The Ultimate Growth Hacking Playbook

The term growth hacking reflects the processes and experiments carried out in a company to boost its customer base and revenue. These changes and effective strategies aim to increase the conversion rate. If you’re amending, testing, and updating your content, you are already growth hacking!

If you wish to learn growth hacking in-depth, this guide will help you understand the concept well.

Let’s begin!

What is Growth Hacking?

Growth hacking is highly suitable for start-ups desiring escalated growth but with a limited budget. They follow a sequence of steps to discover some bottlenecks on the website and aim to improve it. However, beginners in this field may be ambiguous about its implementation. Luckily, we have ‘Pirate Funnel’ or the AARRR framework used by most growth hackers to conduct a deep analysis of a website. Here is what AARRR means:

• Awareness: What’s your reach?
• Acquisition: What’s the traffic on your site?
• Activation: Number of visitors who become users (either sign up, purchase your product, install an app, etc.)
• Retention: Number of people coming back to your site
• Revenue: Number of users paying and the total amount they are paying
• Referral: People feeling about your brands to others

This framework is open to your own interpretations and usages. You can follow the best steps that suit your brand and leave others. Simply, the **Pirate Funnel **helps find the blockages in a site impeding its growth!

Advantages of Growth Hacking

Growth hacking comes with a plethora of advantages. It can help boost your leads and revenue.

1. Cost-effective and improves the ROI of the business.
2. Understand the bottlenecks of the growth of a company.
3. Find out scalable marketing strategies.
4. Build new business models to improvise current strategies.
5. Generate brand awareness and build a loyal customer base.
6. Add value to customers for increased overall conversion
7. It helps to know your target audience and get leads.

Growth Hacking Strategies

Here are some steps to build effective growth hacking strategies:

1. Conduct surveys to gain customer feedback

It is important to conduct surveys and know the customers' reviews and feedback about your product. Many businesses use them to determine whether their product benefits the customers. After all, only customer satisfaction will result in more leads. So, you must assure that your brand aligns with the demands of your customers. In addition, you can formulate these surveys as per your company's needs. Either ask for the details of your target audience or ask them about your product. This strategy will give you insights into what you are lacking or what your customers like!

2. Know your target audience

A business must know its target audience. For that, you can consider demographics like location, age, gender, interests, and profession and create buyer personas. Moreover, it is always beneficial to interact with the target audience and understand their needs to best serve them.

3. Choose correct metrics to evaluate performance

There are plenty of metrics to analyze your brand's performance and make relevant improvisations. But it is crucial to choose the most relevant metrics that suit your strategies and direct you towards your objectives. For that, there are many data analytics software available, both free and paid. Take a look at the list of some key metrics to understand your performance:

• Conversion rate

• Cost per click

• Number of impressions on your site

• Number of engagements

• Cost per landing page view

  
  

4. Choose relevant marketing channels

There are many marketing channels and platforms recommended for successful growth hacking campaigns. Therefore, understand your target audience and choose the right marketing channel.

If done right, this decision can generate more ROI and immense growth for your brand. Below are some marketing channels:

• SEO (Social Engine Optimization)

• Email marketing

• Search Engine Marketing

• Guest blogging

• Influencer marketing

• Offline advertisements

• Trade shows

• Networking events (B2B)

• Social Media Marketing

  
  

5. Conduct testing

There are two most used tests, A/B test and multivariate test. Growth hackers usually conduct these tests on different elements of a site, such as blog posts, content, videos, podcasts, emails, and more. These tests help to make changes to these elements and bring out the absolute best results in your favor.

6. Analyze and optimize

Analyzing the statistics and setting goals to improve further is crucial.

In addition, jot down the strengths and weaknesses of the company and work on its improvement. This careful examination will lead you to prepare optimized marketing budgets and target users efficiently.

10 Best Growth Hacking Tools

With the right growth hacking tools, you can soar high. Here is a list of some of the best growth hacking tools divided into 3 categories:

1. For Email Marketing
   • MailChimp
   • SendGrid
   • Vero
2. For Customer Acquisition

* CrazyEgg
* Optimizely 
* VWO
* Amplitude

3. For Market Research

   Market research is an integral part of understanding customers and their needs. For that, here are some top tools available in the market:

   • Olark

   • Typeform

   • Qualaroo

     
     

4. For Email Marketing

Email marketing is a powerful tool to reach more audiences and discuss your brand. 49.1% of internet users actively check their emails in a day. Hence, emails are a good way to capture users and spread awareness of your business. Check out these growth hacking tools to incorporate into your strategy.

MailChimp

Mailchimp is one of the most widely used email marketing tools. It helps provide email marketing analytics and send timely automated emails.

The top benefits are mentioned below:

• Simple and customizable interface.
• Detailed analytics include insights into subscribers' activities, most-clicked links, the number of people who unsubscribed emails, subscribers who opened the mail, and so on.
• Free basic plan for less than 2000 subscribers.

SendGrid

It’s an excellent email service provider for business communications. The email marketing campaigns are automated in nature. Further, the reports and analytics help the team track the subscribers' activities.

The top benefits are mentioned below:

• High-volume email marketing campaign access.
• Detailed reports and insights into the mail performance.
• Automated transactional and responsive promotional emails.

Vero

This platform helps send emails to people based on their behavior on your website. Moreover, it personalizes and tests your campaigns. If you are from a non-IT background, Vero is highly suited.

The top benefits are mentioned below:

• A/B tests your emails.
• Audience segmentation
• Workflow automation

2. For Customer Acquisition

It’s crucial to bring new clients for your company to increase revenue. This is what customer acquisition is! Some of the best tools in the market can help you ace this. Let’s see.

