Facebook, AirBnb, Paypal…. have all made it astonishingly big by largely adopting the prodigious tactics of growth hacking. Having delved into the various highly successful implementations of growth hacking in our previous blog, I would like to definitely open stage to the intriguing topic of WHY IT IS QUINTESSENTIAL FOR STARTUPS TO LEARN GROWTH HACKING.

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Why Growth Hacking is Important for Startup?
Facebook, AirBnb, Paypal…. have all made it astonishingly big by largely adopting the
prodigious tactics of growth hacking. Having delved into the various highly successful
implementations of growth hacking in our previous blog, I would like to definitely open
stage to the intriguing topic of WHY IT IS QUINTESSENTIAL FOR STARTUPS TO LEARN
GROWTH HACKING.
It has become ever more important for start-ups to explore unique ways of driving growth,
and indeed that’s the most important job of a growth hacker. It involves growing a
relatively small user base to one consisting of thousands/millions of users.
In a recent post, TechCrunch defined the three characteristics of a Growth Hacker as
follows:
Growth hackers have a common attitude, internal investigation process, and mentality
unique among technologists and marketers. This mindset of data, creativity, and curiosity
allows a growth hacker to accomplish the feet of growing a user base into the millions.
3 Reasons- Why start-ups should learn Growth Hacking?
1. New User Acquisition
You have a product on board. A lot of users seem to like the product. But you need tons of
more customers to become an actual business. Just because people are using and like your
business neither guarantees that users will share it nor do traditional marketing channels
guarantee reaching your audience economically. Thus, you need to enable new ways to
create a scalable customer acquisition process.
A good example of growth hacking was Andrei Marinescu’s role as head of customer
acquisition for Hulu. During an interview, he discusses that Hulu had its free version with
25 M uniques, which they needed to actively covert into premium subscribers. They didn’t
have the premium feature sitting around hoping for someone to click through to pay for it.
They advertised it within Hulu during commercials and throughout the product experience
relevant to user behaviors. Additionally, they leveraged OEM partners to co-market it
through free trails and optimized the landing pages to download the app or to become a
Hulu Plus member.

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He and his team didn’t stop there, they dug into SEM and affiliates among other practices
in their tool-kits. They ultimately were able to go from 0 paid to 3 million+ paid
subscribers with a $500 million run rate. Thus, even with 25 million unique, they still had
to actively focus on growth hacking tactics to convert paid users.
2. Onsite Behaviour Tracking
It’s very important to track the behaviour of users on your website. Users have to not just
visit your website, but literally get hooked to your website. Different behaviours on the
website or within the product should trigger different “nudges” that might show up as an
email in the inbox, something on social media in their feed, or through retargeted ads.
Following on with the Hulu example, they worked so hard to convert individuals who had
an appetite for the service already, they were an obvious (but often neglected in many
organizations) segment to reengage! They developed lifecycle marketing to drive retention,
which was facilitated through email and other triggers within the service to get back those
who churned. However, without having analytics, triggers, and viral loops built into the
product, you might be leaving money on the table just because consumers are generally
overwhelmed with distractions and need to be reminded to return. Again, the growth
hacker owns this component of product, user experience, and marketing. It’s the whole
conversion flow.
3. Build an army
Aaron Ginn an influencer on the growth hacker topic shares, “The most talked about
element of growth is virality and new user acquisition. Both of these elements focus on
thru-put in the funnel and less on the funnel itself. “ Thus, the true testament to your
ability to scalability is virality, or when your users like your product enough to refer a
friend.

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However, it’s often shocking that despite the rise of social that requests or nudges to share
and refer the product are hidden or unavailable to its users. This occurs when only product
people are thinking about the product; they want it to be used by that user and are not
necessarily thinking how that user can spread the love! Again, you need non-myopic people
who span multiple functions to have these priorities aligned…aka the growth hacker.
Leave your comments below to let us know more about why start-ups need growth hackers
to grow their businesses! Also, do check out the very awesome Growth Hacking 101/102
course that Venture hire has in store for you!
Related Article:
1. 5 Classic Examples of Growth Hacking
2. What do I need to become Growth Hacker
Links which can be useful to you regarding this topic are