Premium growth hacking tips with Nate Barnwell: What is Growth Hacking? Growth hacking is so misunderstood that there is a desperate need for this post. Few concepts have been as polarising and revolutionary, simultaneously. Is it marketing in disguise? Is it a buzz phrase used to increase salaries? Is it the future of internet products? Let’s start at the beginning… The short history of a controversial concept The phrase “growth hacker” was coined by Sean Ellis in 2010. When I asked Sean why he felt the need to coin a new phrase he said that it stemmed from his frustration when hiring replacements for himself. I’ll explain.
Finishing the second decade of the 20th century, not to start a business, but its growth and continuity have become a priority issue. In this context, growth strategies have become more important than ever and survival in the business world without growth is not sustainable in the long term. We see numerous brilliant growth strategy examples from major companies’ start-up days. Growth is an issue that is needed to be discussed with different approaches. Considering it just as a variety of products is a big mistake. It refers to expanding the product line, services, customer base, company size and more. But the essential need to acquire growth comes from increasing the number of your customers, the rest comes packed with it.
Nathan Barnwell growth hacking strategies: Instead of needing as many leads as possible at the top, a viral loop funnel requires just one satisfied user to share with others. As long as every referral results in at least 1.1 new users, the system continues growing. The milestone referral model is similar to the viral loop in that it relies on incentives to kickstart and sustain it. But milestone referrals add a more intricate, progressive element to the process. Companies that leverage viral loops generally offer a flat, consistent offer for individual referrals — businesses that use milestone referrals offer rewards for hitting specific benchmarks. In many cases, “milestones” are metrics like number of referred friends. For example, a business might include different or increasingly enticing incentives that come with one, five, and 10 referrals as opposed to a fixed incentive for each individual referral. A company will often leverage this strategy to encourage users to bring on a volume of friends and family that suits its specific business goals. The strategy also adds an engaging element to the referral process. When done right, milestone referrals are simple to share with relatively straightforward objectives and enticing, tangible products as rewards.
What exactly is growth marketing? Growth marketing is about (you guessed it!) growth. Specifically, growing whatever a business deems the key metrics in its funnel. That might mean click-through rate, monthly active users or revenue — growth marketers don’t confine themselves to top-of-funnel metrics. Driving revenue is particularly important according to Michael Griffith, a growth marketer with over 10 years’ experience in consumer tech and e-commerce. “A growth marketer’s core function is to identify marketing channels, solutions, ideas that will efficiently drive new customers to the brand and increase revenue,” Griffith told Nate Barnwell. Ultimately, growth marketing is defined more by process than end results, though. In the immortal words of Miley Cyrus, “It’s about the climb.”
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. Find many more details at Nate Barnwell.
With all of your planning, resourcing, and goal-setting complete, you’re now ready to execute your company growth plan and deliver results for the business. Throughout this time, make sure you’re holding your stakeholders accountable, keeping the line of communication open, and comparing initial results to your forecasted growth goals to see if your projected results are still achievable or if anything needs to be adjusted. Your growth plan and the tactics you leverage will ultimately be specific to your business, but there are some strategies you can look to as jumping off points.
