Growth Hacking – The smart way to implement marketing for small businesses

As it is Covid19, many of the small business enterprise owners, especially those in to small businesses are in a dilemma, “whether to spend” on marketing activities at this time or not. A company usually decides to spend on marketing during their growth stage. Now most of them are in a kind of “Nothing works now” mind set. This leads to grief, anxiety and distress that no productive decisions are made and time is just passing by.

People are having a feeling that “let this pass on” and somehow, we need to survive. That relatively wrong. Growth Hacking is what you need to adapt at this point of time. It’s fairly a new term for many but growth hacking is been there for 10 years. The term “Growth Hacking” was coined by Sean Ellis in 2010.

When you get exposed to words like hacking, people immediately relate it with technology, digital marketing etc., for some it means a big marketing drive to stay on top. Actually, it has nothing to do with technology or digitization, though these things help implementation of growth hacking strategies in a way. You need to understand that it is a methodology for growth planning. Whenever a crisis situation arises, companies must actually focus more on marketing and drive more customers. You must look out for more and more conversions. You need to put more effort on creating new experiences for existing customers and acquire new customers by differentiating your products or the way products are delivered or served. As it says, “what got you here, will not take you there”, you must identify new segment, new market, new interests, new needs and new ways of doing old things.

Why is growth hacking more relevant now?

Growth hacking has more power when compared to marketing because the objective of marketing remains with building awareness and acquiring new customers. But growth hacking makes sure that customers make a repeat purchase, they are retained for a life-time. Retention works only if the customer is not only happy with the product or service but also finds it highly convenient for them to continue using it. Growth hacking takes care of customer related operations by delivering seamless user experience and ensures that customers are retained with new features and strategies.

For example:

• #flipkart applied growth hacking by introducing COD service (cash on delivery) in 2010 when online transactions were not mainstream during that period and that’s how they gained foothold in India. It’s a way of helping customers.

• Introduction of #prepaid mobile recharge led to dramatic growth in use of mobile phones.

• 30 Minutes or Free Pizza was a growth hacking technique by #Dominos. This policy was introduced in 1984 which helped make the company the world’s largest pizza delivery company. They are the only company that geared all its processes to meet the famous 30 minutes deadline.

• #AirBnB grew when they integrated with Craigslist, a free platform where users put the advertisements for their businesses, housings, jobs, sales and personals.

• Most iconic example is the #DropBox – who used referral marketing by paying small incentives rather than spending a big budget on marketing.

Growth Hacking is by the way an experiment-driven marketing. Try a new way. It involves science, data and processes. Simply its about go where your people are.

Here the company take efforts to manage the entire A3R3 funnel which is also called the pirate funnel. Unlike traditional marketing funnel this includes 6 stages

• Awareness

• Acquisition

• Activation

• Retention

• Revenue &

• Referral

This helps you to achieve your targets and goals in an economic way. All focus is put on the North Star Metric. Do you believe that all your efforts become productive when the short-term activities are in alignment with the long-term vision of the company? Growth Hackers can help you in reaching your realistic targets. They are known to be equipped with T Shape skills. This is highly relevant during a crisis situation like pandemic. These people can be any stake holder of the organization who can bring in a new idea. Do not rely on marketing or sales personnel alone.

Sean Ellis who coined this term “Growth Hacking” defined a growth hacker as a person whose true north is growth.

Efforts taken by growth hackers are measurable and they report in the form of how many new customers acquired and retained rather then beating around the bush by sending reports on size of viewers or engagements.

Very simply Growth Hacking is a collection of smart marketing techniques. Every small business can think of ideas that will help you in grow. Growth Hacking is not just meant for big businesses, it for small ones to grow big.