“Marketing has always been about the same thing—who your customers are and where they are.”
In this book, Holiday highlights the need to shift to unconventional methods of marketing.
To answer the question “How do I get more customers?”, he writes that the requirement is not just marketing techniques but also a thorough knowledge of your business. More importantly, your product.
The product should be the USP as well as the major attraction for new customers.
The basis of the book is that traditional and orthodox measures of marketing will yield no beneficial results.
For example, to make a product or campaign go viral, marketers approach extremely expensive methods like infomercials, broadcasts, banners, etc; whereas, the use of simple, low-budget growth hacker marketing techniques will result in a self-perpetuating marketing machine that is sufficient in itself to engage a greater audience.
Growth hackers are people who have totally rejected the book of traditional marketing ideas and have only focused on techniques that are tactful and measurable.
If you’re new to growth hacking, get the book here.
Apex internet companies like Dropbox and Groupon are known to use the cheap budgeted growth hacker marketing techniques for building their company and brand.
Conventional marketers tend to employ ways of creating a “buzz” in the market about the product even before the launch, but it’s different from the growth hackers. They believe in constant improvements and mounting growths.
Technology plays an essential role in the marketing process of growth hackers. They use technology for monitoring customer or user behavior towards the product. They differentiate between the marketing aspects and the product development.
Customer feedback is used as an input for improvement and modification in the product quality so that it matches the consumer requirements.
To begin the process the first step is to create something that the people want.
Companies like Instagram and Airbnb spend a huge amount of time figuring out what growth hackers call Product Market Fit (PMF).
Knowing your audience, highlighting their needs, and designing a product that is psychedelic is not just designing choices but requires enormous marketing decisions.
The next step is to find your growth hack. This means that your marketing strategy needs to be aligned with your product type, audience, and how people will perceive it.
Out-ward facing marketing and PR initiatives are needed to capture an audience and then the business grows with and because of the loyal customers. Some techniques you could use are:
1. Creating an exclusive environment
2. Host cool and take the customers through the process of using the product
3. Create hundreds of fake profiles to show your brand to be popular
There is one thing all markets or maybe just all people are wrong about is that they think they are always correct. They make decisions based on their assumptions; which is often not the right route to take.
The most important takeaway from the book is that Growth Hacking is a mindset, not a tool.
All the above-mentioned things from the book can be summed up as – Make cheap trials with your concept and invest money based on concrete feedback and improvements suggested by your customers.
Also, reduce the entry barriers and use targeted media platforms. Think out of the box to be a Growth Hacker.
Haven’t read the book yet? Get it here.
