The digital market is fast-paced, and businesses are thriving hard to survive. From tapping into the pool of social media to incorporating a plethora of marketing strategies, they are going to extreme lengths to achieve the milestones and bring more revenue. But the job is easier said than done, especially since the consumer market is shifting dynamically, with no prior alert.
Customer retention has become the principal hurdle in today’s time. Customers have lots of options. If they don’t like one business, they will choose another. Acquiring new customers is 7% more costly than retaining older ones.
Your business won’t grow if the customer base doesn't; the latter can expand only when you successfully retain customers. So, it is better to focus on customer retention and not acquisition. Acknowledging this, we have shared more insights on custom retention and attraction strategies, growth hacking, to be exact.
What is growth hacking, and how does it work?
Growth hacking has become a buzzword in the startup industry. This article applies only to startups and new entries in the business world. It is more of a marketing practice where growth hackers solely focus on the company's growth in the vertical and horizontal direction, meaning the company shall grow in customer base, revenue, outreach, and market share.
Growth hackers infiltrate the existing startup market and implement strategies to divert traffic to the business website and help retain customers. Although it is not easy, with practice, some tactful ideas, and proper knowledge about market outreach and trends, growth hacking can become successful.
Growth Hacking vs. Marketing
Often people believe that growth hacking is just like any other marketing technique. However, that’s not the truth because both have subtle differences that significantly impact the business.
If you hire marketers, the regular ones, to implement growth hacking strategies, they will use traditional marketing knowledge, which won’t yield fruitful results. Therefore, it is crucial to understand these two concepts' differences before hiring dedicated developers to process the growth hacking process.
In the below section, we have discussed the significant differences between traditional marketing and growth hacking.
- Growth hackers are more concerned with devising strategies for the next growth phase of the business, while marketers shift their focus to regular branding and marketing results.
- Growth hackers pay attention to ways customers can be acquired and retained for a long time to grow the business’s base. On the other hand, marketers consider generating leads and selling products or services.
- For growth hacking, professionals integrate strategies at every step of the marketing funnel, from awareness to retention. On the other hand, marketers are more concerned with the initial phases of the funnel.
- Small and constrained experiments result in successful growth hacking, while traditional marketing projects are usually long-term and applicable for businesses at all levels.
- A growth hacker needs the latest market data and information to devise strategies for a concerned business. On the other hand, marketers do not entirely depend on data.
Top real-life examples of successful growth hacking cases
Before hiring dedicated developers, let’s look at the top companies gaining success through implementing growth hacking. Once you go through these, the concept will become more apparent and more prominent.
- PayPal used the referral program as a part of growth hacking and successfully acquired 10% growth in business revenues. In fact, with the same strategy, their customer base reached over 100 million within a few years.
- Instagram: The famous social media channel also referred to growth hacking for expansion and customer retention. It was introduced to the market when users sought more interactive social media, and Instagram gave them the golden fruit.
- Uber: This global taxi company only implemented intelligent strategies from the beginning. One of the most popular growth strategies involves addressing nightlife events, music concerts, fewer availability zones, and others in Chicago and San Francisco to enter the market quickly.
- LinkedIn: One of the topmost recruiting and professional social media platforms, LinkedIn also adopted the growth hacking strategy. It allowed user profiles to be indexed and automatically appear on Google's search results.
- Airbnb: The most iconic growth hacking example is Airbnb's reverse engineering strategy. It infiltrated the market of Craigslist by posting its places on the website. As Craigslist already had a vast customer base, Airbnb had no problem gaining customers.
Best ways to use growth hacking to increase customer base
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Tap into the social media pool
Social media platforms are the best strategies to implement growth hacking. There are enough options in hand using which you can grow your business by hacking the customer base.
You will have an influencer market, an affiliate market, and a new social media customer base from where acquiring customers or retaining them won’t be a problem.
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Collaborate with other companies
To acquire new customers, you can collaborate with other companies offering services that can boost your business growth, which exposes you to an already established market.
Therefore, you won’t have to waste so much money and time getting new customers. People who opt for your business through the parent company will also try your options again.
You can also try content marketing by collaborating with other companies. The state of content marketing shows it is one of the most beneficial options for businesses.
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Free giving will pay off
As a startup business, it might be difficult for you to give something for free. But if you can get $100,000 in exchange for $1000, don’t you think it will kickstart your business and help it grow? It will, and that's where growth hacking comes into the picture.
Here, you can issue something accessible to the customers and get more. Customers always love to stay with businesses that wish to understand their desires. Therefore, you can quickly become successful in your customer retention strategies.
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Implement referral strategies
Another exceptional growth hacking strategy that you can implement is referral programs. Here, you can give cashback, coupons, discounts, and other such awards to customers who will refer your business to others.
If you get more customers through this technique, your giving away process will become fruitful. Just ensure to organize the best referral campaign. For this, you can hire dedicated developers with more experience using tools to build the campaign.
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Schedule A/B testing
You should pay attention to the performance of your website, whether it is the load time or the bounce rate. It is impossible to wait for the customer's responsibility to fix the issue. So, you should ensure A/B testing is arranged so you can know about the website’s performance and implement strategies on time to help the business grow. Still, at times the loading time speed problem gets complex and affects the website's performance, so we advise you to hire dedicated developers who are proficient in this field and can help you get a better outcome.
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Understand market pain points
Lastly, you need to understand the pain point of the market and the best way to do this is by creating an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Without this, there is no way you can penetrate a new market. Take advantage of the situation and implement the strategy that the customers want.
For example, check if the consumers want a free subscription or are happy with the freemium packages offered by your competitors.
Conclusion
Growth hacking is prevalent amongst top companies and e-startups. It would be best if you implemented it at a suitable time. Until and unless you do so, there is no way you can not make a profit.
You can further refer to POWR to know more about other strategies to grow your startup, gain more revenues, and easily retain customers.