Awesome growth hacking advices with Nathan Barnwell: Growth hacking is an interesting trend that gives us glimpses into the future of internet based companies. There has often been a barrier between the product team, and those responsible for acquiring users for the product. The coders build. The marketers push. It seemed to work for a while that way. Now, those in charge of growth are having to learn what an API is, and those in charge of programming are having to think about the customer experience within the product. Worlds are colliding.
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.
Nathan Barnwell growth hacking strategies: Instead of needing as many leads as possible at the top, a viral loop funnel requires just one satisfied user to share with others. As long as every referral results in at least 1.1 new users, the system continues growing. The milestone referral model is similar to the viral loop in that it relies on incentives to kickstart and sustain it. But milestone referrals add a more intricate, progressive element to the process. Companies that leverage viral loops generally offer a flat, consistent offer for individual referrals — businesses that use milestone referrals offer rewards for hitting specific benchmarks. In many cases, “milestones” are metrics like number of referred friends. For example, a business might include different or increasingly enticing incentives that come with one, five, and 10 referrals as opposed to a fixed incentive for each individual referral. A company will often leverage this strategy to encourage users to bring on a volume of friends and family that suits its specific business goals. The strategy also adds an engaging element to the referral process. When done right, milestone referrals are simple to share with relatively straightforward objectives and enticing, tangible products as rewards.
What is a growth marketer? Similar to “marketing managers” of the past, growth marketers know enough about paid search, paid social, CRO, user experience, email marketing, content marketing, and SEO to be dangerous. They’re more focused on strategy than execution, though; you will likely need someone more specialized to 10x the plans a growth marketer puts in place. A growth marketer is someone who runs constant, iterative tests throughout the funnel, and uses the results to craft data-driven strategy updates that lift key performance metrics. Think of them as a CMO-lite, or a modernized marketing manager. Growth marketers look like this T-shaped model of growth marketing skills. They are well-versed in a ton of topics, which is helpful for the entire organization, and go deep mostly in acquisition marketing and conversion-rate optimization.
Once you’ve built a testing habit within the growth team (ideally 2–3 tests per week), it’s time to start trying to maximise impact. To drive full impact, you’ll need to be able to test across the entire customer journey (acquisition channels, new customer onboarding, referral hooks in product, etc.). This is where things start getting hard. The highest impact part of the customer journey is usually testing across the first customer experience. One benchmark to consider is that the fastest growing consumer apps generally invest 50% of the product development resources in the first customer experience. It makes sense, because there is no second customer experience if you don’t nail the first one. Discover additional information on 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.