HOW TO VIRAL YOUR BUSINESS PART 5

    HOW TO VIRAL YOUR BUSINESS PART 5

Growth Hacker Marketing

 

True growth hackers understand the misconceptions of Internet marketing and what it truly means to go viral. Like all outsiders who see an “overnight success,” going viral looks like a chance, coincidence, or a complete accident. 

In reality, while viral marketing holds massive appeal, it is not as easy as simply posting a video online. While everyone wants to go viral, it takes more than want to create massive source of sharing.

For growth hackers, the first dilemma is deciding on whether or not a product or service is worth sharing or talking about. If the product is worth mentioning, the potential for customers to spread the word is higher than usual. 

In this scenario, if the product is worth mentioning, is should also be easy to spread. In the most basic form, this may include add-ons like social media outlets as one example of sharing.

The biggest problem companies or individuals have spreading news of a product is by believing their product is worth going viral when it isn’t. Going viral is not something that happens out of thin air. The reason certain products spread faster than others are because they are simply worth mentioning and often better than their competition.

           

Diagnosing Growth Hacking

To begin, think about the individuals who will potentially be spreading the word on a new product. In order for virality to work, potential consumers or trend-setters must find a product that is worth taking the social media time to mention or post. 

Whether this includes a simple copy and paste, adding a link, embedding a video, or mentioning a product, this takes time from any one individual’s social experience. 

For smaller businesses, this may simply include asking a friend to post a video, share on Facebook, place on Twitter, or invite as a business contact. While speaking with true online friends is an ideal place to start, it must also be done in a delicate manner. 

No one wants to help if a friend seems pushy or insincere. Instead, focus on asking a friend this enormous favor by making it not seem like a favor at all. Not only should this be worthy of trending, it must also be conductive to trend when it extends your reach.

Growth hacking surpasses traditional marketing when it comes to spreading the word on a new product. Only certain products will ever go viral and the value of the product must be desirable for all of those who potentially come in contact with the product or service. 

This only happens when a client believes in a product or when a product is truly remarkable. While translation of the word “remarkable” has lost some of its meaning, it simply means that the product is worth remarking about.

Becoming a Growth Hacker

After choosing a product to help grow, it’s important to remember that a growth hacker has no actual influence to improve or even change a product in any way. Much like a spin-doctor aiding a politician, a growth hacker can do everything in their power to change the description of a product, but they are unable to change the product itself. Rather than live within the world of built-on marketing, growth hackers work to build virality.

Perhaps two of the best examples of recent growth hacking are

LivingSocial and Groupon. These two daily deal sites not only continue to grow in terms of countless products and tons of special offers, they also provide a great marketing plan. 

LivingSocial offers a “Get this deal for free” option, which invites customers to share any deal with three friends through a specialized link, inviting the initial user a free product, despite the price. On Groupon, the “Refer a friend” option gives back ten bucks when a friend purchases a product through the site.

These examples are much different than something as simple as “Like this on Facebook” buttons, which do offer a chance for customers to share the product, but do not offer any real incentive. 

Through the LivingSocial example, a user could actually receive a free trip by simply signing up three friends. These daily deal sites save tons of advertising and the leads are much more satisfying than simply Liking something on Facebook. These two deals are actually paying users rather than taking a shot in the dark with wasted advertising bucks. 

Shortly after these two sites hit the market, brilliant (but struggling) company, Dropbox, started a “Get free space” option to invite additional users to use their cloud-based storage system. 

For every new friend who joined, 500 megabytes were offered for any additional friends who signed up for the service. After months of struggling, Dropbox increased sign-ups by approximately 60 percent with nearly 2.8 million direct invites recurring each and every month. Presently, 35 percent of customers still come from referrals.

Using Email Services

Gmail and Mailbox now use the simple idea from Hotmail:  placing a line at the bottom of an email. In this scenario, Hotmail would write “PS: I love you—Get Free Email,” which tremendously helped the company grow— somewhere around a million members within the first six months after implementation. 

Shortly after, the company doubled and eventually sold to Microsoft for somewhere around $400 million. Google presented a similar idea but with the twist of an invite-only scenario.

