Forbes: How businesses can harness the power of growth-hacking
The term “growth hacking” was invented more than a decade ago with the sole purpose of describing the ways in which a business can carefully craft strategies and processes that focus solely on just that – growth.
So how can businesses harness the power of “growth hacking” to better implement effective growth strategies and use data to enable and empower everyone within the organization (not just senior leadership) to make real change where it counts?
Start by getting your frameworks in place
When you read about the huge success of a business, it’s never because they implemented a singular new strategy and all of a sudden saw results. If that were the case, businesses everywhere would be thriving.
Seen most typically within larger companies, growth usually comes down to the implementation of finely-tuned processes in order to facilitate a variety of experiments. It cannot be stressed enough how important it is for businesses to know and understand these different processes before starting their growth journey. The following are some of the most widely known and applied growth processes and frameworks (including links to excellent educational articles):
- Dave McClure’s ‘pirate funnel’
- G.R.O.W.S process
- B.R.A.S.S or P.I.E/I.C.E frameworks
An important reminder: for companies starting the growth journey, a normal rate of successful experiments is 1 in every 10. And even experienced growth hackers with these finely-tuned processed, typically improve to achieving a success rate of just 1 in 3 experiments. So don’t get discouraged by failed experiments – you will improve!
Create success from within
Successful growth hacking doesn’t come neatly packaged up with a ribbon. It requires input and effort from all teams on all sites. The more employees that businesses have testing new ways of working, gathering data and validating results, the faster the whole organization will learn, and eventually become more financially successful.
Having teams at every level of the business involved in preparing the company for growth – whether that be testing new checkout system or a new store layout – will help to bring the company’s goals into alignment for the wider team, fortifying the organization’s efforts and ensuring that these growth processes are implemented tactfully and effectively across every department.