What is Growth Hacking for Beginners? - Detailed Review

You are here because you just heard the term Growth Hacking/Marketing (buzz word) and how it is different from traditional ways of marketing? or you want to learn more about growth marketing. 

Yes Growth Hacking is Growth Marketing

So let's start with the basics;

Defining Growth Marketing

Bookish Definition

“Growth Marketing is the process of designing and conducting experiments to optimize and improve the results of a target area”

Don’t we all wish that? 

Growth marketing in simple term is full-funnel marketing that focusses on optimizing the campaign funnel by doing extensive research, constant experimentations, implementing A/B tests of every kind and learn from it. 

Wait a minute ….

You’ll probably be thinking how is it different than what I am already doing.

Basically, because of the advent of digital over the years marketing has evolved from traditional ways of marketing to growth marketing. 

Okay but then ….

How is Growth Marketing Different than Traditional Marketing?

 Traditional Marketing vs. Growth Marketing

Growth Hacking or Growth Marketing focusses on the Full-Funnel of Consumer Journey. 

whereas Traditional Marketing only used to and still focusses on creating top of the funnel awareness by using a shotgun (an idiom chill ??) approach and expecting consumers will convert. 

and YES we can call Growth Hacking/Marketing Rifle Approach.

Those who don’t know what Full Funnel is;

Full Funnel is a term used to depict the marketing funnel of any brand from Awareness: top of the funnel (TOFU) to Conversion: bottom of the funnel (BOFU) and beyond converting them. 

The consumer journey is a process that typically most of the buyers takes through before converting to your business.

Why is Growth Marketing important?

Why not???

You must have heard the below quote a gazillion times in your marketing classes, conferences and training;

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.

We have all been there… 

John Wanamaker was right about one thing here that we are not 100% sure about which part of our investments are getting wasted.

Growth marketing tends to answer the above statement or should I say tends to make it simpler for us to understand. 

Secondly, it does not only focus on getting more leads or acquisitions for your business but also focusses on the life beyond getting a conversion and that is to retain that consumer and then aiming to make that person a happy consumer so that they refer you as well. Positive word of mouth will act as a fluid across the consumer journey because it will build the trust of the audience resulting in a massive decrease in your over CPA (Cost per acquisition). 

Thirdly, digital gives you the leverage to make changes to the campaign along the way unlike traditional marketing where you have to right in the first time because making changes to traditional marketing has a high cost, takes a lot of time and effort. 

For growth marketing, you are constantly testing different hypothesis along the way so you can validate or dismiss your hypothesis. In both cases, you need to document the learning and use that learning for your future campaigns across channels. 

Quick Tips for Testing

Do extensive research to develop those hypotheses and constantly run experiments. 

You will learn a lot from the experiments to make sure to observe consumer behaviour and responses. 

Always focus on goals that really matter to your business and contribute to your business goal rather than follow the usual wish list of your client or your upper management. 

Some of the learnings might not stay relevant throughout the years so you need to be vigilant of the digital media ecosystem of your brand, trends, consumer behaviour and digital media landscape of your markets. 

Keep a close eye on your competition as well. You do not always need to make those tests your self to learn from it.

All of this will help you get consistently better and improve what you are always doing that is why it is called growth marketing. 

What skills are essential for Growth Marketing?

1. Understanding how channels work? They should be fast learners. You need to teach them to be hungry and that is not difficult if you can develop the right culture around.

2. Analytical capabilities — extract data, analyze and interpret it. They need to understand numbers, pick insights from it and interpret results. So he should have hands-on experience and technical skills of excel, SQL and pivot tables.

3. Strategic thinking & project management — How do you observe information? Do you understand the consumer journey? 

Who can be a Growth Marketeer?

You need T-shaped marketing people that are excellent in one thing and knows baseline information of everything. But need to be a specialist in one thing at least. They can be good at analytics, strategy or paid media etc.

So a T-shaped marketer has a broad-level understanding of various topics, has clarity in marketing foundations and has a clear understanding of channels. At the same time, he should be expert in one particular area.

Below is the example of T-shaped marketer with in-depth knowledge and skill on Paid media. This person is the go-to person for paid media but understands how the entire digital ecosystem function and how things are inter-related.

Most importantly digital is an evolving field so if you need to pursue your career in Growth Marketing you need to have that hunger to learn and stay updated.

One of the best resources for great Growth Hacking case studies and learning is Growthhackers.com

Check out all the case studies to learn how other companies are using it.

What is the checklist for Growth Marketing?

The most basic checklist or steps for Growth Marketing are;

1.      Identify and develop the Growth Model

2.      Mapping your customer journey

3.      Identifying all your growth channels

4.      Start building a road map

5.      Build experiments and learn

6.      Execute and achieve those goals

What is the best Growth Hacking Model for Growth Marketing?

One of the most famous models is Dave Mclure’s Pirate Metrics which is AARRR

1. Acquisition
2. Activation
3. Retention
4. Revenue
5. Referrals 

One needs to identify and understand if this model can work for their business. This is one of the most used growth marketing models.

How to use this model?

You need to understand Growth Drivers for each stage with individual metrics which are different for each of the phases. The key is to understand the hurdles of each stage from a consumer journey standpoint.

After you have identified the Growth Model you will have to follow the next steps.

Important points to use the above model

1. Think from a consumer journey perspective
2. Break bigger goals into smaller activities – like revenue can be broken into a number of purchases, returning, revenue per users etc.
3. Channels for each vertical will be different. You need to know where your consumers are
4. Focus on hardcore metrics. For app you will focus more on, push notification, emails etc. some app optimization so you need to know which metrics and channels you want to use.

How should you track your performance?

Monitoring your Progress is most important to have success in Growth Marketing.

·      Focus on annual goals for companies and quarterly for teams so everyone is on one page and is involved.

·      Usually there are two teams’ acquisition and engagement teams. Clarity of roles and responsibility is important

·      If you are new and have no benchmarks so for First quarter focus on acquisitions only

·      and then for Second-quarter focus on retention or referral

·      Focus on specific metrics for periods. Fix your biggest hurdles that can be fixed quickly and will have the greatest impact.

·      Two ways to do it is to optimize or run totally new experiment like the landing page

·      Do brainstorming with cross-functional teams for fresh perspectives

Conclusion

Growth marketing is not just an activity it is an ongoing process and you need to keep learning and using it to get the best results.

If you want to know more about Growth Hacking you can check out my weekly Growth Hacking posts or if you want to get in-depth understanding then you should consider CXL institute's Mini-degree in Growth Marketing

This course can definitely help you have a solid understanding of how to use growth marketing to your advantage.