It’s common for startup marketers and founders to think that growth hacking is a really difficult concept but is it really? In reality, you are probably implementing a lot of growth hacking strategies at your company, you just don’t know it’s growth hacking. In case you are new to growth hacking, check out some of these growth hacking strategies in this article. These are all very easy to do. In fact, they all take a very short time to implement.
1. Build a landing page
You probably haven’t investigated how much good a pre-launch landing page will do for your new startup. As you continue to tell people about the new company you are launching, don’t let your home page read something like “Thanks for stopping by, we are launching soon.”
Instead, use that web real estate to take note of users who might be interested in your product. Simply build a landing page. We have talked about some of the best landing page practices in one of our posts here before. The point is that a well-done landing page will help you get emails from possible clients. Make sure your landing page has an online form to collect contact information from these people.
Just above the signup form have a statement like this “Thanks for stopping by, we shall be launching soon. Leave your email with us so we can let you know once we launch. Lots of free offers are loading. Don’t miss out!”
To go with that, provide social media sharing buttons for the social media networks that work best for your company. This is so that people can share your landing page on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google Plus, etc. This is an easy way to generate free shares coupled with quality signups.
2. Craft a list of media/influencer targets
Getting a lot of attention on your launch date also depends on who you contacted prior to the launch. With your target market in mind, build a list of possible media companies and newsrooms that might be interested in your product. Once you have done that, have a look at the editors, journalists, and reporters in the teams of these media houses and see who might be more interested in your product. Pressfarm is a good tool to use for this specific step.
Once you have a list of journalists who might be interested in writing about your startup, you are on your way to that free publicity provided you can craft effective cold emails that will lead to the journalists writing back to you.
Building a list of influencers in your niche is also important. For example, if you have a company starting up in the online marketing niche, contacting influencers like Tim Ferris and Neil Patel will probably pay off. Therefore, build a list of the most relevant people in your niche. Create very good emails to reach out to them. Chances are that if one of these people likes your product, the number of visitors you receive will skyrocket, and so will the customers.
3. Host a contest
Contests are nice things. After all, everyone loves a good competition. What would life have been without competition? It’s in people’s nature to want to get something before other people do, or to simply want to be the best. Leverage this human craving for your startup.
The contest you run for your company might be for several rewards. It could be for free subscriptions, an ebook, or access to exclusive features once you launch. If you offer attractive rewards, rest assured that contestants will come, compete, and win. The attention you get will be rewarding. The number of interested clients who leave you their contact information will also be worthwhile.
4. Give something away for free
When you are looking to launch a product, you could use an existing problem to generate early publicity. Let’s assume you find out that people in your niche are facing a particular problem, no matter how small. This is a good opportunity to design a solution or write an ebook to show them how to overcome it. The next thing you should do is to give away this solution for free on your website. Before people take the solution, ask them to give you their contact information so you can drop the solution in their emails.
This strategy has to be executed carefully. After all, you want to collect emails of people who will be interested in your product when you launch. For this reason, the solution you are giving away for free has to be solving a problem in the same niche as your upcoming product.
5. Create a viral-worthy video
People watch so many videos these days. 10 years ago, a video would probably not make it on this list. But this is 2016, and times have changed. YouTube is now in over a billion people’s hands thanks to mobile phones. There is no better time to use video for marketing than now.
Take an example, the video by Dollarshaveclub.com is one of the best examples of using video as a growth hacking strategy. I’ll probably ruin it if I described what happens in the video so I’ll just let you watch it and learn something from it. Here you go: Our Blades are Great
6. Do a crowdfunding campaign
Crowdfunding campaigns have helped launch several startups around the world. Think Pebble, Kano, and Bunch O Ballons. These startups would probably not have gone far were it not for the publicity they got on Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform.
The good thing about crowdfunding platforms is that thousands of journalists are always visiting these places everyday looking for newsworthy startups and products. Imagine the amount of free marketing you could get if you were published on growth hacking TechCrunch, for example.
7. Find early adopters
Remember the points about building landing pages as well as influencer and media lists? These steps get you to the current step. The goal is to get early adopters. These could come out of the lists you have built as well as the email signups from your landing page. Alternatively, you could visit several platforms to find people who want to be your first customers just because they can. Some of the good platforms for this include Reddit, Product Hunt, Erli Bird, HARO and Muck Rack.
These platforms are full of people who can go on to be your beta testers. They will give you honest opinions about your product pre-launch and tell you where it can be improved or tweaked.
8. Build a press kit
When a journalist contacts you because they saw your company shared somewhere, they will want a description of what you do, your metrics and important numbers. You don’t want to wait until they contact you to begin organizing this information. Create a press kit that is well designed. Make it easy for journalists to do their job of marketing you.
If you start assembling this information when they are asking for it, you will probably take too long and lose the interest of your journalist. Always be prepared with such information.
Sometimes developing a press kit is a little too much for a founder who still has to worry about product development. If this is the case for you, you should consider enlisting help from a PR agency like Pressfarm.
Armed with a team of PR specialists, expert writers and certified designers, Pressfarm can help you create content that’ll make your brand stand out. With a professional press release, some engaging guest posts and an eye-catching media kit, Pressfarm can help you make a splash in your industry.
In addition to creating this content for you, Pressfarm can help you put it in front of the right eyes when it matters most. By submitting your content to the right media outlets and startup directories, Pressfarm can help you feature in relevant search results across search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing!
Finally, by giving you custom media lists and granting you access to a media database of 1 million+ journalists, Pressfarm can connect you with the best people to tell your story. With a PR package from Pressfarm, you can finally generate the publicity your brand deserves.