The only problem is, if it seems too good to be true, its generally because it is.
If it wasnt, nine out of ten startups wouldnt fail in their first year.
Essentially, growth hacking promises that with a few simple techniques, businesses will quickly see viral growth.
Its actually an even better branding strategy by the guy who coined it, GrowthHackers CEO Sean Ellis.
Play the long game
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That might sound boring, but lets do a little thought experiment.
Lets say youre riding a bicycle in top gear.
Youre gliding through the streets with minimal effort.
It wont take long before you grind to a halt.
And the same thing will happen to your business.
Youre in the wrong gear and lets face it, youre not fit enough to face it yet.
Constantly refine your targeting and non-scalable activities.
Focus on breaking even.
Find solutions to make your product unique and accessible.
Remember to regularly review your product as it matures and consider how it applies to specific users.
Year 2 Polish off your infrastructure and messaging.
Aim to implement scalable acquisition and run CRO tests once sufficient data is acquired.
You should be able to demonstrate some scalability and improvements from CRO tests.
Focus your growth teams towards product usage, retention, and sales.
These are areas CRO is not typically applied to.
Surviving means achieving continuous, gradual improvements that you’re free to grow your business and infrastructure around.
Dropbox is a classic example of a complex strategy being mis-promoted by those looking to sell snake oil.
So referrals should work for everyone else, right?
What this ignores is the grueling data-driven work that Dropbox carried out to eventually churn out the winning strategy.
The team ran thousands of tests in total, which eventually led to Dropbox trying out the referral scheme.
When it showed potential, they expanded the strategy further, testing as they went along.
This highlights the modern problem with growth hacking and its repackaged offerings.
Theyll be researching the subject before they start researching solutions.
Now, it should be easy for you to form hypotheses and test them on your users.
What metrics should I be tracking?
First, Ill tell you what you shouldnt be wasting time on.
A common growth hacking tactic that provides great vanity metrics is to growth hack Linkedin.
Its worth mentioning that the people promoting these hacks have been banned from Linkedin.
Not great for long-term growth.
Often this hack will include using a tool like Phantombuster to auto-send connection requests to a targeted audience.
If you are looking to build lots of connections, this is a great tactic.
Its also a great tactic for pissing off all of your first degree connections.
These are sold as lead generation schemes, but they quite simply are not.
After all that, you will not have moved the needle for your business.
What you should be looking at is not activity, but valuable action.
Between how many visit your page, and how many opt in to your product.
Use metrics that prove your business is growing sustainably, not full of hot air.
People will always be drawn to the easy option.
Learning the mathematical process will let them answer every question taking them to where they need to be.
