Every day someone is launching a new product every waking minute, and they need to make it successful the next day.
Marketing a new startup isn’t that easy, and it isn’t so hard either despite the fierce competition out there for most entrepreneurs competing for a slice of the market share.
You need a unique creative marketing approach and be open to learning new growth hacks to build a strong base for your growing business.
The trick is to leverage growth hacking techniques to get your business off to a steady start and build your base quickly.
Growth hacking is more than just marketing. It involves total focus on getting clients to try out your new product or service.
In this article, we emphasize on some of the best and successful growth hacking tactics for startups in any industry. You will learn how to attract more customers and drive more sales for your growing startup.
1. Set Time-Bound Goals
Specific and measurable goals will get you what you want – i.e., growth and eventual success in your emerging business.
If you need to drive sales by the end of the second quarter of the year, write it down and crunch the numbers; say, “I need 100 customers by the end of July 2020”, or “I need 100 returning customers with gross revenue of $10,000 by the end of the second quarter of the year.”
Once you have your desires written on paper, look at it often to make it sink in. It’s not enough to have a money-making goal; you need specific pointers about what you intend to achieve and when this happens.
Keep your goals somewhere conspicuous to remind you of what you need to do and how to get there. You can save them on your Smartphone, in Evernote, or stick them on your fridge door, bathroom mirror, or even at the back of your door entrance for that constant reminder of what you have to do to get your startup on the right gears.
2. Create an Impressive Landing Page
Create an attractive website with a landing page that incorporates positive elements to turn clicks into customer conversions. Use catchy brief headlines, consistent colors, and a convincing call to action.
To maximize conversions, consider developing a landing page aligned with your customers’ needs and awareness level.
How do you determine your customers’ awareness levels and merge your message to their buying patterns?
Use Google Analytics to:
- Scrutinize new vs. returning customers
- Which pages they browse regularly
- Which keywords appear the most on the search box
- How long customers stay on your page
Use tools like ClickTale or CrazyEgg Heat & Scroll Maps to analyze the engagement of your landing page. Find out where users visit the most, what gets a lot of attention, and what doesn’t.
With this data, you can draw solid conclusions about the visitors on your landing page, whether they arrive via Google or Facebook ads.
To boost your landing page, try to simplify the headline, give it solid information, and include relevant
Keywords. You can use the tools below to build a landing page that changes based on the visitor’s origin:
- HubSpot landing page builder
- Google Ads Word Stream
- Dynamic Text Replacement by Unbounce
3. Fake it Till You Make it
The pufferfish, a small, timid aquatic fish, was forced by evolution to develop creative defense mechanisms to camouflage itself against large predators by filling its stomach with water to appear bigger than it looks. And it worked!
Now consider your startup as the small fish trying to swim in a pool full of giants.
How do you make your startup to appear larger than the reality on the ground?
Simple. Just fake your company size by giving an outward illusion of success.
To achieve rapid growth, make your business appear larger to attract users.
You want customers to come in droves after all.
A good case study is Lyft, a cab service company that faked their size to drive more customers and achieve rapid growth. Lyft inflated the number of drivers (on hourly pay) and made them sit at strategic locations to wait around for customers. To their surprise, folks soon realized the cabs were everywhere and made Lyft their first choice when booking a cab ride. Soon after, the number of repeat riders shot up rapidly, and that’s how the small company gained a lot of customers within a short time.
4. Find Affiliate Partners
Another business trick is to partner with other established businesses to boost your startup growth by advertising their products alongside yours.
In 2013, Dropbox launched an affiliate program with Samsung mobile phone users. Dropbox offered 50GB of free storage up to 2 years to customers who purchased a new Samsung camera or phone. The strategy worked, and Dropbox has experienced tremendous growth by partnering with Samsung.
You could also start a workable affiliate program by building a steady network of reliable companies or individuals to promote your products on your behalf. The program works if you pay the advertising company a percentage of the sales achieved from their website.
Bloggers and online influencers are the best assets to boost a successful affiliate program within a short turn around period.
5. Instagram and Twitter Hashtags
With Instagram, the trick is to try and gain as many followers as possible. To do this, get to the most recent hashtag section in your industry, select the top picture, follow that account, go to their photos section, and like their five recent pics.
Do this with several accounts for a couple of weeks, and you will experience a surge of Insta followers within weeks! Now create amazing content on your website to convert your followers into repeat customers.
With Twitter, you can search for engaging keywords where you’re likely to find people talking about a particular product. Think creatively and come up with words like “best yoga pants,” or “organic foodies in New York,” to find potential customers talking about your pre-empted keywords.
The trick here is to target people interested in yoga pants or organic foodie lovers in your area. Once you get a suitable hashtag, follow through the conversations and pitch your product directly or inbox potential buyers, follow them, and like all the related comments related to your keywords.
Final Word
Growing your startup takes a lot of creative ideas, strategies, and perseverance to achieve the desired results.
If you’re working with a small budget, the tips provided should give you a head start since you only need to do your online research aggressively with a reliable computer or laptop and WIFI connection.
As you can see, growth hacking doesn’t need thousands of dollars to promote your startup business.
You can combine these low-cost strategies with paid affiliate programs to boost your growth within a short period.
