foster a growth culture

A growth hacking team should not only follow a growth process, but also cultivate a growth culture. A growth culture is one that encourages experimentation, innovation, learning, and collaboration. A growth culture is also one that embraces failure, feedback, and iteration. To foster a growth culture, you need to provide your growth hacking team with the necessary tools, resources, and support to run experiments and learn from them. You also need to reward your team for their efforts and achievements, and celebrate their wins and failures. Moreover, you need to share your insights and learnings with the rest of the organization and involve them in your growth journey.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?