Growth Hacking

I have two passions that I spend a lot of time on one is marketing and the second is my personal blog on sportsmerits.com, and over the upcoming blogs I will be combining both of these passions. I frequently get asked about different marketing subjects and I hope to satisfy both audiences explaining marketing tactics while in some cases leveraging sports examples. Tonight I am starting with the basics behind the concept of Growth Hacking.

Expanding Your Brand with Growth Hacking

Traditionally, companies have assigned the job of getting the word out about their product to the marketing department, men and women whose job it is to create advertising and otherwise promote the company brand. However, in the modern business era of small start-ups in staunch competition with one another, you may find yourself in need of a growth hacker to supplement traditional marketing practices. Growth hacking is something marketers who want to remain competitive in the modern age have been doing for some time, but it was not until 2010 that this new method of marketing was identified and given the attention it was due.

What is Growth Hacking?

Growth hacking is a type of marketing that is focused exclusively on expanding a business quickly. The goal of a growth hacker is to get the name of the business in front of as many people as possible to build brand awareness. This is accomplished through a wide range of marketing strategies, many of which are often applied at once until the growth hacker can determine which strategies work best.

How Can Growth Hacking Help Your Business?

In the early stages of a start-up or small business, capital is often in short supply. It is critical that the business build its customer base as quickly as possible so that it can begin to take in revenue. Growth hackers pride themselves on raising awareness of a brand extremely quickly so you can begin to make money.

How to Be a Growth Hacker

Growth hackers may be traditional marketers or they may come from another line of work entirely. The thing that unites all growth hackers is a passion for growing a brand and creative ideas for getting the brand out there. Growth hackers take a scatter shot approach to marketing, but they also pay close attention to analytics and other data so they can know which of their ideas are working and which need to be retooled.

How to Grow Your Business

Growth hackers recommend growing your business through a series of marketing experiments. First, determine exactly what you want to accomplish with your marketing campaign, then deploy one or more marketing strategies online or in the real world. Keep track of how many new customers each strategy brings in, then keep and refine the ones that are successful while getting rid of the ones that don’t work as well. Repeat this method until you have an unbeatable marketing strategy for growth.

Growth Hacker or Traditional Marketer?

Growth hacking and traditional marketing do no have to be at odds with each other. In fact, you may want to have both types of workers promoting your brand. Marketing executives can focus on advertising, building a brand identity, and managing the brand, while growth hackers can focus exclusively on growing the brand and bringing in more customers.

Growth hacking doesn’t require any specialized training, though individuals who are passionate about data tend to succeed more easily. All it takes is a dedication to growing your brand and some novel ideas for getting the word out.