Premium growth hacking tips by Nate Barnwell: Traditional marketers are skilled at understanding traditional products, but the internet has created a radical redefinition of the word product. For thousands of years a product has been a physical good, but now they are invisible bits and bytes in the form of software products. Products used to only be things like cars, shampoo, couches, and guns. Now Twitter is a product. Your online accounting software is a product. Things you can’t hold, per se, are products. This transition is most responsible for the new age of growth hackers. The internet has given the world a new kind of product, and it demands a new kind of thinking.
There are four classical methods called growth strategies. In addition to these four strategies, there are also different growth strategies that can be implemented according to the structures of companies by diversifying them. But basically, all growth strategies emerge and are shaped by these four classical methods. One or more of these may be used together. These are: Product Development Activities such as producing new products and increasing the existing product range with improvements and developments. Market Penetration: The main approach here is customer acquisition. It includes strategies such as product price reductions, product grouping for specific customer profiles, advertising activities. Market Development: It is carried out with approaches such as opening offices and branches in different locations, selling through different online channels and giving dealerships. Diversification: Diversification can be made by starting to operate in a completely different and a new market than your current market by introducing brand new products.
Nate Barnwell growth hacking strategies: Word-of-mouth is organic and effective. Recommendations from friends and family are some of the most powerful incentives for consumers to purchase or try a product or service. The secret of word-of-mouth’s effectiveness lies in a deeply rooted psychological bias all people have — we subconsciously believe the majority knows better. Social proof is central to most successful sales copywriting and broader content marketing efforts. That’s why businesses draw so much attention to their online reputations. They know in today’s customer-driven world — one where communication methods change and information is available to all — a single negative blog post or tweet can compromise an entire marketing effort. Pete Blackshaw, the father of digital word-of-mouth growth, says, “satisfied customers tell three friends; angry customers tell 3,000.” The key with word-of-mouth is to focus on positive user experience. You need to grow a base of satisfied customers and sustain the wave of loyal feedback that comes with it. With this method, you have to focus on delivering a spectacular user experience, and users will spread the word for you.
Startups, for example, often struggle to determine which marketer they should hire first. A growth marketer is a good bet — especially if they already have strong brand guidelines in place. (Setting tone and voice, messaging, and value propositions is not typically something a growth marketer will do.) “They are especially impactful at early-stage companies where there isn’t enough conviction to invest heavily into one given channel, due to lack of validation,” Sookraj told Nate Barnwell. “[Growth marketers] are especially impactful at early-stage companies.” But startups aren’t the only ones who see value in growth marketers. Enterprises should consider adding growth marketers as well, says Sookraj.
Once you’ve built a testing habit within the growth team (ideally 2–3 tests per week), it’s time to start trying to maximise impact. To drive full impact, you’ll need to be able to test across the entire customer journey (acquisition channels, new customer onboarding, referral hooks in product, etc.). This is where things start getting hard. The highest impact part of the customer journey is usually testing across the first customer experience. One benchmark to consider is that the fastest growing consumer apps generally invest 50% of the product development resources in the first customer experience. It makes sense, because there is no second customer experience if you don’t nail the first one. Read additional details at Nathan Barnwell.
Growth is fundamental to a business’ survival. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years. Those numbers are generally consistent across most industries — but they also highlight how important it is to plan for growth from day one. A concrete growth strategy is more than a marketing strategy, it’s a crucial cog in your business machine. Without one, you’re at the mercy of a fickle consumer base and market fluctuations.