Premium growth hacking tricks from Nathan Barnwell: This cross pollination makes sense. If growth really is the lifeblood of an organisation, then why wouldn’t growth be woven into every aspect of the organisation. Even customer support should be done by people that think about growth because angry customers churn. And designers should design with one eye on growth because beautiful art alone doesn’t always acquire users. The future of internet companies, and the teams that build them, will not look like they did yesterday.
When Tinder, a sort of dating game, first launched, the first problem it faced was the lack of people playing the game. For this purpose, Tinder has started a campaign in the dormitories in universities and getting one-on-one member registration. This way, the number of members increased from 5,000 to 10,000. These new members also started to make their friends members. Those who saw that their close friends are members of the app could overcome their concerns about being included in the system more easily. As the number of female members increased, more men began to use the application. Today, Tinder has become a worldwide dating app with millions of users.
Nate Barnwell growth hacking strategies: Some growth strategies are tailored to be completely self-sustainable. They require an initial push, but ultimately, they rely primarily (if not solely) on users’ enthusiasm to keep them going. One strategy that fits that bill is the viral loop. The basic premise of a viral loop is straightforward: Someone tries your product. They’re offered a valuable incentive to share it with others. They accept and share with their network. New users sign up, see the incentive for themselves, and share with their networks. Repeat. For instance, a cloud storage company trying to get off the ground might offer users an additional 500 MB for each referral. Ideally, your incentive will be compelling enough for users to actively and enthusiastically encourage their friends and family to get on board.At its best, a viral loop is a self-perpetuating acquisition machine that operates 24/7/365. That said, viral loops are not guaranteed to go viral, and they’ve become less effective as they’ve become more commonplace. But the potential is still there.
A good growth marketer thinks big and tests small. They can envision anything — even Craigslist! — as a marketing channel, but they also run constant cheap, iterative tests to make sure their ideas can work. When DTC growth guru and investor Nik Sharma worked at Hint Water, for example, every major marketing push started with small, cheap tests — a growth marketing staple. If a small test got splashy results, the company invested more in the strategy. This helped Hint Water avoid expensive missteps, and innovate effectively; the company helped pioneer influencer marketing as we know it today. “Now everybody does it,” Sharma told Nate Barnwell. “But three years ago, nobody else was doing it and people thought it was kind of sketchy.” That’s the power of growth marketing — it’s an approach that allows you to confidently invest in a new channel. You just test first.
It is important to instrument for growth so that you can truly understand what is happening. Another important part of instrumenting for growth is testing tools such as Google Optimize, that allow you to implement a/b tests across your website and product. Finally, you’ll need a system to bring all of this information together so that your team can learn how to improve growth. Now you’re finally ready to start accelerating growth, which is level three of the pyramid. In this stage you should focus on building a growth team that can effectively execute a growth process. The purpose of this growth process is to uncover better ways to accelerate growth in the business. Your goal here is just to build a rhythm and habit of testing. Every test you run will lead to additional learning — even if it doesn’t directly drive immediate improvement in growth. It’s important during this stage to catalogue this learning so that the team keeps getting smarter about how to accelerate growth. Discover extra details at Nathan Barnwell.
Once you’ve determined what you’re growing and why you’re growing, the next step is to determine how much you’ll be growing. These goals should be based on your endgame aspirations of where you ideally want your organization to be, but they should also be achievable and realistic – which is why setting a goal based on industry research is so valuable. Lastly, take the steps to quantify your goals in terms of metrics and timeline. Aiming to “grow sales by 30% quarter-over-quarter for the next three years” is much clearer than “increasing sales.” Next, outline how you’ll achieve your growth goals with a detailed growth strategy. Again – we suggest writing out a detailed growth strategy plan to gain the understanding and buy-in of your team.