The guide to

Growth Hacking

Stefan Tasevski

07.08.2014

A marketing technique developed by technology startups which uses creativity, analytical thinking, and social metrics in order to sell products or gain exposure.

The 3P’s of getting visitors

★PULL

★PUSH

★PRODUCT

PULL

➔ Pulling customers in

➔ Giving reason to come to us

➔ Finding us before we find them

➔ Drowning them to us

PUsh

➔ More aggressive than pull strategy

➔ Not to appeal, but to convince

➔ Paid result - based

➔ Practically, pushing the customers to the product/service

Product

➔ Through the product itself➔ The product brings the traffic/awareness➔ Paid result - based➔ Practically, a product being used by a group that

gets another group to use it➔ Plays a crucial role in the customer experience

PULLPUSH PRODUCT

“ It’s important to realize that all of the 3P’s work together really well and in the right context but when executed by the right person. Growth hackers are for big growth, not

a growth in certain narrowly defined reasons. “

- PULL STRATEGY -TACTICS

Blogging or guest blogging➔ Keyword rich, and are easily indexed by Google, which aides an overall SEO strategy.

➔ Have a compounding effect. The more you write, the more total chances you’ll have of pulling people towards your product over time.

➔ Usually based around specific niches, so if you are guest blogging then you can tap into large swaths of your market with a single post.

➔ Great at educating people, and people that are informed about your product are more likely to move through your funnel.

➔ Can position you as a thought leader, and people would rather use a product that has been created by an expert rather than a nobody.

➔ Blog owners are always looking for new guests post, which makes this low hanging fruit in many cases.

PodcastingPodcasting is another great pull tactic because audio has inherent inbound qualities. TIPS & TRICKS when podcasting:

➔ Dominate the market by going niche & narrow

➔ Instead of making weekly shows, set a goal of 10 episodes total and make it on a certain topic

➔ Focus on beautiful album art and/or great audio intro which makes people curious

➔ Never promise more episodes

E-books, guides & whitepapers

A valid tactic in which a number of large written documents have a number of advantages in terms of getting traffic.

➔ Ebooks, guides, and whitepapers have a certain draw to them. It’s somewhat easy to ignore a new blog post, but when there is a new hefty document on a niche subject you care about, it’s hard to ignore.

➔ Ebooks, guides, and whitepapers have a high perceived value, and you can ask for an email address in exchange for downloading them. It feels like a fair trade, and it helps you build an email list that you will eventually work through your funnel.

➔ Ebook, guides, and whitepapers spread through social media very effectively when they are executed well.

➔ As an author (even a self-published one) you are a thought leader of sorts, and people will want to use the product you’ve created.

➔ Ebook, guides, and whitepapers can be written to specifically educate people about your product. Informed visitors are more likely to become members and users.

E-books, guides & whitepapers

InfographicsInfographics can entice people to your product because they simultaneously display expertise and

aesthetic taste. Visualizations are powerful tools, and they are spread using social media extremely easily. Adam Breckler, of Visual.ly, provides the following advice when creating an infographic :

➔ Select a good topic ➔ Find the right data➔ Analyze the data ➔ Build the narrative ➔ Come up with a design concept ➔ Polish and refine the design ➔ Distribute the infographic

Webinars ➔ Webinars are considered to be an event

➔ Webinars are made so that they can educate people

➔ Webinars allow interaction

➔ Can end with a special promotion for the product so it can drive traffic to your product.

➔ Can be done in collaboration with another company in order to promote both products/services with the cross-sales principle

Conference Presentation

➔ The conference presentation creates a number of by-products which can be used to pull in visitors more effectively

➔ The slide deck from the conference can be uploaded to slideshare

➔ The audio/video recording can be uploaded to social media channels, to the company’s blog etc.

SEO Two types of SEO:CONTENTBy virtue of creating content, even if you don’t know how SEO works, you will be optimizing for it. Just keep producing and you’ll be using SEO to your advantage even if you don’t know what an algorithm is.

CODERThere are also things you can do at the code level which enable a solid SEO strategy. Are your links seo optimized with keywords? Are H1 tags properly labeled. Do you use Schema.org tags for specific kinds of content? Do you have an up-to-date site map?

