Skilled professionals of every field are turning towards self-dependence rather than paid jobs due to the insecurity. This is the main reason why you can see numerous entrepreneurs mushrooming in both big and small cities. Currently, the startup is a trending concept because government authorities of various countries are promoting them with attractive schemes. Even after so many supportive steps, Startup businesses are highly prone to failure due to the limited availability of resources. Also, the lack of business instinct is one of the major reasons why many startup businesses cannot manage to survive for more than 5 years. Every aspiring startup person cannot hold adequate experience and qualification of doing business. They need someone who can give the desired shape to their ideas. Therefore, business consultancy agencies come to an existence where customisable solutions are available for every kind of business. It is advisable to go with an innovative consultancy firm where growth hacking ideas are preferred over traditional processes.

Growth Hacking Connotation for Startup Business

When it comes to the growth hacking for a startup, you may consider it as a process involving several experiments. The experiments driven marketing strategies mean a right combination of factors including marketing, designing, development, data and analytics. The process of hacking a startup growth involves innovative ideas that are not traditionally accepted. The main aim of growth hacking is finding cost-effective and highly productive methods that helps a business to stay ahead from competitors. The only aim of a growth hacker is to bring rapid growth in the business by implementing random strategies. However, it doesn’t mean that one can start with any idea without knowing its consequences. The business consulting experts holds adequate knowledge that which strategy will suit perfectly to a particular startup. As a business owner, you must be aware of some strategies as elaborated below in detail.

Major Startup Growth Hacking Strategies

1)    Multiple online platforms to reach potential customers

As a startup owner, one must be aware of this fact that both websites and mobile apps are equally important for business expansion. A startup needs to be present on all platforms to target the customers at every device whether it is a smartphone or PC.  Cross-platform websites and multiple OS supporting apps are the growth hacks for a startup. Thus, investing in their designing and development will always be productive to business. The business consultants have their own team, or they hire some experts who always keep your online portals up to date with the latest trends. It is a very helpful tool to reach the global market as well as engaging the local customers too.

2)    Build and engage a social media community

Every startup business needs social media assistance to imply a convincing influence on potential customers. Activeness on social media is essential if you want to seek attention. It is an important strategic management part because wide criteria of potential customers use to spend their time on social media sites including Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. Social media is not limited to these handful portals; business consultants also approach forums like Reddit and Tumblr to engage the visitors with useful information. Social media companies offer both organic and paid methods to engage a maximum number of visitors. On the official profiles, regular updates including entertaining videos, contests, online polling and live product release events are some key strategies to retain your visitors and increase their number.

Also, startups can utilise social media as the most effective channel to create a personal bonding with customers by interacting with them through the comments section or personal messages. Rather than depending on review agencies, it’s better to get feedback in comments to improvise the product or service according to customer’s preference.

3)    Invest in collaborating with a big brand

The biggest problem that every startup faces at its initial stage is its recognition in the market. While targeting a market, one must have a good recognition status. New businesses are less known to the customers even you are providing high-end quality. Therefore, seeking help from a big brand is a great growth hacking strategy. When your startup business collaborates with a renowned brand with a huge customer base, the chances of rapid growth also increases.

This strategy implies a noteworthy impact on business growth that you can clearly see an increasing number of social media followers and organic traffic level at business’s website. The experts find out a large size company sharing similar platforms of products or services that you produce. It is their duty to convince a large business by offering benefits like data and advertisement in return of traffic and goodwill.

4)    Referral Marketing

Referral marketing is not only meant for enterprise-level businesses, but it has significant benefits for startups too. Nowadays, mobile apps are the most convenient and effective measures of referral marketing. If you have a startup business, start the referral campaigning friends, family, employees and industry influencers. It beneficiate both givers and receivers; thus the chances of conversion are much higher. The referral reward can be monetary or simply offer them freebies like online premium tools and storage spaces. Referral links reduce customers acquisition cost because they directly start connecting with you rather than through heavily paid marketing techniques. Also, the probability of conversion rate is also higher with referrals that ultimately beneficiate the startup business for a long run.

5)    Email listing

If you are surprised with the email listing point in growth hack strategies, then remember one thing that email marketing trends are now changing. This is not about continuously sending emails to random people without educating what you are selling. Create a pre-launch email list to create the hype, but after building a complete website. One can add genuine visitors to the website in email listing by offering special onetime discounts in return of subscribing to the email newsletters. It creates a strong bonding between seller and buyer because only special customers can avail best offers and giveaway benefits.

6)    Share and win Campaigning

This is one of the latest strategies of growth hacking that beneficiates both seller and customer. This unique strategy of promotion is identical to the referral program but works on a different concept. The main aim of share and win campaigning is to promote a particular product or service on social media platforms. You can set a specific number of shares, likes and retweets for earning reward points and claim a gift. Set different milestones to become eligible for freebies.

