On-Demand startups must adopt a multi-pronged marketing and public relations strategy in addition to other growth hacking techniques to entice the target audience and customers to use the services that an on-demand startup is about to launch.
On-Demand startups must successfully market their products in order to expand their businesses. There will be several difficulties along the way, but with growth hacking methods, scaling is achievable. Entrepreneurs must use a variety of growth hacking tactics in order to reach a large number of people. Growth hacking concepts for firms are a tried and true component of success. However, not every company is capable of implementing these marketing growth tactics effectively.
In this article, we will chart out the basic contours and underlying components of growth hacking. Going ahead we will shed light on some of the most effective and impactful growth hacking techniques and then we will come up with certain success stories with regards to growth hacking.
Growth Hacking
Growth hacking is an experiment-driven approach for determining the most successful strategies to grow an enterprise. Marketing, development, design, engineering, data, and analytics are all the underlying components of the process. Growth hacking is a rapid, cost-effective, but unique way to achieve growth instead of following the traditional course of growth. Someone who is sharp, unique, and inventive is referred to as a growth hacker. His main objective is to develop innovative, cost-effective tactics that allow startups to gain customers abruptly and keep them for as long as possible.
Basic Contours of Growth Hacking
To reach his objectives, a growth hacker may employ a variety of techniques, including, SEO, A/B testing, viral marketing, content marketing, email marketing, PPC campaigns, usability testing, competitor benchmarking, online surveys, multivariate testing, branding, PR campaigns, and reverse engineering, however, it must be kept in mind that while growth hackers can be growth marketers, they can never be classified just as marketers as they are inclined to apply strategies and techniques across multiple domains. The most vibrant formula at the core of the growth hacking that is widely followed is:
Products and Services + Growth = Impact (giving currency to your brand)
Choosing how to evaluate success is an important component of every marketing strategy. Many growth hackers scale the success of their growth hacking grand strategy in terms of the following outcomes:
Activation: convincing customers to use the product.
Retention: keeping customers and reducing churn.
Revenue: making money.
Referral: getting other people to refer new customers.
Effective Growth Hacking Techniques for On-Demand Startups
What you should focus on in the early stages of a startup is making that all-important first impression in order to encourage buyers and clients to trust your brand. When people trust you, they will come to buy your product or service and spread the word about your company through word of mouth and social media. Growth hacking can assist you in making that impact right away. To help your startup reach its full potential, you must employ the following growth hacking strategies to broaden the customer base of your on-demand startup so that the profits and revenues can be enhanced.
1. Pre-Launch Email Marketing
When it comes to generating leads and conversions for a startup, email marketing still reigns supreme. Startups must put their efforts into growing an email list. It enables them to communicate successfully with their target audience. Furthermore, email marketing aids startups in creating pre-launch buzz for any product or event. It enables startups to acquire potential consumers even before the launching of their products and services. Certain email listing softwares can be deployed by startups at their disposal to have an impactful email marketing campaign.
2. Referral Marketing
Referrals from friends, family, and industry leaders convert leads significantly more quickly than other methods. Referral clients have a lower CPA, helping your startup to decrease expenditures as well. Customers with a greater LTV (lifetime value) have a higher retention rate, resulting in a 16 percent increase in LTV. Additionally, sales professionals who participate in referral programs make four to six times more.
3. Outdoing the Competitors by Bringing More Value
Each market has its own structure of rivalry and competition. To stay ahead of the competition, startups must invalidate the effect of competitors. So, how would they go about doing that? Let's use YouTube as an example to better grasp what we're talking about. YouTube's proposition -the ability to upload any type of video to the web- was compelling, but in order for it to fully thrive, it needed to scale up the quality of the content to the point where it could draw in viewers. Competitions provided a means to expand the network of content creators. Initially, YouTube only offered its own rewards, but it later changed its policy to include partners. The most drastic move taken by YouTube was the expansion of its partner program, which allows content producers to split advertising income.
4. Social Media Growth Hacking
For businesses to thrive, social media can be a crucial component of the marketing mix. Startups can use social media networks for marketing and advertising purposes. They can get input from the market through social media by engaging with industry influencers. Creating content and building an audience takes time. To do this, you must attempt to match your social media efforts with your overall growth strategy. Creating a Facebook group around your startup where your audience and potential consumers can connect with your brand is one of the finest social media growth hacking methods for harnessing the growth of your startup.
