As marketers, one of the most pivotal periods in terms of marketing innovation has got to be the past ten years, with all the growth transformation from non-digital to digital, the birth of the iPhone to the death of Motorola flip phones, and the ice-bucket challenge that went wildly viral.
Growth, as we know it, is a never-ending, essential, and exciting process that all companies, big or small, should embrace. How can growth hacking, a term coined by Sean Ellis ten years ago, relevant in today’s world, and how can it help with retargeting our audiences?
What’s growth hacking?
Growth hacking is a marketing strategy that uses various methods to ‘hack’ the growth of a business. Most often used in startups, growth hacking has three prominent characteristics:
- It has to be easy to implement.
- It has to be scalable.
- It has to be cost-efficient (think cheap!).
Great, but how can it help in retargeting audience?
- Growth hack your existing data.
The primary reason why growth hacks are used by startups is that startups don’t have plenty of resources or big budgets to spend to increase brand awareness. In a simple sense, your company can gain plenty of traction not by trying to get new leads, but instead, mine existing resources from mailing lists, customer data, social media followers, etc. Creatively mining your existing resources can help your business expand its customer base, increase overall profits, higher demands, increase brand visibility, and even open you up to a new market you never thought about.
- Growth hack, so your products and services stand out.
Creativity is an essential component when it comes to growth hacking. By implementing an easy, simple hack, you exponentially make your product stand out by increasing your user base. Think of the way Dropbox used referrals to increase brand awareness. Your brand can focus on seasonal efforts or creating an incentive when an existing customer refers to your product, service, site, or app to new customers. Another way you can do this is via affiliate marketing and creating a rewards system.
- Growth hack, so you can use dynamic ads.
The main element of growth hacking is to use the least amount of money and resources. Newsletters, blogging, and affiliate marketing are essential tools to use in today’s diverse Internet content landscape. Instead of dumping money on low-end ads, create dynamic campaigns with ad agencies that can bring your vision to life. Fluid Ads is one such agency that can help you integrate purposeful content into a blog, newsletter, or email campaign that users will want to read, and more importantly, want to share.
- Growth hack for more visual content.
We already know more people are watching videos than reading, but according to Google, more people are also willing to watch videos rather than watch TV! Turn your ads and content into thought-provoking videos that take customers through a journey of brand relationship.
Final Thoughts
Growth hacking will never die. As long as digital innovation takes place and more and more trends enter our digital ecosystem, the tasks are on marketers to collaborate with the best minds and the best tools that turn a customer’s perspective from ‘Meh’ to ‘Aha!’.
