Should you be using Growth Hacking Techniques?

Hacks and hacking are such interesting terms. The word hack is primarily defined as “to cut with rough or heavy blows.” When talking about computers the idea of hacking used to be fairly simple; to gain unauthorized access. However with the spawn of ideas like life hacks and work hacks the meaning of the word has changed, now referring to any trick, shortcut, skill or method to increase productivity whether that takes place in website design, meeting health goals, or finding ways to save money.

Today we are talking about hacking as a way to increase our productivity levels in marketing and answering the question of if you should be using Growth Hacking Techniques. Spoiler alert, the answer is going to be yes.

Why do I need hacks?

Nobody needs hacks. More than likely you are already working diligently at your marketing and are using numerous proven techniques to obtain results that are satisfactory in one way or another. Your business is already doing a lot of the common things that produce results.

However just because we don’t need something doesn’t mean we don’t want something. In the business world what most of us end up wanting is more. More leads, more conversions, and ultimately more money.

The point of using hacks of any kind is to make small improvements in your overall process for better results. In this case, we are looking at proven growth hacking techniques that can improve your marketing results without adding a lot of time or expense to your current process.

That sure sounds like a win-win scenario.

Growth Hacking Techniques

• Use Emotional Headlines – It has been demonstrated that headlines that have an emotional charge to them get shared more than content which doesn’t. Now that doesn’t mean you just exclusively write headlines that just use words from your emotional word bank. You also need to add focus to the headline if you want to increase sharing. Headlines that sound valuable, entertaining, supportive, relationship-nurturing, amazing, and astonishing or provide self-defining moments when using emotional words are a solid hacking technique.
• Share Content Multiple Times – For some reason there is a large segment of the marketing world which feels sharing content once or twice is all that you need to do. The reasoning behind this seems to be either laziness or a belief that the content should be strong enough that it will share itself. Or, perhaps there is a lack of belief in the content and by not taking extra effort then it won’t feel like as much of a failure when the final metrics are tallied. In all cases that reasoning is counterproductive. Simply put, the more you share content then the more it will be seen and thus the higher percentage chance it has for success. Share that content multiple times on the first publication day and then follow up for the next few weeks with a diminishing schedule of promotion. This is such an easy thing to do! Hubspot and other tools are available to help automate this process.
• Email Content Multiple Times – This idea piggybacks off the above idea when it comes to email marketing. However, rather than sending a blast email to your entire list, instead segment your email list to those who opened the original email and those who didn’t. For those who didn’t simply change the subject line and resend the same email 4 to 7 days later. It is surprising how effective this can be with relatively minimal effort.
• Random Acts of Kindness – If you are suffering from low email opening rates, one way you can increase this is by simply giving away something for free. It really doesn’t matter what it is. For example, a restaurant could offer a free appetizer coupon. The point is that it is free with no strings attached. By doing this, even if people don’t take advantage of the free offer, they will be more likely to open future emails from your business to see if it is another free offer of some sort.
• Increase your Website Speed – While slow and steady might win a race against a lazy rabbit in an old fable, it does not win customers online. Did you know that even a 1 second delay in your page response speed can reduce conversions by 5% or more? More than likely your site speed is costing you more conversions than that as sites often run 2 or 3 seconds slower than they could be running. Check out this article for ideas on how to speed up your website and stop leaking conversions because your turtle can’t get into 2nd gear!
• Use Social Proof – Social proof such as testimonials, case studies, rating systems or even the use of logos form businesses you interact with add a valuable layer to your businesses effectiveness in selling itself and its products. Many people constantly use the actions and feedback of others to guide them in making decisions. Therefore it makes sense to take advantage of that. Here is a good article on how to turn Social Proof into Sales.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that most every company is spending time and energy on marketing efforts to gain customers and conversions. Rather than looking to re-invent the wheel or add new tactics, you should be using growth hacking techniques to make some of the things you are already doing more effective and efficient thereby moving closer to optimal performance. Increased growth with minimal effort? Sign me up!

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