At the core of this is growth hacking strategies, where the growth hacking process enables a growth hacker to active his or her playbook of accelerated growth techniques. We will tackle two things here: what is growth hacking and how it wor, and what is the growth hacker and how they align together. Although they are two different things, they align like a perfectly fitted glove. Growth hacking strategies are at the center of this, which is the glue that brings this all together.

Before we get started, here is some background information to around you off.

1. What is growth hacking?
2. Why is growth hacking important?
3. How does growth hacking work?
4. When should growth hacking be used?
5. How to develop the skills to hack growth?

What is growth hacking?

Growth hackers explore new growth opportunities systematically at any point of the customer journey, from awareness through the market to brand ambassadors by optimizing the product. In terms of technology, it originated in 2010 when Sean Ellis coined it is mostly used by startups because of its limited budgets and limited resources. Since then, it has shown an incredible increase in popularization among large-scale and traditional businesses. Companies like Shopify like Uber has their own head of growth and dedicated growth team. The growth hacker is based on an experiment-based, data-driven.

There is a wide range of definitions. In the Book Ready Set Growth Hack, growth hacking is defined at a strategic level as a process that achieved disproportional results. This is best understood through an example of efforts v.s results. This is when less effort is exerted to get dispositional results.

How does growth hacking work?

Growth hacking works and is defined in the Ready Set Growth Hack as a systematic process governed by the growth cycle concept. The growth cycle is a three-phase process, where it starts with a growth problem, moves into experimentation then into scaling. Based on this process, once a growth problem is well defined through a specific process, it would then be up to the growth hacker to find solutions. Solutions are found vis structured and systematic experimentations.

Using growth analytics for data-driven growth decisions, growth hackers can quickly discover what works and doesn’t before investing a penny in more development. This is governed by a process called growth thinking which is a design methodology used for growth hacking.

35 things to consider for growth hacking success

Some of the following topics and subject areas can create confusion and are some of the areas you need to consider to learn and understand better.

1. Does growth hacking work? of course, it does see what is coming next
2. famous growth hacking examples will not work for you; focus on your own growth hacking techniques
3. growth is the only metric that counts
4. validate ideas fast; don’t wait
5. a sign up page is not the only measure you need to keep going
6. most companies don’t use growth hacking; this is your advantage; many companies overlook this
7. online business isn’t where growth hacking starts or even stops; it applies across the board
8. customer acquisition has to be mastered as part of growth hacking
9. customer acquisition cost is vital don’t lose sight of them
10. user acquisition and customer acquisition are different
11. acquisition channels have to be well defined in advance
12. Using a wide range of growth hacking techniques 
13. Marketing campaigns are marketing efforts, and good marketing strategies
14. Focus on new users but don’t overlook existing users
15. at the core is the growth hacking experiment
16. Do not overlook product-market fit for growth hacking to work
17. Always start with a growth strategy before tooling up and growth hacking
18. Data analysis is key; let it guide your decisions; this is how growth hacking works
19. get a good cloud storage service with extra storage space
20. business growth is why growth hacking exists
21. best growth hackers are hard to find
22. building growth teams is critical; don’t work alone
23. do not stop at google analytics growth hacking si way more
24. start growth hacking now to master it; don’t wait
25. growth marketers are not growth hacking
26. a growth hacker funnel is the same as a growth funnel
27. tight budgets are why growth hacking exists
28. traditional marketing doesn’t work anymore
29. continuous improvement is a must
30. small businesses do stand to gain the most from growth hacking
31. technical skills cannot be ignored
32. know your target group
33. Want to hire a good growth hacker? Get the job description right and include top technical skills
34. Google ads o not your fried but rather a crutch
35. mobile apps are not the only channel consider responsive strategies

Break the rules – growth hacking

The hidden weapons of growth hacking are simple and simple: Be a rule-breaker. The job requires you to think outside the box and unleash your creativity. A growth hack involves having the right mindset on growth. This job requires creativity and ad-hoc experiment with hypotheses and high potential. Be creative growth Hacks won’t come with any rules. Rule-breaking is at the core of growth thinking and how the growth hacking process works.

1. if a rule is working, find a better way to break I
2. If a rule isn’t working, break it with a better one
3. If a rule is about to fail, let it and then break it
4. If a rule is about to have success, break that too

The growth hacking mindset or growth mindset is a very different way of working than that of other professions. Their goal is the north star metric which is basically a growth goal and only a growth goal.

What does growth hacking look like in practice?

Airbnb used Craigslist — a platform for thousands of people seeking hotels — to increase their user base dramatically. The reason for this is Craigslist’s no public API. The company had to rework Craigslist forms’ development and make them compatible without even having access to the Craigslist codebase. It’s also a good subject to be learned by growth hackers. Most growth mechanisms have definite lifetimes. I’d be unreasonably afraid that people would post their own items on Craigslist for the next 10 years, and assuming they’d be able to take a hit with their followers every few days. In fact, it looks like Craigslist has “fixed” the vulnerability that permitted the integration.

Now, although those are traditional examples of growth hacking that we are well known they serve as a great guide all of us can refer to as we have seen this unfold. Hackers take much deeper and more sophisticated approaches with keeper data analytics in today’s work growth hacking and growth.

Growth acceleration and business models

Comparing growth thinking with other methodologies is based on four types of basic models. Each model has a different purpose, where growth thinking focused on accelerated growth models (growth hacking).

This table is broken down into 5 parts. The first is the methodology type; the second is the methodology’s name; the third is the impact that methodology has on growth; the fourth is the level of complexity; and the fifth is compatibility or fit with the growth thinking design methodology.

Remember, the growth thinking design methodology has been designed to work in a complementary fashion with major business methodologies for designing products or services, managing projects, and building companies.

