“Hey, can you create a Growth hack that will skyrocket our numbers, have customers arrive en-masse and make us all rich?”. Every single company dreams of the Dropbox kind-of-hack, yet only a few found their killer hack. Why is it so? And why is Growth hacking somewhat perceived as ”Referral Marketing under steroids” when it touches the entire customer’s journey, the entire conversion funnel, and actually the entire company: If Finance is your brain, Operations your heart, then Growth is your blood, interacting with absolutely all parts of the body, tip to toe, no exception.
We “just” need the right Growth Hacker
You’ll find plenty of Growth Hackers that will promise you an avalanche of leads with a single activity. They’ll show you one trick that pushes you as a top result on Google and you’ll believe they are God. Their methods include:
- building you a – technically unstable and crappy –cough – website in a day*
- searching keywords your audience is looking up (this is good)
- having bots write thousands of pages with those keywords (it’s already getting dirtier, search bots may fall for it till its next algorithm update, but will it engage your audience, the humans? See, writing for SEO is writing for Humans)
- just before leaving, they’ll show you some nice KPIs: traffic is up, newsletter’s subscriptions are up (even if you actually don’t have a newsletter to send out, it feels good anyway)
- they’ll finally say “look here are some leads, it works”
A moment later they’ll slip a hefty invoice that you’ll pay, convinced you made the right investment. Then they’ll disappear and one of those two things can happen:
- That guy is GOD (Growth-on-Demand?): Growth is sustained, crazy flow of news customers, after a few months you sell the company and go live in the Bahamas. Nice! Can I get their phone number, please?
- After the first few exciting moments, reality hits you hard: the hack no longer works, or leads keep coming but they are not the right ones, or you didn’t have anything to keep them engaged and someone else (read “competition”) did. No bueno!
Or maybe we need to enable sustainable Growth
How many times have you heard about the outcome #1? If you did, do you think that the hack itself worked in isolation or was the product so irresistible that everyone wanted it? Growth is the full package, it is a commitment, it is a process, it’s never a single action. If your business successfully takes money from people you “growth hacked”, but what you deliver is crap, then it’s a scam.
When it comes to Growth, success is a mix between creativity, excellence, automation and yes, “hacks”
- You generate leads by serving the right message to the right people at the right place and right moment, with the right tone, they feel understood and want to know more;
- When they start engaging with you, they find exciting and comprehensive content;
- Then, they talk to nice people that are here to help them, to team up, not just there to take their money;
- When they get your product, they love it and it does what you said it would, it has a high perceived value for the customer;
- Your customer service is easy to reach and helpful, they find solutions in due time;
- People get so excited about your product, and you/your team, that they talk to their peers about this amazing company they are working with, and you “help” them do that;
- You feel good because you’re doing the right thing, and by doing just that you’re more successful.
Actually if you’re familiar with Marketing you probably just recognised the various steps of the Customer’s Journey. Now, as I wrote in the intro: Growth touches the entire customer’s journey. A Growth hacker’s job is not to come, look a bit around, say “Got it, place the hack here please”, and then go for a Frappuccino. Their job is to look thoroughly at all the touch points of the customer journey, think how to make them perfect and THEN place this little something there that will push the person to act: subscribe, buy, download, share, etc. By the way, “encourage” is the wrong word: at that point this person should be WILLING to do it, like it’s making them feel good to subscribe, buy, download, share, etc. It adds to their “status”.
Are you a Growth Hacker saying growth hacks don’t work?
No, I don’t say a Growth Hacker won’t find the ultimate hack. I say it’s a lot of try, fail, learn, try again until you get there, and it’s exactly the philosophy of growth hacking: dare to try, go for high frequency testing of new things, and share this vision within the organisation. When everyone adopts the growth mentality, incredible things happen.
Personally, I believe that while it’s nice for a Growth Hacker to find the ultimate hack, their mission should be to bring sustainable growth, something that works for the entire company, that is scalable and more than often it means not to put all your eggs in the same basket.
How do we do then?
Resist the mirage of a Growth magic potion, hire or work with someone that will be committed. Someone that believes that your success is their success and that they are with you on the long run. They won’t tell you “I’m your quick fix, and I work, believe me”. They’ll say things like: “We will try, we will gather data, we will measure success, and we will improve” and they’ll invest their heart and soul in your business.
Growth is a journey, not a one way ticket to success. It doesn’t grow on trees because IT IS the tree, reaching higher and higher, extending its branches in many direction, becoming stronger, catching more sun… I guess you get the metaphor. Don’t despair: the fastest tree grows 10cm a week and your business growth can be fast. You should just be wary of growth magicians and their tricks.
In a nutshell
- Get the right person in the Growth position (call it a Growth Hacker if you like)
- Recruit the right people IN ALL POSITIONS, they are making all the difference either by the way they interact with (potential) customers or the way they influence their colleagues, or by bringing high energy to the office, etc.
- More than a brand, be a love mark
- Your only goal is to delight customers at any stage of their journey
- Be smart and ask: wherever you see a possibility to turn people into your ambassadors do it; wherever you can put a call to action, put it.
- Measure: cost per lead, CAC,… it’s not easy, Marketing Attribution for example is very hard to nail down but try. Start with a few KPIs then add more.
- Learn and improve: you’ll make mistakes, and it’s good, they get you one step closer to the right growth hack.
- Adjust: adopt an agile philosophy, if you see something working well invest more on it. On the opposite, cut your losses when something doesn’t work. Be bold, many times you’ll think, “yes, but maybe if we try again” and have doubts but then remember that a “No” to something is a “Yes” to something better.
*Maybe you’re wondering why I did mention the crappy and unstable website built by a Growth Hacker promising the moon. It’s actually something I experienced as a customer and it drove me really mad. Your website is the cornerstone of your Growth strategies, the place where all stories begin, the place that every person you talk to will visit at least once. Don’t neglect it. Build a scalable site with a solid infrastructure. Because if you don’t, you’ll pay it 10x later.
