What's Really Behind Growth Hacking?

This article was originally published by Click & Mortar, which has since become part of Tink.

At Click & Mortar, we dream of Quebec becoming a global powerhouse in web marketing. Given the role e-commerce will play in the years ahead, we believe it's essential for Quebec entrepreneurs to learn how to leverage online sales.

But learning e-commerce isn't easy, not because information is scarce (quite the opposite), but because there's an invisible clash between technical content and strategic content. In this article, I demystify the concept of growth hacking—the new darling of startups—by presenting the big picture. You won't learn how to boost your Instagram followers or your AdWords ROI here; instead, you'll learn how to organize your marketing efforts to grow your business faster. Ready? If so, go grab a coffee (or a chai tea—yum!) because we still have about 1,400 words to cover together!

So What Exactly Is Growth Hacking?

Growth hacking (or growth marketing) is the art of rapidly testing different tactics and approaches to discover the most efficient way to grow a business. It's a bit like harnessing creativity with a more pragmatic mindset. For marketing professionals, it means shifting from instinct to science.

Let's be frank: this transition is essential, because succeeding online is hard for two main reasons.

• It's a field that changes at lightning speed: You have to run faster and faster just to stay in place. New acquisition channels emerge constantly, and established ones transform before your eyes. Keeping up with this evolution is almost a full-time job!
• There's an overwhelming amount of content available: You might think this solves the first problem—things change fast, but at least we have plenty of resources to help! Well, in this case, "too much is as bad as not enough" applies perfectly. There's so much content that it becomes very easy to get lost in the jungle. It's information overload.

To sum up: we're under pressure to evolve quickly, and we can find countless sources claiming the solution lies in this tactic, that hack, or that channel. But there is no silver bullet that works for everyone. Every business is different, and implementing tips like "Top 5 content your brand should post on Snapchat," "How to growth hack LinkedIn," or "The way to collect 21,894 leads in one month" will rarely be useful in the long run.

Operating this way amounts to trying the latest trend and hoping it works. Would a scientist work like that? Of course not!

No single tactic works for everyone. However, there is a process and methodology that all the greatest growth hackers share. 

So no one can copy-paste the same tactic, but everyone should use the same process? Yes, exactly! And this is where it gets interesting. When you dig a little deeper, you realize that business leaders like Sean Ellis (Dropbox), Andrew Chen (Uber), and Noah Kagan (SumoMe) all share a similar methodology. Here are the main steps… (suspense).

1. Tackle a Problem

This is the easiest step—as an entrepreneur, you probably have a mental list of things to improve. It's also the step that makes all the difference, because everyone wants to know how to increase their online sales.

Now that we have our problem, we shouldn't just sit down and start trying random things hoping they'll boost sales. That's roughly how we operated at my first online breakfast delivery company, and it no longer exists today!

The important part is turning that problem into the most specific objective possible. I know I'm not teaching you anything new here. But here's how growth hacking superstars go from problem to objective.

2. Choose the Right Metric Among the Pirate Metrics (AARRR)

Let's go back to our goal of increasing online sales. Since we don't want to jump into execution blindly, we first need to decide which metric to focus on.

• Acquisition: Increase website traffic
• Activation: Improve the purchase conversion rate
• Retention: Increase the number of repeat buyers
• Revenue: Increase the average cart value
• Referral: Increase the viral coefficient

While this list isn't exhaustive, we now have a more detailed view of the options available to grow online sales. Choosing which metric to focus on is personal, it depends on your context and history. Let's say we focus on acquisition and want to increase site traffic. We'd then formulate a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, and Time-related) such as: "I want to increase traffic by 3,000 visitors per month within 4 weeks."

That's a much more precise objective than our initial idea of increasing online sales. But let's admit it still feels daunting… 3,000 visitors in 4 weeks? That's why you need to reverse-engineer the goal starting from the end: 3,000 new visitors in a month is 750 per week, or 150 per working day. Feels a little less scary now, doesn't it? We now want to attract 150 additional visitors per day. I don't know about you, but I have far more ideas for getting 150 visitors tomorrow than 3,000 next month! Speaking of ideas, once you know exactly how to quantify your goal, you need to figure out how to achieve it.

3. Do Your Research

This is where you're allowed to read far and wide. Now that you're looking to get 150 more visitors to your site tomorrow, it's time to read articles about growth hacks that increase website traffic, or simply ask the question in communities like Quora. Even if you stumble upon somewhat questionable "top 5" lists, the idea is to build a list of things to try. A list of scientific experiments, if you will!

For example, to increase a website's traffic by 150 visitors per day, you could:

• Post in Facebook groups related to your niche
• Publish and share a blog post
• Write a guest post for a credible blog in your industry
• Open a new acquisition channel (e.g., Pinterest)

4. Formulate Hypotheses

Once you've listed your tests, it's time to formulate hypotheses about them. In the long run, this is the best way to develop your intuition about the performance of new tactics. Your hypothesis should also represent the minimum effort/results threshold you consider acceptable. For example, if I estimate that posting my blog article in a Facebook group takes 5 minutes, I'd be comfortable expecting that action to bring 10 visitors to my site. My hypothesis would therefore be: "Posting my blog article in a Facebook group will generate 10 visitors to my site."

5. Experiment

Now it's time to actually run our scientific experiment by implementing each tactic and evaluating its impact. For each test, it's a good idea to document its implementation and execution so you can delegate the task if it proves successful.

6. Analyze

Important: when we talk about experimenting with a tactic, we don't mean trying it just once. If you want to share in Facebook groups, for example, you'd need to make multiple posts in several different groups over several weeks. Otherwise, your test can't possibly be representative of reality!

At minimum, an experiment should last 30 days.

At the end of the experimentation period, you'll know whether your hypothesis is validated or not. If the tactic exceeds your initial hypothesis—great! If not, do you start over with modifications, or abandon it? That's your call.

7. Conclude

Once the tests are done, you know what works for your business and where to invest. The process is rigorous, but it's the only way to consistently find the best solution to your marketing problems.

The best part? The growth hacking methodology will keep you from getting lost in the jungle of content that exists in the world of web marketing. By working toward a very specific objective, it becomes much easier to choose which marketing actions to test!

So, are you ready to give it a try? Let me know how it goes!