Must-Do Tips from Growth Hacking Experts

This fourth and final article is in continuation to the three earlier growth hacking articles. The first article shed light on some of the big misconceptions about Growth Hacking, the second article covered top 10 most effective growth hacking techniques while the third article covered how some of the fastest growing Indian startups have successfully leveraged growth hacking techniques.

It cannot be more exciting then to learn the growth hacking tips from the person who coined this term. Yes, you are right. We are referring to growth hacking tips from Sean Ellis.

Sean always provides actionable tips which really require extra efforts to put into the practice. In this article, we are going to uncover some of the tips from the best-known growth hacking experts including Sean Ellis, Nir Eyal etc.

Growth Hacking Tips From Sean Ellis

Focus on true ‘North Star Metric’

Marketers miss picking the right metrics and focus on the metrics which satisfy their ego and ultimately it misleads them. Often marketers focus on metrics like time spent, sign-ups etc. which may not reflect what is the most important growth factor.

This can be corrected by picking true “North Star Metric” which provides real value to the customers. Sean Ellis mentioned that North Star metric is the single metric which best captures the core value that your product delivers to customers.

Focus on the first interaction of the customers

Building multiple features for your product, and ignoring what you want your customer to achieve during their first interaction is the path to disaster.

Sean advised that 50% of the effort you put into your product should go towards users’ first experience.  If they can’t complete what you want the first time, they won’t be coming back for the other cool features.

Be a show’er then a grow’er

Focusing on a product which does not grab anyone’s interest is the quickest way to fail. Sean mentioned that if 40% or more would be distraught then you should start to scale. 

If not, go back to your product – there’s more work to be done. Sean suggested to get customer’s feedback through a survey. If users are not sharing feedback through a survey, then it is better to email or call them individually and have one to one discussion.

Get early feedback

The most common mistake made by entrepreneurs is spending endless hours to make a perfect product with the dream that customers will love their end product.

In traditional marketing, the product passes through multiple rounds of development, testing, and is finally rolled out, expecting that there will be minimal changes in the future.

In the new-age method, the growth hacker will instead crawl towards the creation of what marketers call the minimum viable product (MVP), which fulfils the basic requirements of the customers.

The growth hacker will introduce the advanced features of the product only after taking the early adopters’ feedback and gathering insights about users using advanced analytics.

Growth Hacking Tips From Nir Eyal

Nir Eyal is the Author of book “Hooked”.

Nir Eyal has very well explained how to create Habit-forming products. As per Nir “A company that forms strong user habits enjoys several benefits to its bottom line”.

Every company wants to keep users activated and engaged on their platform. And one of winning techniques to keep the user engaged is by Hooking them to your platform.

One of the core component of Hook model is Trigger.

Trigger ignites the Hook model.  Triggers can be internal or external.

External triggers grab users’ attention by alerting them with an instant short message like outlook’s email notification, Facebook’s browser notification of comment by your friend and more.

While the internal triggers are invoked without marketing or external stimuli, external triggers need to align with an internal trigger to enable the users’ action. Make sure to introduce right external triggers which map with user’s internal triggers.

Growth Hacking Tips From Neil Patel

Neil is the founder of CrazyEgg, HelloBar, KissMetrics.

Don’t target everybody

Every product goes through a lifecycle. There are various stages in which marketers should understand. This is known as the law of diffusion of innovation.

The third level is the most appealing level to reach the masses and to achieve it, you need to cross the 1st two levels.

Create a product which is appealing to innovators and early adopters.

If you want to reach out to everyone then you are going to lose the focus to reach out to the first set of 14-16% of innovators or early adopters. And for this, it is very important to know your customers.

You can know your customers by interviewing them, competitive studies, reading about the success or failure of the similar products.

The outcome of this should be a unique customer profile which describes an individual getting the benefit from this product. To begin with, just focus on these set of customers.

Growth Tips From Dave McClure

Dave is the former marketing director at PayPal.

Every customer is unique and follows a different journey during every purchase of a product or service. The growth hacking funnel, therefore, should define all the progression paths clearly to enable the audience throughout their purchase cycles.

In order to convert, the audience has to progress through various stages of the funnel, and the growth hacking funnel differs a lot from the traditional marketing funnel.

Dave McClure understood this difference and came up with his version of Growth hacking funnel which is known by acronym AARRR:

• Acquisition: Audience lands on the website through various sources.
• Activation: The first experience makes the visitor happy.
• Retention: Spends time and comes back again.
• Referral: Tells her family and friends about the product.
• Revenue: Completes the transaction which helps in monetizing the product

As the growth hacker or marketer, you need not apply the same metrics. Pick up the relevant metrics which works for your business. Although the threshold might be different.

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About The Author

Apurva Chamaria is an investor and a bestselling author. His first book, You Are the Key, was a national bestseller. His second book, “Master Growth Hacking” is open for orders on Amazon and Flipkart now. Gaurav Kakkar heads the digital marketing engagements for HCL’s clients in North America.