These types of key strategies greatly trump hiring a PR firm because they begin within the organization and grow out. By growing from within in this manner, these organizations determine the presentation of the product as well as the inner workings of the product. 

Essentially, these organizations are providing free data or free products to simply help the company spread the word on products and services that customers already enjoy. 

Not just any product or video can be shared overnight to millions. It is important to have an enthralling reason for the community to share any specific item. Virality is an engineered procedure and not an accident.

 

Step-by-Step Hacking Process

Much like any successful enterprise, it is best to begin with a narrow focus on specific, realistic goals. When individuals focus on too broad a spectrum, focus becomes meaningless because of its vagueness. Also, while large growth is of course the hopes of the end result, achieving smaller tasks must develop it. 

Much like driving a car on a long journey, the end result only occurs after understanding the route.

Once potential growth hackers have defined a realistic, actionable goal, the next step is to implement analytics in order to track the process of goals.

Without having precise analytics, goals are essentially empty. 

It is, of course, possible to hit certain goals working without an outline, but structure is vital for success. Analytics provide a definitive answer to prove that a result has or has not been reached. 

They also provide the information for the suggestion of which aspects to change in order to test another hypothesis. Much like a sculpture, the unnecessary elements must be stripped away for the ideal end result.

After analytics have been put into place, the next step is to analyze the startup or company to find out which elements are possible to use as leverage for the company. 

Every company has the ability to have something unique to help define or enhance the organization. In the example of mass email marketing, the answer is usually within the question. Certain companies would require one strategy while others another. 

Always plan growth by building upon strengths and remember that each company features a different type of fulcrum for their specific leverage.

Before moving forward, it is best to create a hypothesis. Much like scientific method, a hypothesis is a strategic guess at potential results from a procedure. 

After writing down the hypothesis, begin the experiment. When conducting any experiment, make sure not to be naïve when considering resources required for predicted results. 

If the organization requires thousands of users to work, do not expect it to work with a few hundred. When all of the data is in place and resources aligned, learn from any successes or failures and remember that the data will provide information as long as you are willing to use it.

Experiments, in science or business, are meant to be performed repetitively until successful. This may require minimal tweaking or full-blown remodeling. 

In the case of using email marketing, consider creating a control group. This group will help track the exterior environmental factors that are more difficult to track in even the most optimal settings. 

It’s important to know when an outside factor greatly affects the sales of a product. Consider companies who wish to spread to another region of the world, only to find out their products offend aspects of certain cultures. This may be overlooked and thought of as a failure without a control group narrowing down the results. 

Finally, make sure to repeat the process. While certain experiments do not work, others simply need to be tweaked and adjusted. Use the data and continue to repeat experiments until reaching success. 

Much like the gold-hunter giving up his dig inches from richness, the answer is usually within reach, so make sure to continue the hunt for a successful growth hack, as long as you believe in your product and your company. 

Growth Hacker Myths

If the steps above sound a little foreign, ignore the scientific jargon and look at what it truly means to be a growth hacker. Since the phrase sparked in 2010, too many people have said it too often and too out-of-context. 

Much like a new buzz word, other phrases and wrongful ideologies are quickly associated with a new phrase like this one. Rather than continue to believe it’s only for certain types of people, browse the following to learn the myths behind the buzz.

First, it’s important to understand that a growth hacker does not have to a programmer or a traditional marketer. In fact, marketers will have to greatly define and narrow their field in order to become a growth hacker. 

By narrowing their field, it will then require a marketer to deepen their skill set within that field. Among these myths, many outsiders feel that growth hackers only rely on analytics, which is also a wrongful interpretation. While analytics are important, they are more of a guideline to proficiency.

In addition to analytics, growth hackers are also resourceful with a curiosity about creative growth. Truly, it is the combination of right and left-brain that help the most successful growth hackers expand businesses in a successful and creative manner. 

These individuals build upon the smallest amount of success and narrow their focus much like passing helium into the small hole of a balloon to expand the entire project to it’s greatest capacity.