When you hang around startup workers and business owners for a while, one buzzword you’d keep hearing is ‘Growth Hacking’.
Not ‘iterating’, not ‘pivoting’, always ‘growth hacking’… and it’s easy to see why.
Even though growth hacking just popped up a few years ago, it is already a big thing. Every startup business wants a growth hacker. This is because every new (and old) business wants to scale up real quick and make so much money in the process.
However, what does the term ‘growth hacking’ even mean?
Growth hacking defined
Coined in 2010 by the founder and CEO of the popular firm ‘GrowthHackers’, ‘growth hacking’ is a terminology for every strategy designed for the sole purpose of growing a business. These strategies are geared towards acquiring as many customers and users as possible, in a short space of time, while spending as little as possible.
Early-stage startups with limited budgets in need of massive growth use growth hacking strategies the most.
How to start growth hacking
Growth hacks follow a pretty straightforward process. To start growth hacking, the first thing a company will do is create and product and test to ensure that people want the product, and wouldn’t mind paying for it. Doing this helps the company generate data so they understand the personality of their potential buyers and decide on the best ways to implement their growth marketing tactics.
This next thing a company will do is to update their product based on suggestions from customer feedback and ensure that they are on the right track. While doing this, the company should also market their product to in order to keep growth. The results should be tracked and taken note of. This conversion optimization technique known as A/B testing is very essential for effective growth hacking.
The Best Resources For Mastering Growth Hacks in 30 Days
1. One Month
One of the best courses around, One Month contains a series of video tutorials and lessons split into six hours, that will help any growth hacker, engineer, marketer, or entrepreneur learn the strategies for growing a product.
Every growth hacker needs a combination of the right technical and marketing skills needed to deliver clever marketing hacks as they monitor their results. One Month is a great place to acquire these skills.
Inside the course, you’d also find copy, code, and email swipe files, regular curriculum updates, direct access to certain docs and a certificate of completion after the course.
Who needs this course?
One Month is perfect for:
– Engineers
– Marketers
– Founders and Entrepreneurs
– Promotion seekers
– Novices and first timers.
What you’d learn:
During the duration of the course, you’d learn the best growth hacking strategies and methodologies used by big companies like Appsumo, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Zynga, Dropbox, and Facebook.
You’d also learn customer acquisition skills, lean analytics, the A/B testing method, the lean marketing framework, and conversion rate optimization.
Cost:
To gain access to One Month’s growth hacking course, you’d have to make a one-time payment of $199 and enjoy access for a full year. You can also pay $299 for a one-month unlimited access to more than 20 other courses like WordPress, Python, JavaScript, HTML, Bitcoin and Blockchain, and so on.
Link: https://onemonth.com/courses/growth-hacking
2. Udemy
Of course, you’ve heard about Udemy. If you want to learn the best growth hacking ideas, Udemy is a great place to start. On Udemy, you would find several courses with a series of lessons and tutorials that teach the fundamentals of growth hacking, and the best growth hacks for sales and marketing.
There are up to six courses on Udemy that teaches you what growth hacking is, the whole growth hacking process, the growth hacking experimentation process, all you need to know about growth hacking techniques, every misconception about growth hacking, and the growth hacking jargons and terms.
What you’d learn
On Udemy, you can learn how to arrange email lists and automate communications on email marketing, enhance social media audiences through organic techniques and bots, use marketing content and stories to improve conversion rates, calculate per-user CAC/LTV, monitor, analyze and leverage product and traffic usage data with Google Analytics, incorporate the adaptive and data-driven culture of Growth Hacking to enhance digital marketing results.
Some courses on Udemy also teach things like creating CTA buttons and high-converting landing pages, using sales psychology to increase prices, adding leads and subscribers to a list, improving search engine ranking, and optimizing a business website.
Who needs Udemy?
Udemy is great for:
– SEO specialists
– Small business owners
– Social media marketers
– Growth marketers
– Growth hackers
– Entrepreneurs
– Product managers
– Digital marketers
Cost
There is a free growth hacking course on Udemy. However, the course teaches just the fundamentals of growth hacking. To learn things like email lists, communication automation, and organic techniques, you may have to pay around $99-$133. The paid courses on Udemy also come with a certificate of completion, as well as direct access to instructors.
Link: https://www.udemy.com/courses/marketing/growth-hacking/
3. Growth Hacker Marketing
Want to become a master of growth hacking techniques? Ryan Holiday’s Growth Hacker Marketing course is for you. The course is made up of insightful lectures and tutorials on the future of advertising, marketing, and PR.
Ryan has spent a lot of years mastering the art of growth hacking. He teaches how to apply growth hacking ideas to whatever you’re doing as a budding entrepreneur, marketing student, or executive.
What you’d learn
First of all, Ryan teaches the basics of growth hacking, before diving into product-market fit, finding your growth hack, going viral, closing the loop between retention and optimization, and then how to apply start-up style growth hacking to publishing.
Who needs Growth Hacker Marketing?
Growth Hacker Marketing is for:
– Budding entrepreneurs.
– Marketing students.
– Executives.
– Social media marketers
– Growth marketers
– Growth hackers
– Engineers
– Designers
Cost
You can enroll for the growth hacker marketing course for $59. After making your payment, you are granted unlimited access to this course for eternity, and can use any device to access. Ryan offers a full refund to anyone not satisfied with this course.
Link: https://learn.ryanholiday.net/p/growth-hacker-marketing
4. Growthhackers.com
Growthhackers.com is an online community for marketers that are growth-oriented. At least 3000 growth teams can be found on the platform, interacting and sharing ideas on how they use growth experiments to improve company operations.
