Excellent growth hacking tricks with Nate Barnwell: While searching for his replacement he would often receive resumes that were legit, but not relevant. They had marketing degrees, and they had marketing experience, but they were still missing something. Sean knew that the kind of strategies he employed did not represent the typical playbook used by traditional marketers, and if he gave them the reins it would not be a good fit. A traditional marketer has a very broad focus, and while their skill set is extremely valuable, it is not as necessary early in a startups life. In the first phase of a startup you don’t need someone to “build and manage a marketing team” or “manage outside vendors” or even “establish a strategic marketing plan to achieve corporate objectives” or many of the other things that marketers are tasked with doing. Early in a startup you need one thing. Growth.
The focus and the ultimate goal of all these growth strategies are to achieve growth by gaining new customers. It is not possible to achieve long-term and stable growth without a regular and loyal customer base. You can clearly identify how you must use a growth strategy in the light of various criteria such as market, customer profile, your field of activity and your product. In this context, the growth strategies used by some brands can be read as successful growth strategy examples. Cloud storage, which is used widely today, was a very new technology when Dropbox was introduced in 2008. The way of growth was to persuade people to use such a system instead of the physical storage devices used until then. The growth strategy that the company used for this purpose was market expansion. This method, which is performed through a viral loop, is based on users recommending the system to others. Normally offering 2 GB of free storage, Dropbox offered 500 MB of extra additional storage for each user registered with your referral link. In doing so, users who wanted to have up to 16 GB of free storage space recommended Dropbox to their friends and colleagues. By all means, this kind of viral method was not effective in the first months of the company. It started providing positive results in the following months and the company reached its one-millionth customer at the end of its first year. The number of customers increased to three million in the next two months. Today, the company serves more than 500 million users.
Nate 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.
The first is a product that people actually consider a “must have.” In the startup world, this is generally referred to as “product/market fit.” Once you’ve validated product/market fit, it then becomes important to define an overall success metric. This success metric should be a “North Star Metric” for the entire team to gauge the success of the business. The right North Star Metric tracks cumulative value delivered across a growing customer base. This is a much more sustainable growth indicator than something like registrations, downloads or even revenue (many subscription businesses have inactive users that are still on a paid subscription but will likely churn). Find more details at Nate Barnwell.
Growth is fundamental to a business’ survival. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years. Those numbers are generally consistent across most industries — but they also highlight how important it is to plan for growth from day one. A concrete growth strategy is more than a marketing strategy, it’s a crucial cog in your business machine. Without one, you’re at the mercy of a fickle consumer base and market fluctuations.