So, you have a great business - whether it be small or large; and you just know that if you could reach more people without spending hundreds or even thousands on fancy marketing campaigns, your business could sell itself – but how?
Allow us to introduce (or re-introduce) you to leading digital marketing expert and brand strategist, Gaurav Sharma.
A Growth Hacking connoisseur, having produced 10x lead growth and $300k monthly revenue for clients, Gaurav is one of the top Growth Hackers of today.
So imagine how excited we were when he agreed to reveal his secrets exclusively to the Dux-Soup audience in a live webinar.
A Dux-Soup user, Gaurav’s webinar, brimmed with practical tips, literally giving you a fast track to Growth Hacking wisdom. If you missed it, you’re in luck as here’s the low down.
What is Growth Hacking?
The term growth hacking was coined by Sean Ellis, (GrowthHackers CEO & Author of Hacking Growth) and ‘refers to the use of innovative and cost-effective ways to grow a business. It’s all about marketing experimentation and achieving quick results’.
Growth Hacking strategies cover:
· Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
· Content Marketing
· Lead Generation
· Email Marketing
· Social Media
They’re applicable to everyday marketing, which means that if you’re not using them – you’re already behind.
But don’t worry, we’re here to help you catch up!
Why do I Growth Hack, and how does it work?
Did you know that 11 out of 12 business start-ups fail?
Growth hacking will help your business to thrive. Even better, it will help your business to SCALE, by:
· Introducing your brand to new customers
· Directing more traffic to your website
· Increasing website conversion rates
· Driving revenue
Generating leads is a challenge, so you need to get creative – after all, not every business has money to spend on marketing.
The Growth Hacking Funnel - 3 key steps
The key to making it work can be found in what Sharma calls, the ‘Growth Hacking Funnel’.
Firstly, attract consumers by finding new ways of doing things. Secondly, activate your landing pages to generate engagement, and lastly, retain business, by rewarding customers and using post-purchase tactics.
So what are the key Growth Hacking Strategies you need to know about?
Here’s a list of the top 6 that can help you develop your business:
1. SEO - HARO and Expert Roundups
HARO, (or Help A Reporter Out), is a popular online service that journalists use to post questions and gather information from the public.
By responding as an expert in your field, and including your link, if they like your answer it will get published - and with it your backlink too. It’s a simple process and a great way to improve your brand image and attract referral traffic. Go to 11:40 on the video for more details on how this works.
2. SEO - Infographics/datagraphics
Everyone loves a good visual. I’m sure they capture your attention, right?
By collating data from a study, survey or sources you have access to, and building a graphical representation of the statistics you’ve gathered, you can create something visually pleasing, not only for your website but for use on other 3rdparty websites too.
Make sure your content is unique and includes useful statistics and then share it, along with your backlink. As long as you’re sharing within relevant circles, this will generate an increase in brand awareness, a boost in traffic to your website, higher rankings and increased leads. Head to 14:52 on the video for more info.
“Using HARO & Infographics will take max, 4,5,6 hours to complete, compared with an easy 15-20 hours spent writing a guest post, for another site” states Sharma. With stats like that, it’s a no-brainer to work out where your focus is better spent.
Want a pro tip?
When posting images and infographics across social media, an image compression tool like TinyImage can reduce your image file size and optimize their resolution so that they render perfectly on the platform.
3. Content Marketing - Webinars
In today’s world, almost everything is done online, which makes it somewhat harder to build a rapport with your customers.
On average, “If you send 10,000 emails, you may receive 100 replies, and of that only 10 will convert to customers”, says Sharma, and it’s obvious really, but the best way to turn a visitor into a customer is to develop trust – in your product or service, and in you and your business and you do this by sharing your knowledge and experience.
Webinars are a great way to build traffic, promote your brand and increase conversion rates.
A webinar not only allows a visitor to see you and your brand, but a live and interactive event, with ‘limited places available’ shows those ‘chosen’ as potential attendees, that they are valued as your customers and helps to create a feeling of loyalty towards them (18:49 on the video).
Choose a relevant topic, a knowledgeable host and make sure the information you are sharing is valuable and engaging for the audience. To see how it works in practice, head to 19:00 on the video.
4. Lead Generation - LinkedIn Automation
If your business focus is B2C, then Instagram is probably your platform of choice for creating leads, however if your focus is B2B, then you absolutely want to be using LinkedIn for lead generation.
It takes an average of 15-20 emails to close a customer via email. In contrast, via LinkedIn, it takes just 5-8 exchanges. Whilst this is a huge time saving in itself, if you’re looking to scale your business, then these need to look and feel personalized, which can still be a hugely time-consuming task.
Enter Dux-Soup!
The key to getting this right is to set up a drip sequence of 3-5 messages and make sure it takes 15-21 days for those messages to go out.
Don’t rush to force a connection, it needs to look natural, and Dux-Soup is perfect for this.
Make sure your messaging is targeted and to the point, showing the customer how to overcome their challenges.
Note: Give it at least 3-6 months before you start to analyze your conversion rates and ROI.
Head to 22:25 on the video for tips on how to use Dux-Soup’s lead generation tool for lead automation.
“Growth Hacking is all about saving time, making more revenue and converting more people and Dux-Soup is a good strategy to be using to enable that Lead Generation” states Sharma.
5. Email Marketing - Exit-Intent Pop-Ups
You’ve all seen these. If a company gets it wrong, the minute you land on their website, a pop-up appears welcoming you and asking you if you need to chat. More than likely you’ll close the pop-up, or exit the site – and the conversion is lost. Right?
The key to pop-ups is to give the customer time to ‘browse’ exactly as you would in a shop.
Exit-Intent pop-ups provide a customer with something to entice them to either become a paying customer (a discount code for example), or to provide their contact details so you can send them targeted marketing communication in the future (newsletter sign up, or ‘save your basket’).
The idea behind it is to give the customer an incentive to stay on your site for longer, and come back again in the future. Go to 31:39 in the video for more details.
6. Social Media - Contests and Giveaways
We all love a genuine giveaway, especially when it’s something alluring enough as a free iPhone, Beats headphones, Alexa or MacBook Air.
If you’re going for this approach, it’s got to be good. Make the giveaway costly enough that it’s going to entice people to visit your website and start following your social media pages, providing you with a whole new database of leads.
Done right, the outreach you achieve will far outweigh the cost of the giveaway! See 34:24 in the video for more info.
And to finish … as Gaurav nicely sums up, if you follow these key takeaways, you can’t go far wrong!
And there you have 6 top Growth Hacking strategies to help your business thrive.
Let us know how they work for you or share your own at https://www.facebook.com/DuxQuack/
Want more lead generation hacks? Sign up at https://www.dux-soup.com/learning
About Gaurav Sharma
Gaurav Sharma is the founder and CEO of Attrock, a results-driven digital marketing company. Grew an agency from 5-figure to 7-figure revenue in just two years | 10X leads | 2.8X conversions | 300K organic monthly traffic. He also contributes to top publications like HuffPost, Adweek, Business 2 Community, TechCrunch, and more.
