It’s no surprise that marketing is changing. The pace of change has never been faster, and the consequences have never been more radical. With the advent of social media and mobile technology, consumers are able to talk about products at an exponential rate. As a result, companies must be agile when it comes to adapting their marketing strategies to meet these new demands as quickly as possible.
Marketing has gone from a static concept to something that is constantly evolving, and Growth Hacking is at the heart of this transformation. But, let’s quickly recall what growth hacking is. In a nutshell, it’s a strategy used by companies to accelerate their marketing efforts by combining testing with algorithms, or rules of thumb, to find the most effective ways to build awareness and grow their brand. The term can also refer to someone who practices growth hacking. Why should you be interested?
Growth Hacking: pros and cons
While growth hacking offers many benefits to the marketing industry, it is not without its critics. Customers and investors often question the effectiveness of new strategies and unsubscribe en masse if they are not satisfied with the results. For this reason, some experts believe that growth hacking is a fad that is not likely to last. However, this is a misinformed view.
Growth hacking is essentially a new way of thinking about marketing, and even about business, that allows them to be more creative, more strategic and more effective. It is a response to the changing marketing landscape, which companies are simply trying to adapt to. The examples of growth hacking are numerous and well detailed.
Thus to implement this strategy, the growth hacker will have a clearly defined organization to analyze the different objectives and find the appropriate solutions to develop the company. This is the AARRR protocol.
The AARRR framework
AARRR stands for Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Recommendation and Revenue. It’s a framework for understanding the stages of the customer journey and what to do at each stage to be successful. Low-level tactics like email marketing and social media advertising can be used to acquire new customers, but it’s retention that is the key to success.
Thousands of dollars of advertising spend can result in the acquisition of a handful of customers. It is therefore necessary to know perfectly how to optimize everything. It is also necessary to know the backdoor ways (but within the law) to succeed in reaching the goal. The key to referral is the activation stage, where the customer experiences the product in a meaningful way and becomes a paying customer.
Acquisition within the AARRR framework
The first stage of the AARRR framework is acquisition. So, the goal of this step is simply to get people to see and click on your ads. The best way to do this is to launch email campaigns and social media ads, for example (depending on your budget, your target KPIs, …).
In these campaigns, you are looking for a certain type of customer – someone who is not yet interested in your product but is open to it if presented in the right way. It’s also important to remember that acquisition is just the first step. You’re not necessarily trying to get the person to buy your product immediately. Rather, it’s about getting that person to see the product and the type of person who will eventually become a customer.
Activation for a growth hacker
The activation stage is where you start to convert those customers into paying customers. To do this, you need to activate the customer and get them to experience the product, if only for a short time. To do this, you need to follow the person wherever they are in their journey and make sure the product is in the right place at the right time. This can include the right subject line, timing and placement in emails and on social media.
You also need to make sure your social content is engaging and engages your audience. You want them to click on your content, be curious enough to want to know more, and then click on your offer. This is how a percentage of your customers will become paying customers.
Retention under the AARRR process
For those customers who have become paying customers, you now need to turn them into loyal ones. You can do this by building trust with your customers and making them happy. You can do this by creating value for them and giving them what they want, when they want it. To create this relationship, you need to copy the customer’s social content and create more. To do this, follow your customers’ lead and adopt their style by using customer-oriented language, publishing content that matches their interests, etc.
You can also give your customers more reasons to become loyal to your brand. You can do this by offering additional products or services that complement the initial product.
Recommendation in growth hacking
You need to find a way to get your existing customers to recommend your product to their friends and family. This process is often referred to as “brand evangelism“. It usually happens through word-of-mouth marketing, such as sending emails to customers who praise their experience with your product.
You can also encourage your customers to post positive reviews on websites like Yelp or Google related to your business. You can also offer gifts or coupons to customers who recommend your product on social media. In this way, you’ll turn your existing customers into brand evangelists who will help drive new customers to your brand.
Revenue within a growth hacking strategy
Finally we come to the end of this framework, revenue. This is where you need to really think about revenue to understand how to increase without increasing the number of customers. The focus will be on revenue. Thus, it may be necessary to implement additional sales techniques that can be inspired by “guerrilla marketing” (by Jay Conrad Levinson) or different techniques of ux-design or nudges.
Conclusion
By following this process, by going through these successive steps, the growth hacking strategy will gradually be implemented. It is about going as fast as possible to multiply the growth of your company. To do this, it is necessary to analyze your data as closely as possible in order to find the right hack that will make your business take off!
So, if you want to develop your strategy according to this framework, our growth hacking agency is at your disposal!
