Tough competition can make growing a new brand seem near impossible, despite the hundreds of new companies that are created every day. Creative solutions offer the answer, allowing you to move in a positive direction with your brand start-up at an affordable investment. To achieve this, speed is the key. Growing your user base fast will allow profits to come in fast, too. This is what growth hacking is all about. 

Read on for 5 of the best tips in the game on growth hacking:

1. Knowing your goals

Of course, you want your business to boom – who doesn’t? But clearly, knowing you want something isn’t enough, because if it was, we would all be successful business-people. 

What’s important is being specific in what you want. When do you want your finished product to be complete by? How many subscribers do you want at the end of the month? What do you want to expand your inventory with?

Knowing your goals clearly means you will start doing what it takes to achieve them. Only one in a hundred high-achieving people actually write their goals down and visualize them regularly. 

These are the people who soar above the rest. It’s also alright to set goals that seem too big for you to complete right now. Most of your goals will be since they’re not things that will happen overnight. When setting your goals, also set out how you plan to achieve them.

“If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy and inspires your hopes.” – Andrew Carnegie

2. Self-promotion

A brilliant way to understand your customer audience is to ask them about themselves. Through blogging, you can experiment around with readers. Use questions to get them to show you things about themselves. This can be experimental, such as asking questions about scenarios to find out what really matters to them.

People like to see a balance of emotive visuals, with facts and figures. Combine the two for the most potent effect. Conduct some market research to spot trendy topics that are relevant to the product you’re selling. Base your images on factual information. Next, build accompanying stories with the images that incorporates compelling language. You’ve done great! Share your creation on as many platforms as you can.

3. Build an effective email list

Emails are by no means out-dated. It still stands tall above social media in terms of marketing strategies. Your email list will be essential to your company, so it’s important you craft useful and compelling messages that will lead potential customers to keep clicking your links.

Having been around for decades now, emails are trusted and come without some of the complicated analytics involved in social media (though, get to grips with these too). Having a subscribe button at the top of every page on your website will increase the chances that customers enter their email.

Exit intent popups appear on-screen whenever a visitor wants to click back, or navigate from your website using their bookmarked tabs. These are a highly effective strategy to implement on your website. 

Another tip to consider is asking for visitors’ names with their verified email addresses. This makes it easier to personalize messages later and build a better relationship with your customers.

“Why waste a sentence saying nothing?” – Seth Godin

4. Developing trust with your customers

Referrals and reviews are potentially risky and potentially brilliant keys to success. If you focus on perfecting your product, they will help your business grow rapidly. Though, if your product is mediocre, at best referrals and reviews will be few and sparse. With a good product or service, there will be a point you get to where they begin to sell themselves. This is trusting your customers. 

You can also allow your customers to grow to trust you, with a reward program. You can implement this from the moment they subscribe to your email list, by offering a special one-off discount for example. 

Once you have loyal customers, it’s an easier job to keep them with some effort. Ensure you know what it is that they like and want through research such as polls on social media. Show that you have done this by using the data you obtain directly.

5. Form partnerships with other brands

Let this be a goal you incorporate after developing your platform and email list. The other brands you build a rapport with do not have to be like your own. Instead, they must appeal to what your customers want. 

For example, if you discover through research that your customer audience like free food, but you sell headphones, try to partner with a food delivery company.

This may mean your customers get a discount for food delivery through purchasing your website’s headphones. This is a benefit to both companies through publication, purchase and peer referrals. Be inspired by online influencers – they partner with affiliate partners as part of their work.

Through guided steps and creativity, growth hacking is a cost-effective and trusted method of company enlargement. Though, applauded by many and most brands out there in the online marketplace today, ensure you give yourself time and patience. 

Traction comes before growth, and for some this can seem like a slow process. What you need to hear is that this is the most potent time. Use that slower period of expansion to really get to understand your customers and perfect your product.

Overall, growth hacking can be split up into five important P’s:

1. Platform – Having a suitable place to market your product is the first essential.
2. Product – Allow customers to try your product. This can be paid or unpaid, or with special discounts. This is the traction stage of slowly getting bigger. 
3. Partnership – Developing long-running consumer-supplier relationships with customers is key to having constant business.
4. Promotion – This is how you get heard about beyond the limits of self-promotion. This is when your growth stage will begin; without proper foundation, your product won’t truly stand out when it becomes better known, so it is crucial that you focus on perfecting your product before the promotion stage. 
5. Permanence – Develop methods for constant self-referral. This way, your business will continue to grow effortlessly.

Have you tried growth hacking? If so, what tips and suggestions do you have for the people starting out? Let us know below!