Website founder, Sean Ellis also teaches the fundamentals on how to become an effective growth hacker through courses and conferences. If you want to learn the best way to lead a team towards executing growth processes that bring in results, growthhackers.com is where you should be at.
What you’d learn
On growthhackers.com, you’d learn how to speed up your team’s velocity for maximum growth learning, keep your team consistently focused on growth, concentrate your team on the best growth opportunities, follow-up your team after every growth meeting session to make sure all plans are executed properly, properly prepare for growth meetings, and conduct effective growth meetings to improve growth.
Who needs growthhackers.com?
– Marketers
– Product managers
– Growth analysts
– Founders
Cost: There are five major courses on the growthhackers.com website. The ‘2019 GrowthHackers Conference Virtual Pass’ can be purchased at $249, the Growth Master Training Course’ is available at $299, the ‘How to Recruit and Launch a Growth Team at an Enterprise Business costs $39, the ‘2018 GrowthHackers Conference Virtual Pass’ is available at $199, and the ‘2017 GrowthHackers Conference Virtual Pass’ can be assessed at $199.
Link: https://growthhackers.com/
5. Growthhacker.TV
In growthhacker.tv, entrepreneurs and founders trying to improve their startups will find a great educational resource. It is one thing to build a product and start a company, it is a different thing entirely to get people’s attention, and grow a company. Growthhacker.tv is all about ‘growth’.
Guests from some of the biggest companies across the globe like Expedia, LinkedIn, Hulu, DropBox, and Facebook frequently come on the platform to talk about how their companies grow.
On growthhacker.tv, you will find at least 180 episodes of startup growth experts revealing their secrets. There is at least a new episode released each week on the platform.
What you’d learn
Proven growth hackers from big companies teach how they grew their startups at different stages. You get to learn how to approach growth as a startup, and how to implement specific tactics that worked for these companies.
Who needs growthhacker.tv?
– Anyone trying to grow a startup
– Growth engineers
– Growth leads
– Growth hackers
– Data scientists
– Product managers
– Startup engineers
– Designers and UI + UX experts
– Accelerators and Incubators
– Directors of Marketing
– Chief Marketing Officers
– Venture Capitalists
– Founders and Entrepreneurs
Cost: To sign up to the platform and enjoy its community, episodes, and recipes for a month, you get to pay $49. You can enjoy all of those things for a full year at a one-time payment of $159. There is also a lifetime package that means you get to enjoy a lifetime package of advanced growth hacking education at a one-time payment of $179.
Link: https://www.growthhacker.tv/
6. Growhack
GrowHack is probably the most expensive platform on this list for learning growth hacking techniques and growth hacking ideas, but it is absolutely worth the cost. There’s three programs on the platform for repeatable growth.
You get to enjoy coaching on how to increase revenue and run growth experiments. You also enjoy access to workshops taught by experienced growth hackers.
What you’d learn
GrowKack teaches you how to increase your company’s chances of success by launching better quality growth experiments, how to optimize conversion rates, how to implement user analytics and research, how to analyze user base, and how to optimize analytics and user acquisition.
There are also tutorials on:
– Leveraging metrics that matter
– Handling onboarding, retention and trigger email
– Using retention for growth
– CRO, retargeting, emails and referrals
– Segmenting users and creating positive selection
– Designing a compelling first-time user experience
– Content marketing and SEO
Who needs GrowHack?
GrowHack is perfect for:
– Startup companies
– Founders
– Experienced contributors
– Growth leaders
– Team leaders
– Public company executives
– Anyone looking to learn growth hacks
Cost: There are three courses available on GrowHack. ‘GrowHack coaching’ costs $2000 per month, ‘The GrowHack Bootcamp’ costs $1699 while ‘The GrowHack Subscription’ costs $999 per year.
Link: https://learn.growhack.com/
Some Tactics Used by Famous Growth Hackers
Brands like AirBnB, Dollar Shave, Dropbox, Facebook, Foundr, Gmail, Groove, Grow and Convert, Groupon, Harvest Snaps, Hotmail, Hubspot, and Instagram have been able to outgrow their potentials, and implement some amazing tactics that helped them expand and increase profits. Some of those tactics include:
– Creating a pre-launch email list
– Launching on Product Hunt of similar platforms
– Leveraging referral marketing
– Making new brand partnerships
– Hosting and attending community events and conferences
– Leveraging adjacent markets
– Building a communities around their brands through social media marketing
– Imitating and outdoing their major competitors
– Creating aggressive content marketing strategies
– Guest posting
– Working with influencers
– Cashing in on current trends
– Using HARO for press opportunities
– Sending gifts to customers
– Offering discounts
– Featuring user stories on blogs
– Leveraging Quora by answering relevant questions
– Making affiliate partners
– Creating email drip campaigns
– Repurposing existing content on websites and blogs
Growth Hacking Tools That Are Easy to Use
1. SEMRush:
This tool helps you learn what your competitors are doing. That way you can outdo them.
2. Optimizely:
With Optimizely, you get to automate the most stressful processes of A/B testing.
3. BuzzStream:
BuzzStream helps you organize your outreach influencers and contact with a click of the button.
4. MailChimp:
MailChimp is an all-in-one marketing platform with tools that help you grow your business.
5. Constant Contact:
Want to make your email processes seamless? Constant Contact is what you need.
6. Intercom.io:
Intercom is a platform that allows you to directly communicate with your customers and send messages to visitors via live chat.
