My Personal Growth Hacking Tactics for Tech Startups in 2019.

Growth Hacking Is the New Marketing

My Personal Growth Hacking Tactics for Tech Startups in 2019

The person you see on the stage in the above picture is me, my name is Pavan. A growth hacking enthusiast and I talk a lot about growth, startups, and DevOps. Recently, I gave a talk at one of India’s prominent institutions (IIMB) on Growth Hacking for Startups organized by NSRCEL. I would like to share a small summary of what I spoke. Let’s get going…

The startup ecosystem is evolving at a rapid pace and this has forced companies around the world to be more competitive. There is a need to stand out from the crowd, it is not just about the unique value proposition your startup has, you need strategies that scale and help your company grow exponentially. There might already be firms offering the products or services same as you but what makes you different from others?

The answer is ‘Growth Hacking’, Yes, the unique, creative and unconventional strategies that can be scalable and impact directly to the growth of the organization.

Want to be a growth hacker? Check out my article below,

How to be a growth hacker

Today we will see some early traction growth hacking tactics that can help your startup grow exponentially.

1. Get active in the targeted online communities or try to build your own

Leveraging the users of an already well-established community is a well-thought growth hack and a very rarely used marketing trick, we also call it community marketing. Being active in industry targeted communities/forums can help boost your brand presence. Most of the successful companies we see today did gain their initial traction by getting engaged in the targeted communities or forums. You need to be slow initially and gain some authenticity to reach a stage where people value your suggestions. Make a content plan to see what you can post on a daily basis in the form of a story that makes people to get involved with the content and react to it in one or the other form. Once you develop sufficient trust, you can always divert the community members to your desired domain.

Getting involved in community marketing can be of two types, an organic way or through the sponsored way. Organic community marketing refers you getting involved in groups that are already established and members who share a mutual affinity for a common concern. Sponsored community marketing is where it involves you, as the brand or business, creating a community where fans of your products or services can join, interact, share feedback — not only with each other but with the brand itself.

5 things to keep in mind when it comes to organic community marketing,

1. Don’t pitch, participate first
2. Be genuine and consistency matters
3. Contribute like an expert to build authenticity
4. Be friends with other active community users & influencers
5. Be accessible whenever needed and polite

Another trick is to build your own community from the scratch to interact and engage with your own users and potential customers. The University of Michigan study discovered that customers spend 19 percent more after joining a company’s online community, another study shows that seventy-seven percent of companies believe that an online community significantly improves brand exposure, awareness, and credibility. According to Forrester Research of Customer Lifecycle Journey report, 81% of companies have a consumer community or similar support channel. The Forrester report also found that 60% of businesses own a branded online community and 15% are planning on launching one within the next year.

This is how I participate on Reddit, see below,

Dev_ooops:) (u/PavanBelagatti) - Reddit

2. Be creative on social media channels & collaborate with influencers

Social media has evolved big time in recent years and is definitely a boon for entrepreneurs. We have seen videos and memes going viral overnight. Social channels like Instagram and LinkedIn are gaining huge popularity and they provide a number of opportunities for entrepreneurs to promote their brands in as many ways as possible. No matter which social network, consistency, and creativity can help you gain good momentum. Brands nowadays go live through their social profiles to share important information or just to get to know about their fans and sometimes they show what’s happening behind the scenes, etc. It is up to one’s potential on how well they can make use of these social channels in the modern marketing world.

Some points to be creative on social media,

• Leverage the power of live content
• Use the power of storytelling
• Create more visual infographics
• Organize a webinar with another industry expert
• Host an AMA
• Repurpose your evergreen content
• Take advantage of the trending topic

Collaborating with social media influencers will help you gain word of mouth and an exponential reach. A good push from a genuine Influencer can change the whole game, but finding that genuine influencer is the key. Influencer marketing is on the rise these days, brands have found that collaborating with influencers is the easiest way to reach a number of people in a go.

These influencers are trusted by millions of buyers, and marketers are paying attention to this trend.

According to Statista, in 2017 the worldwide Instagram influencer market value was estimated to be 1.07 billion U.S. dollars and this value is projected to more than double to 2.38 billion U.S. dollars in 2019.

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