As an entrepreneur you will dream of creating a company and growing fast, but the truth is that the reality is very different. On your way you will encounter many difficulties such as lack of knowledge of the market, fixed costs, problems finding partners, lack of funding or lack of motivation.
According to South Summit’s Entrepreneurship Map, 80% of first time entrepreneurs failed, although failure decreases to 30% as the number of startups created grows. In other words, you learn from failure.
The need for money is, perhaps, the main stumbling block of start-up businesses and one of the reasons why they can fail. In this sense, you’ve probably heard terms like business angels, crowdfunding, accelerators, incubators or venture capital.
In this article, I want to talk to you about several ways to grow a company without investment. Yes, it is possible and one of the keys to success is creativity.
But, let’s start at the beginning.
WHAT IS GROWTH HACKING AND WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES?
Have you ever invited a friend to use an app to get free minutes, freebies, or discounts? Without realizing it, you’ve been using growth hacking.
Growth hacking can be defined as a discipline that seeks the growth of users, revenue or impact of a company quickly and with minimal resources.
In other words, high-impact, low-cost actions are used.
WHAT ADVANTAGES CAN GROWTH HACKING BRING TO YOUR COMPANY?
If you use growth hacking techniques such as the ones I am going to detail in the next section, you will be able to obtain benefits such as:
- Cost reduction: Growth hacking actions are usually cheap and have a significant return, so they will allow you to control and reduce your company’s costs.
- Increased visibility: Your company will be known in a simple way and will be able to capture the attention of more customers.
- Creating a Community: You will be able to create a community of followers who can be converted into customers.
- Increased sales: Your sales will grow and, therefore, so will your company.
GROWTH HACKING TECHNIQUES YOU CAN USE IN YOUR COMPANY
Now that you know what growth hacking is, it’s time for you to know the most commonly used tactics for rapid growth.
THE FREEMIUM MODEL
Many companies currently work with this model that consists of offering a free version of a product and a premium or paid version. Think of the case, for example, of Spotify. It has a free product with ads and a paid one that gives more features and has no ads.
EXCLUSIVE INVITATIONS
It’s about creating a product, inviting a series of buyers who can only invite as many others, and so on. In this way, the invitation will be the only way to get to know or buy the product and an idea of exclusivity will be generated.
GAMIFICATION
It consists of creating games that incentivize people to perform certain actions. The clothing brand Gas Jeans came up with a game for its 30th anniversary that consisted of giving users 30 seconds to buy for free in its online store. People shared the information and the brand made a huge impact.
SCARCITY IS THE KEY
There are «magic» words that encourage impulse purchases such as: last units, limited units, end of promotion.
These are situations in which the limitation of units or time encourages users to buy without much thought.
FREE TRIALS
It’s another widely used technique, they offer you a free month of a product to try it out. This would be the case, for example, of Netflix, which gives you a free month to watch movies and series and after that month they will start charging you.
MEMBER GET MEMBER
It consists of offering users a discount or a gift, for example, if they recommend your product or service to someone. For example, with Dropbox, if you recommend the app to a friend, you get more storage space for free.
THE WOW EFFECT
With this tactic, you’ll simply have to give potential customers more than they expect. The gift can be an extra service or an ebook, for example.
EMAIL TO SUBSCRIBERS
If you already have a number of subscribers on your website or blog, you can write to them offering them discounts and special offers. It’s always easier to sell to someone who is already a customer than to attract new customers.
CONTENT SCRAPER
It’s a technique that can be used when you have a blog. It consists of looking for keywords, topics or content related to the market in which you work and that are shared a lot on social networks, to create better content than that. In this way, we will be able to position ourselves better on Google and increase visits.
INFLUENCERS
There are people in your industry who stand out for being leaders and for having a lot of followers on social networks. How about offering them your product or service for free so they can try it and recommend it on their social media profiles?
CONTESTS
You can organize a contest where the prize is one of your most requested products. To participate, users will have to follow you on a certain social network, share your post or «like» your post, for example.
WEBINARS
Organize a free webinar on a topic in which you are a specialist and spread it on social networks. It’s a great way to attract subscribers and potential customers.
FREE SHIPPING IN ONLINE STORES
One of the main objections of users when buying in e-commerce is the cost of shipping. To overcome this objection you can offer free shipping for a while, for example, so that your conversion rate increases, due to the growth in sales volume.
FREE CONTENT
Just like you can create a webinar, you have the option to create a guide for potential customers to download for free. This will increase your database with interested users.
WHAT IS THE PROFILE OF A GROWTH HACKER?
To apply all these techniques you need a special person, a growth hacker. A growth hacker is not just a marketing manager, they are much more and these are the characteristics that define their profile:
- You must be an analytical person, who continually asks yourself why, in relation to the situation of the company and the measurements it makes. Why have sales dropped this week, why has the conversion rate increased?
- A growth hacker must be creative, must go beyond the usual marketing techniques and invent new avenues.
- You must have knowledge of marketing, SEO, programming and be up to date with what is happening in the market.
- Finally, you must be a person who never tires of learning and innovating, so you will be continuously searching.
TIPS TO FOLLOW BEFORE APPLYING GROWTH HACKING TECHNIQUES
Before implementing the growth hacking techniques we have seen in your company, it is essential that you follow a series of steps:
- Conduct market research to find out where you are moving and what trends exist.
- Define your ideal customer, you must know everything about them, from where they live or how old they are, to what worries them. It is essential that you know what their needs are and how you can help them.
- Study the customer journey and analyze what works and what doesn’t.
- Create a truly innovative product so that you swim in a blue ocean, a market without competition.
GROWTH HACKING SUCCESS STORIES
Many brands have used techniques like the ones we’ve seen successfully, here are some examples:
DROPBOX
This company has been based on the growth hacking system since its inception. On the one hand, it created the system whereby to get more storage space, you had to invite a friend, and, on the other hand, it drew up an agreement with the Samsung brand whereby if you installed dropbox on a Samsung smartphone you got free space.
GMAIL
In the beginning, you could only get a Gmail email account through an invitation, this meant that the service was considered exclusive and grew.
UBER
Uber is the perfect example of creating an innovative service. What they do is offer a free ride, that way you try the service and leave your data. In addition, it takes advantage of the scarcity technique and also offers free rides when there are special events.
HAWKERS
The Hawkers sunglasses brand, of which I am president, is a success story in which the internet has been the key to selling and attracting customers through growth hacking. Many techniques have been used, such as influencers with Paula Echevarría, Messi or Andrés Velencoso, Facebook ads, social networks, community creation such as Hawkers Campus, raffles, sponsorships of events and teams such as the Los Angeles Lakers and many others.
There are many possibilities to grow your business without the need for financing and with cheap high-impact actions that can be complemented with others of higher cost once the results justify it.