According to CBInsights’ analysis of major startups’ failure, lack of market need and poor marketing is responsible for more than half of all startups fail.
If there is no demand for what your startup offers, it is bound to fail. Worse, even if there is demand, your startup is bound to fail if you’re unable to gain traction.
Growing your startup, however, does not have to require breaking the bank. Below are five cost-effective growth hacks guaranteed to supercharge your startup growth:
1. Leverage the power of viral giveaways
One of the most powerful growth hacks that you can use to rapidly grow your startup is the use of viral giveaways.
For his giveaway, he decided to offer a free license to the Sublime Text software (valued at US$70). When people registered for the giveaway, Earl didn’t just stop there, he gave them a “lucky URL” that they can use to invite others to join the giveaway.
The more people they invited, the higher their chances of winning the giveaway. As a result, participants in Earl’s giveaway automatically became brand ambassadors and had an incentivize to share the lucky URL on Facebook, Twitter, and to their network.
To ensure a successful giveaway, you want to focus on three things:
2. Make sure people are incentivized to promote the giveaway (for example, inviting more people increased an entrant’s chances of winning).
3. Create as much awareness as you can about your giveaway
2. Exploit the power of referrals
Dropbox is one of the most impressive examples of growth hacking ever. Dropbox’s referral marketing system is so powerful that they went from 100,000 users to 4 million users in just 15 months.
That’s a 40 times increase, or a doubling of users every three months. And it’s all thanks to referrals.
What made Dropbox’s referral system so powerful and what can you learn from it?
A referral system that gives users an incentivize to actually invite others; most referral programs are designed in such a way that users feel they will lose when they invite others (since these other people will share the same limited resources). Dropbox’s wasn’t.
The Dropbox referral system was clear: up to a limit, you get 500mb extra space for EACH user you refer. Talk about a real incentive!
The process of referring users was made extraordinarily easy; besides providing a custom referral link for all users, Dropbox also made it so that you can share this link with a click by sharing on social media or importing a list of emails.
By clearly analyzing the above key traits of the Dropbox referral engine, and designing yours accordingly, you can also design a solid referral system that will drive your startup growth.
3. Tap into the power of push notifications
Do you know that the average click-through rates of push notifications are 7.8 per cent? This is according to Accengage’s study of over 50 billion push notifications sent to 900 million mobile users.
While email marketing has long been touted as one of the most important inbound marketing strategies, the facts indicate that push notifications deliver more than 3x as many clicks as email marketing.
Push notifications are naturally more effective because they go more directly to users’ computers or mobile devices as opposed to emails in which users have to login first. It’s also impossible to have fake push subscribers since you have to subscribe with an actual device.
If you do not have a push notification strategy yet for your startup, it might be a good idea to do so now.
4.Work on your website speed
Do you know how much a one-second delay would cost e-commerce giant Amazon?
Research shows that:
1. 53 per cent of people will abandon a website that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
2. A one-second delay in a page’s load time can result in up to a 7 per cent decline in conversions.
3. Page speed is a major factor used by Google to determine a site’s search engine rank and AdWords quality score.
While many startups do not see having a fast website as a growth hack, the above statistics show that having a slow website could automatically be costing you about half of your visitors, a good percentage of your conversions, and good organic and ad search rankings.
Actively optimize your startup website to be a lot faster. Target a page load time of fewer than 3 seconds. Start by ensuring you are on the right web host. The analysis shows that your web host can significantly impact website performance. Take things a step further by using a CDN to ensure your website loads fast globally. You can also enable caching, minify CSS, and use file compression to ensure a much faster website.
5. Develop an SEO strategy
Do you know that 93 per cent of online experiences begins with a search engine and that search engines are responsible for 300 per cent more traffic to content sites compared to social media?
Here are some SEO tips for you:
1. Create key, comprehensive content resources aimed at answering common questions potential users have.
2. If you don’t have a blog, start one and update it regularly. Businesses with blogs generally get more links and consequently enjoy better search engine rankings.
3. Build links. In a lot of cases, your SEO is only as effective as the kind of links you can get. Get high-quality links through outreach, guest posts, content syndication, and media features in your industry.
Source: e27