It works with the help of websites and mobile apps where visitors share your links expecting rewards in return. There is no need to arrange a huge budget for this purpose, products like free software subscription and cool bags are enough to turn the random traffic into regular visitors. It helps in reducing the bounce rate and beneficiate your business with high conversion.

7)    Track and Follow the biggest competitors

Similar kinds of businesses exist at different levels from entrepreneurship to enterprise level. As a small business owner, you can directly compete with global players. They have a robust infrastructure, finance sources, contacts and analytical reports. However, it doesn’t mean that you cannot compete with them. The competition can be at any level whether it is within a region, district or state. If your product or service is meeting all quality standards, it can survive in a tough competitive environment.

Follow what biggest competitors are doing in a similar industry like yours. Always keep on tracking the activities that they are doing to stay in competition, tackling the market fluctuation and for expansion. It gives you an idea to survive in the toughest circumstances. After following the strategies of the most successful competitor, you can create your own action plan. It helps in taking right steps without wasting time to make a decision. This doesn’t mean to imitate exactly like others, leave their failed strategies, just keep the right things and customise them according to your business size.

8)    Seek help from paid marketing channels

Organic traffic is essential for every business to survive in the long run but what about the currently existing crisis. A startup needs reliable tools to quickly gain reputation in the market which is not possible with conventional methods. Thus, you need to invest on some reliable paid marketing techniques including pay per click campaigning, banner ads, text link ads, floating ads and influencer marketing. Also, utilise the social media platforms that boost the reachability of your profile or a specific post to a specific target.

The paid advertisement channels require continuous investment for a certain period of time. Thus, you need to spare a specific budget amount from annual expenses estimate. If the campaigning is effectively done, you can expect huge traffic rate to the web portal. After reaching a milestone, you can discontinue the paid campaigning and go with organic traffic results.

9)    Guest Posting on High Alexa Ranking Sites

Engaging text content shared as guest post plays a very important role in gaining website traffic. Hiring influential bloggers is also a part of growth hacking strategies. A business consultancy agency searches all relevant sites according to your business type that offers guest posting service. After figuring out the sites with high ranking, they contact the site owners and ask for guest posting. This is a white hat strategy of gaining traffic much faster than other traditional techniques.

The visitors of guest posting site automatically divert to your portal if they find the content useful enough to meet the need for information. A good quality shareable content helps in building backlinks with good domain authority from the website.

How to find a proficient strategist for growth hacking?

If you search small business start up development experts on the internet, countless results will appear for your locality. This creates confusion while opting out an option where you can get assured results of all efforts. If you are looking for growth hacks, the service provider must hold enough talent to derive highly productive and unique techniques. Here are some tips that help in finding the right service provider for your startup.

1)    Business size and its issues

The first thing to consider is the size of your business while searching for an expert to help. Even the startup businesses have different turnover level criteria which are the base of searching for a consultant. Make a list of all agencies and sort out only those names where assistance is specifically provided to your level of businesses. Also check the expertise hand of their fields like marketing, finance or accounting. Figure out your issue and match it with the criteria of their services. It helps in shortlisting the service providers precisely according to your need.

2)    Experience matters the most

When you deal with sensitive matters like business survival or its expansion, trust only the experience holders. Check the background of agency and its operators that for how long they have been working in this line. The entire team such as marketing, strategic planning and financing etc. must hold enough experience in dealing with issues similar to yours. Don’t forget to ask the recent track record of teams that you need. Rather than going with their pre-planned service packages, ask them to customise strategies precisely according to your problem. The solution must be productive, fast and cost-effective. Not just verbally, but get all commitments on a written contract to ensure the reliability. 

3)    Customer feedbacks

Try to find genuine channels of information regarding customer’s feedback. Nowadays, many fake review methods are in a trend that may misguide you. Rather than trusting on the reviews of a strategic business consultancy firm, see the customer response on their social media profiles and genuine rating sites. If possible, ask for the contact details of recent customers or their web address to check the real-time performance.

The entire future of a business depends on theintelligence of strategic planners and implementers. When you visit TRConsulting or a similar service provider to seek help, confirm all these points inpriority. Also, gain some knowledge regarding the strategies that are actualgrowth hacks, not traditional slow techniques.

Author Bio:-

The Author of this blog is a digital marketing expert who provides advanced solutions of marketing related issues to startup business owners. His blogs are specifically meant for small scale businesses with aspiration to reach desired goal with wise and quick decisions. He executes in-depth study of all aspects before preparing a highly valuable informative content.

By Chakraborty

Dr Chakrabarty is the Chief Innovation Officer of IntuiComp TeraScience. Earlier she was Assistant Professor of Delhi University, a QS ranked university in India. Before that she has held research positions in IIT Mumbai, IIT Chennai and IISc Bangalore. She holds 2 patents and over 20 research publications in her name which are highly cited. Her area of research is in smart technologies, integrated devices and communications. She also has a penchant for blogging and is an editor of Business Fundas.