5. Deliberating on Timely Traction
Initial traction is one of the most difficult things for every startup to deliberate on. This is the area where the majority of new enterprises fail. Uber is a prime example of rapid scale-up, with operations in 65 countries and a valuation of more than $80 billion. It was just a local vehicle rental firm with an app that matched supply and demand. The startup was aware that it was addressing challenges associated with traditional cab services, but it needed traction. The fact that it was based in San Francisco was crucial. Uber first centered on the IT community, arranging events and providing free rides to individuals who utilized its services. Individuals who used the offer also conveyed their experience in their social circles.
6. Eying Established Marketplaces
Creating and releasing an on-demand app with gorgeous and striking colors, bright images, and lucrative deals is not enough to propel your business to the next level. Customers come from all corners of the globe. Your startup should also be visible to them. Enlisting your application or business in the most popular internet marketplaces is one of the simplest and most reliable ways to achieve so.
7. Increasing the Longevity of Customers- Retention
Because of the increased consumer loyalty, brands that improve the user experience expand 200 percent faster than their competitors. It's critical to understand what could persuade them to stay with you. According to statistics, gaining new clients is several times more expensive than maintaining the ones you already have.
8. Distribution of Branded Gift Items Highlighting the Brand
Branded gift items, such as pens and office supplies with your startup's logo and name engraved on them, offer a lot of value to the user. It can increase consumer loyalty while also raising brand exposure. It also contributes to the propagation of the favorable word of mouth. It also increases client views of your company. A satisfied customer filled with gratitude becomes a brand advocate and helps you to enlist the help of others.
9. PR Campaigns and Event Organization
Convening and hosting the top startup community events can provide your startup with the skills and insights to make sure that it does not collapse. Go ahead and learn from the finest. Make a PR team to establish contacts and take feedback from the most astute minds both in the industry leaders and the customers. You've got nothing to lose. Exhibiting your startup at relevant business events and conferences can allow you to experience success with little effort.
Growth Hacking Success Stories
The success marvels that the corporate world has witnessed by the virtue of growth hacking which has been used by some of the world's most successful companies can be enlisted as follow:
1. Airbnb
The Airbnb Craigslist hack is unavoidable mentionable when discussing growth hacking instances. Airbnb is a household brand these days, but when it first launched, it needed to attract more consumers and lodging providers in order to establish its reputation. What occurred next is the stuff of folklore in the realm of growth hacking. People seeking inexpensive housing utilized Craigslist a lot back then. Airbnb's idea was to make it easy for their hosts to duplicate their listings to Craigslist, validate them, and post an accommodation ad with just one click. This effectively placed Airbnb in front of the correct target market, resulting in phenomenal growth. Some development hacks, such as taking better photos, are so basic that it's difficult to realize how effective they may be.
2. PayPal
PayPal, now a behemoth in the online payment world, began its meteoric rise using a referral system as well. They were able to attain 10% daily growth and a user base of over 100 million individuals as a result of this. PayPal utilized a mind-blowing trick instead of giving away free storage. Users were really compensated to sign up. You and your friend would both get $10 each time a friend you referred to opening an account. It made perfect sense for them to invest in their own referral system since they knew their customer lifetime value was higher than $20. Growth hacking is not only about ingenuity and creative imagination as in certain scenarios simple and old-fashioned economics can also be mighty impactful.
3. Uber
Uber has been quite astute in its strategy to enter new markets, tailoring its approach to each new city they visit. They decided on a new site based on factors such as nightlife, events, weather, and taxi service availability. By doing so, they ensured that a market demand existed, such as in San Francisco and Chicago, where hailing a cab late at night can be a major hassle. They based their whole marketing approach on tackling the problems with local taxi services, such as making payments simple, decreasing rates, and eliminating the need to hail one down. They immediately began to give $20 to new customers to take their first trips when they recognized early on that virtually everyone who used the service once would likely use it again. In fact, they anticipated that their client lifetime value will significantly exceed that figure in the future. This incentive reduced many of the hurdles that new Uber users encountered, increasing their chances of becoming long-term clients. Traditional marketing channels with costly advertising aren't necessarily the most efficient method to advertise your products. Uber has demonstrated that unorthodox routes, even negative feedback may be extremely beneficial to a company's growth.
4. Hotmail
The simplest growth tips are sometimes the most successful. Hotmail, the webmail program that preceded Outlook.com, is one of the most well-known growth hacking instances. Every email sent through Hotmail contained a signature link, "P. S: I love you. Get your free email at Hotmail", which encouraged recipients to sign up for a free account. Within 18 months, Hotmail had grown to 12 million members thanks to that easy growth trick. That represented a more than respectable 20% of the overall email market at the time.
For startups, growth has always been a struggle. The underlying problem is that your target market and audience aren't often exposed to innovative marketing efforts. You can only develop your startup in such a competitive market by implementing the aforementioned growth hacking methods.