Social Media➔ Know your demographics and engage with the

people interested in your product/service

➔ Provide value by answering questions, giving advice, offering assistance

➔ Become a hub of interesting content, whether you produce it or not

➔ Make your customer support public on the social media

Contests Contests are an awesome way to drive new traffic to your product.

They are good for small companies and big companies alike.

App Marketplaces B2C Marketplaces

➔ Make perfect screenshots ➔ Choose the name of the app

carefully

B2B Marketplaces

➔ These marketplaces are less crowded so it is easier to stand out

➔ They are apt to promote your product on their blog, social media sites, ect.

➔ B2B marketplaces will even pay you to build an integration with their product

Deal Sites In the aftermath of Groupon’s rise (and slow demise) there have been a number of deal sites created in their wake. For many niches there is a deal site which has a substantial email list and is willing to promote your product. The arrangement with these companies is usually pretty straight forward. You provide a discount to their audience, and in exchange they provide you with distribution. This is a quick way to get traffic, and given how easy it is to set up this kind of relationship it’s worth trying. Another unexpected side benefit of these deal sites is the number of people who will purchase your product at full price even though they came from the deal site. The internet is a strange place and this will happen more than you would guess.

LOPA (Leverage other people’s audience)

In the aftermath of Groupon’s rise (and slow demise) there have been a number of deal sites created in their wake. For many niches there is a deal site which has a substantial email list and is willing to promote your product. The arrangement with these companies is usually pretty straight forward. You provide a discount to their audience, and in exchange they provide you with distribution. This is a quick way to get traffic, and given how easy it is to set up this kind of relationship it’s worth trying. Another unexpected side benefit of these deal sites is the number of people who will purchase your product at full price even though they came from the deal site. The internet is a strange place and this will happen more than you would guess.

- PUSH STRATEGY -

TACTICS

Lifetime value of a customer (LTV)

“The amount of money that you are going to make from a customer throughout their life. “

*The primary difference between pull and push tactics is that push tactics usually cost money

Purchase ads➔ LEARN THE TECHNICAL

DETAILS OF YOUR CHOSEN PLATFORM

➔ CONSIDER THE VARIOUS PERSONAS OF YOUR CUSTOMER

➔ IF YOU ARE PAYING PER CLICK THEN QUALIFY EVERY CLICK

➔ TEST VARIATIONS OF YOUR AD

Promo Swap

The easiest, and free way to drive traffic to your site is through cross promotions with other companies by:

➔ SWAP TWEETS➔ SWAP FACEBOOK POSTS➔ DEDICATED EMAIL SWAP➔ SPONSORED EMAIL SWAP➔ AD SPACE SWAP➔ PRE-ROLL VIDEO SWAP➔ GIVEAWAY SWAP

Affiliates

➔ Think carefully about the incentives

➔ Choose the affiliates very carefully

➔ Don’t roll your own affiliate solution

Direct Sales

➔ Way of getting traffic up the funnel

➔ Best lead-generating tactic

➔ For our business model it’s highly effective

- PRODUCT STRATEGY - TACTICS

“ The aim of the product strategy is to make a way every visitor uses

your product. If that happens, you made an achievement - you’ve gone

viral. “

Network invitations

➔ Phone contacts

➔ E-mail contacts

➔ Social contacts

Social Sharing ➔ Popular blogs are the

main solution

➔ Code-based widgets for sharing

➔ Understand where your traffic naturally comes from

API Integration

➔ Integrate the product with existing social network through API level

➔ Give access to social media for logins

➔ Great growth hacking tactic, but also very risky

➔ Nike+, Spotify etc.

Backlinks

“An incoming hyperlinks from one web page to another website. “

Incentives

The best way of bringing people to the product.

★ Great tactic if you have:

➔ Something low-cost to you➔ Storage is not expensive➔ Getting new users is very valuable➔ A “perfect storm” - a particularly violent

storm arising from a rare combination of adverse meteorological factors.

Organic

➔ Simple products spread organically➔ Beautiful products spread organically➔ Pain relieving products spread

organically➔ Products that make people look cool

spread organically➔ Emotional products spread organically➔ Fun products spread organically➔ Unique products spread organically➔ Surprising products spread organically

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS...

Getting traffic is a recipe, not a single ingredient !

And it’s a recipe that is always changing ...

SO DON’T JUST

OTHERS’ RECIPES ...

and make your own !!!