Strategy consultant & leadership coach with 25 years in finance & biz leadership roles across Asia-Pacific | Value-Unlocked Private Limited.
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Any startup's biggest challenge is growth, irrespective of the stage at which it may be. In today's world, when customers' attention spans are short and many brands are vying for their attention, growth is even more challenging. What can businesses do to attract, acquire and retain customers in such circumstances?
Growth hacking is a term coined for using clever tactics (hacks) focused on growing the business rapidly. Growth hacks aren't prescriptive; you need to tweak these hacks to remain solutions-focused and results-driven for your business.
Let's look at some such growth hacks that any startup can and should apply.
1. Set up processes to track AARRR metrics.
AARRR stands for Acquisition (or Awareness), Activation, Retention, Referral and Revenue. Every growth hack you deploy should focus on at least one element of the AARRR metrics, and if they focus on more, even better. Identify the data you want to collect for each stage of the AARRR framework, and then zero in on the tools you want to implement to collect and analyze the data. Deploying AARRR metrics is key to understanding which of your growth hacks is working.
2. Prioritize COPE (create once, publish everywhere) content.
Do more with less to save time, resources and money. Find many uses for the same content; for example, you may do a podcast, a blog and a video with the same content with minor modifications. You could even do it all together—film and record the podcast interview, then transcribe the audio to create all three in one go. Repurpose existing content, such as old blog posts into revamped email newsletters, e-books or guest posts.
3. Build sharing links in your content.
Make it easy for your audiences or users to tell their friends and connections about you. Build buttons to directly share your website content so that readers can share what they find valuable at just the click of a button. Embedding live videos on your website—again with shareable links—can be even more valuable.
4. Create your own influencers.
Look at the list of your connections and assess their following. Reach out to some of these people to write a review or feature them in a blog post. It is a human tendency to get influenced by people you know, and our audiences and users are no exception. They are much more likely to convert if they see someone they know recommending a product or service. Reach out to industry experts in your circle with a common relevant question and compile their responses into a post. If they permit, attribute the quotes or comments to them.
5. Create your referral program.
Don't underestimate the power of referrals. But if you want people to refer you, you must ask them and give them something in return. In my experience, referrals work best when both the one who refers and the one referred gets some benefit. Devise schemes where you can provide some of your key customers with a unique code to use when they refer people. Codes can entitle the "referred" customers to a discount, and the same code can track the value of referrals to provide a proportionate benefit back to the one who has referred.
6. Do RFM analysis.
RFM is one of the most basic analyses for customer data. Yet, the insights it provides are crucial to driving the direction of your sales and marketing efforts. RFM stands for three actionable parameters to analyze and segment customers:
- Recency of each customer's purchase
- Frequency of each customer's purchases
- Monetary value of each customer's purchases
This analysis can lay clear who your regular customers are, how often each customer buys and which customers buy the most in terms of value. With limited data, you can run a rudimentary analysis, even in Excel. Create a spreadsheet with customer names in the header column and months (or weeks) in the header row, and then keep populating all the cells with the information.
The information can help you decide what kind of targeting and messaging you should use for which type of customers. If a customer is frequently buying, but the monetary value is low, try to focus on upselling. However, if an otherwise frequent customer has not purchased for three periods in a row, you need to target them differently since they may have found some alternatives to your offerings. This data can also help understand the lifetime value of customers to decide how much you spend on them so that your unit economics remain positive.
7. Work out partnerships.
Find businesses that are targeting the same customer cohorts but selling non-competitive products. Work out a deal to cross-sell to each other's customers. Remember, such deals work only on a principle of reciprocity. Either you must give the other party an opportunity to sell their products to your customers or offer them a revenue share for the sales you generate from their customers. Since the revenue generated is incremental, it can be a win-win for both.
8. Give something free.
How many times have you attended a free webinar and felt that it was just a sales pitch? While it is a sales pitch, for sure, make it worthwhile for your audiences. Offer attendees enough value—an extra month of free subscription, a free e-book or a free product as a sample is all value you can easily give.
9. Use your employees' networks.
Employees are the best ambassadors for any company's offerings, and each has a network to promote its products or services. However, organizations hardly incentivize others to find leads—except for sales employees. Build a good employee incentive to give references, get leads and generate sales and see the impact for yourself.
Remember, growth hacking is more of a mindset than a toolkit, which compels you to think with what you have. Leverage a data-driven mindset, small budgets and experimentation to acquire more customers, boost revenue or grow faster.
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