CrazyEgg

CrazyEgg is widely used by people worldwide. It’s an excellent analytics platform that tracks and optimizes your website’s visitor behavior.

The top benefits are mentioned below:

• Heat map reports
• A/B tests
• Understand the customer’s behavior while navigating your website.

Optimizely

This platform provides ways to escalate engagement and conversion rates on your website.

The top benefits are mentioned below:

• Perform multivariate and A/B tests easily.
• Track key metrics to understand the user’s behavior and make appropriate changes.
• Offers a 30-day trial plan.

VWO

VWO is a great tool for customer acquisition. It helps conduct A/B and multivariate tests on your site in a simplified manner.

The top benefits are mentioned below:

• Tests multiple versions of your site using split URL testing.
• Conducts multivariate testing and A/B testing.
• Free 30-day trial.

Amplitude

Amplitude is a self-service digital analytics platform. This tool helps businesses understand users’ behavior diligently to boost growth and, ultimately, revenue. The top benefits are mentioned below:

• Real-time analytics.

• 15 metrics to track customer acquisition, such as engagement, retention, activation, and monetization.

• Easy process to reach out to the customer based on gathering insights from each step of the funnel.

  
  

Olark

Customers using Olark have seen more conversions, accurate user insights, and lower call volumes.

The top benefits are mentioned below:

• Chat in real-time with customers, answer their questions, and gather feedback.
• Use live chat insights to optimize your business’s services and products.
• Custom pre-chat forms for quick conversations and getting details to preview the customer’s needs.

Typeform

Typeform is a platform that allows you to create interesting forms and surveys for customers. These questions are engaging and prompt the users to take part in filling out the forms.

The top benefits are mentioned below:

• Integrated analysis tools to gain insights and understand customers’ demands.
• Excellent user experience.
• Free plan at first. Users can avail Pro by subscribing to it at $25 per month.

Qualaroo

It’s a credible platform to conduct surveys and analyze visitors to your website.

Here are the top benefits mentioned below:

• AI-powered analytics and reports.
• Get website and app feedback from people.
• Insights into the product's functions and understand your customer’s demands and requirements.

Your Ultimate List of Growth Hack Resources

It is crucial to analyze the current strategies of your business and formulate a plan that directs you toward growth. For that, you can implement various changes to your site and analyze the results.

Here we are mentioning the top growth hack resources to help you achieve your goal.

1. Upgrade the blog content

The blog content of a website holds a lot of potential to increase conversion rates. As it is said, content is the king, it becomes essential to present polished and informational data in front of the users. According to statistics, approximately 77% of people read blogs online regularly. Therefore, it’s a great way to capture users. Here are some tips:

• Keep the data crisp and easy to understand.

• Do not use complicated words, it can increase the bounce rate.

• Add multimedia content to attract more visitors.

  
  

Moreover, another growth hack is to add videos to your blog posts. It can be a live stream, tutorial, or any such option that may interest users. As a matter of fact, it is easier for users or readers to get quick information and save time. Therefore, such clips can attract them by providing beneficial information quickly. Do you know video content is 1200% more successful than any other type of content? Moreover, the viewers grasp 95% of the content while watching the video.

2. Establish connections with industry experts

Users always look for the credibility and authenticity of a brand. For that, connect with industry experts. In addition, you can take their interviews, hold a live session, or talk about any topic that may be of user interest. These experts have spent more time in the respective industry, and their experience can benefit your audience immensely. This exercise can attract many users and increase your brand's value.

3. Update old blog posts/ articles

Make sure to update your old articles regularly. You can add new information or statistics related to the content. This growth hack increases the chances of improvement in your ranking on different SERPs. According to a survey, updating old posts get 270% more results than the posts that stay dormant.

4. Include social media posts on your website

Add social media posts to your website. For instance, add reviews of customers, testimonials, or tweets to your site to reflect the credibility of your business. This practice helps to earn the trust of users. Moreover, it can also bring more followers on social media channels.

5. Create multiple versions of an ad

As you know, ads are an excellent way to reach your target audiences and increase your conversion rates. There are different sections of audiences based on age, gender, preferences, etc. So, to fulfill users' needs and target multiple sets of audiences, publish more than one version of an ad. Some ad versions can result in better performance, and some won’t do well. Hence, you can discard the underperforming ads and invest wisely!

6. Use keywords in YouTube videos

Keywords are very effective for a business’ growth. If you are publishing a YouTube video, it is obvious that you would wish to see it in the search result! If that’s the case, you must use the correct keywords. This growth hack can help your YouTube videos show in the ‘suggested content’. Further, it will increase your brand's reach and attract more audiences, as YouTube accounts for a staggering 2.1 billion monthly users worldwide!

7. Work with Email Experimentation

Email marketing is one of the most popular and powerful ways of digital marketing. According to HubSpot, here are some of the most effective strategies for email marketing campaigns:

• Message personalization (used by 72% of marketers),
• Subscriber segmentation (used by 78% of marketers),
• Email automation campaigns (used by 71% of marketers).

The growth hack here is to create different versions of an email and test them. For instance, try changing the tone of the mail in your emails and analyze which email gets more responses!

Know about the best email testing tools here for better email marketing.

Final Remarks

Every business aims to grow in a significant period of time. That’s the ultimate aim, right? Well, growth hacking targets to fulfill this purpose. It is obvious that it can be intimidating initially, however, with time, experimentation, approach, and resources, you can excel in this field!

The results require patience and effective strategies. There are multiple growth hacks, but it’s important to experiment and see which aligns with your brand the most. It’s not necessary for what works for one business, will work for yours too. Therefore, you must give it some time to see the best results. I hope this growth hacking playbook and the growth hack resources will help you bring the expected results for your business!

Good luck!