Hack like a Pirate: 3 Growth Hacking Tips For Your Small Business

As we all know, growth is a key factor to increase your brand awareness and improve your revenue stream. Since the advent of the Web 2.0, which focuses on user-generated content, growth has changed from selling your product to grow your business.

This is an idea, known as growth hacking, states that the best way to grow your business to “pull” your customer in – as opposed to the more traditional marketing method of mass marketing to a wide range of consumers. Those days are way gone now and the new age hackers and hustlers rule the roost.

Using a metric measure, a growth hacker uses techniques and methods across a variety of disciplines to customize a message meant to draw in potential clients. Clients who are “pulled in” are better for you, because they are already motivated to see what services or products your business offers.

For instance, Airbnb started off trying to answer a problem that owners Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia perceived – the lack of low income or inexpensive lodging. Eventually, the owners decided they could grow hack their business by utilizing Craig’s List’s user database. Come to some half-decade into the future, and Airbnb now out books Hilton Hotels and is valued at 10 billion dollars.

Are you ready for your small business to expand, but aren’t sure how to proceed? Well, here are 3 easy steps to growth hacking your small business:

1. Engage Specific Markets

Before the internet, marketing consisted of making an ad that was generalizable and unfocused. This was because finding and targeting possible consumers was extremely difficult, pricey, and largely unnecessary.

Today, a growth hacker has a single, solitary purpose: to grow their company. The idea is to reach as many customers who are willing to engage in your company as possible. The key is engagement: growth hackers don’t create broad, unfocused marketing campaigns.

The campaign may be broad, but it is targeted and focused. Growth hackers grow their business by attracting clients who are directly interested in their product. Focus on developing marketing strategies that are customized to the user you want to attract.

For a growth hacker, the message is key. Understand what the user wants, and understand how to draw in new users with that message.

2. Customize Your Message

In 2010, Sean Ellis coined the term “growth hacking” as a way to differentiate between traditional marketers and web marketers. He did this, not because traditional marketing is no longer valuable, but because modern tech companies needed a different strategy.

A few factors play into the need for new marketing techniques, the first being the sheer immensity of the markets to which a tech startup is exposed. With a potential user base of 100 million-plus, the potential for growth is huge.

While the size of such markets seems to argue for more traditional marketing techniques, this is not true. Modern analytic tools allow for growth hackers to monitor and can be downloaded almost anywhere.

Growth hackers use such tools to create a targeted message aimed at attracting interested consumers and use analytics tools to instantly understand what is working and what is not working with their product. Such real-time feedback from customers allows a growth hacker to change their message into something that draws more leads.

3. Research your Resources!

The key to growth hacking is getting your message out to the world. To do this, a small business owner needs to start with some sort of contact list. The best way to create a targeted message meant to pull in customers is to know what you’re working with.

Marketing and creating email lists is an intimidating process, especially for entrepreneurs justing entering the tech world. Fortunately for all of us, there are resources out there waiting to be utilized.

Your LinkedIn profile can provide an easily accessed email lists (and a lot of them) – all potential clients you can contact. Additionally, you can do as AirBnB did, and utilize Craigslist’s user database to get in touch with a wide market.

Ready to growth hack your small business? If you have a great mobile app idea or a tech startup you would really like to see take off with the right match for app development. That’s, where Software Developers India(SDI) can help, get you.

SDI has been around for over 15 years and, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, we have seen what works and what doesn’t. With 4000 successfully launched apps and 200+ developers, SDI can help you grow hack your startup today. Have a look at our detailed case studies and gain insights into your business idea. Contact us right now or call us at 408.805.0495, or feel free to say hello at team@sdi.la.