Comparing methodologies

There are four types of methodologies to compare growth thinking.

• Offering design models to design products and services
• Managing projects models design to manage development
• Building a company models design for building a company
• Accelerating Growth models designed to accelerate the growth process ((growth hacking)

Compare Growth Thinking helps you understand the difference between, Business models, product management, project management, and design.

If you look at the spectrum of business methodologies, there are four types.  

Accelerating Growth​

How to accelerate and manage exponential Growth using growth thinking. Some examples of methods are (growth hacking): 

1. Pirate Funnel AARRR
2. G.R.O.W.S.-process
3. T-shaped Growth Hacker
4. One Metric That Matters
5. North Star Metric

Build a company​

How to start a company from the beginning. Some examples of methods are: 

1. The Business Model Canvas
2. The Value Proposition Canvas
3. Lean Startup Canvas
4. Blitzscaling Canvas Business
5. Model Innovation Framework

Managing projects​

How to effectively implement and manage a product management model that works. Some examples of methods are: 

1. Agile
2. Scrum
3. Waterfall
4. Kanban
5. PRINCE2

Offering Design

How to optimize and manage product design using approaches like design thinking. Some examples of methods are: 

1. Design Thinking
2. Google Design Sprints
3. Lean Startup
4. Double Diamond Design
5. Kano Model

Now let’s get into how we can find growth hacks to accelerate growth.

Four types of growth hacks for growth hacking

These four areas can be seen as a guide to answering the question “where to find a growth hack.” This guiding question sets the tone and process for finding, executing, and creating new growth hacks.

The optimization point is the target for deciding which of the four growth hacks best suits a situation. Through our research, we have found the optimization point is best measured by

1. Speed of execution – how fast and effective you can action your growth hack.
2. Level of flexibility to adjust – how fast and accurately you can change 
3. Cost of execution – how to keep execution cost-effective 
4. Return on investment – how to lower cost, efforts, and time against the results 

In optimizing growth hacking, we look at the four types of growth hacks. There are four types of growth hacks they seek to exploit:

1. Find a limitation – an area not being solved well enough. 
2. Find a gap – an area not being solved at all.
3. Find a hole – an area where its completely dysfunctional 
4. Find a combo – an area where a combination has not been exploited. 

The most exploited type of growth hack is gaps, while combinations are the least executed. Although gaps might rise to the tide on this, that’s because they are the easiest to identify and execute. In complete contrast, the combinations are the least exploited due to complexity, lack of vision, and a willingness to try new things.  

Business methodologies and growth hacking

Growth acceleration is one of the four types of methodologies used in the practice of management. The growth accelerator space is the most underdeveloped of the four types that being:

• Offering design models to design products and services
• Managing projects models design to manage development
• Building a company models design for building a company
• Accelerating Growth models designed to accelerate the growth process

To learn more about business methodologies and how they work, click here to learn more.

Find a limitation – an area not being solved well enough. 

Limitations are when parts of a system cannot reach their full potential; it can be something missing, not done well, or something that just doesn’t function right. It also can be something that has been overlooked and creates a limitation.  

Neglect  

When a limitation is known, no one wants to take on the effort or pain to solve this, and hence they find other more comfortable places to put their efforts. This presents a significant limitation since they outright ignore it and are most likely unwilling to tackle it.

Validation checklist for growth hacking

• Ignoring the growth opportunities
• Miscualations of the growth opportunities
• Can’t see the value in the growth opportunities themselves 
• Not investing in the overall growth opportunities. 
• Not interested in the growth opportunities

Blind-spot 

When a limitation exists, no one really sees it, understands it, or even acknowledges it. This is a super ample space to be, as it gives you a natural advantage of being ahead of the curve. These opportunities are usually straightforward, but no one sees them.

Validation checklist for growth hacking

• Don’t see the growth opportunities.
• Don’t understand the growth opportunities. 
• Don’t see the value in the growth opportunities.
• Don’t know how to make the growth opportunities.
• Don’t give importance to the growth opportunities. 

Underestimated 

When a limitation is known, understood, and even being actively tackled. However, they don’t see the real opportunity as they have become exhausted or numb to see the same problem repeatedly. This also gives a natural advantage of taking a new perspective others have not.

Validation checklist for growth hacking

• Undervalue the growth opportunities 
• Miscalculating the growth opportunities 
• Don’t see value in the growth opportunities. 
• Don’t see the growth opportunities altogether.
• Mindset is blocked from seeing the growth opportunities. 

CASE: Blockbuster was neglecting the streaming market very early on although they saw it coming and even had better service than Netflix to start with. However, they were to invest in their physical space and retail footprint. This mindset blinded them from seeing the future of their industry. As a result, this became a major limitation that Netflix exploited very well.

Find a gap – an area not being solved at all.

A gap is an element where something is missing or not done well at all. This is not a limitation but rather the absence of something vital or not seen at all. Gaps present a massive opportunity and account for about 25% of all growth hacks undertaken.

Unseen

When no one sees a gap, this is usually due to a lack of insights or the ability to see fresh perspectives. These are some of the best growth hacking opportunities where you can get ahead of the curve before everyone else.

Validation checklist for growth hacking

• Undetectable to the majority 
• Not enough exposure 
• Not enough insights
• Not enough experiments 
• No one cares or sees the value. 

Not understood

When a gap isn’t well known, its existence is known, but not enough insights on how to resolve this gap. This means no one has understood the opportunity itself and why no one will invest their time and efforts. This is where you stand to shine.

Validation checklist for growth hacking

• Poor insights and low-quality data
• Little research was conducted to understand
• Lack of foresight to see what is coming in the future. 
• Not willing to take risks and experiment 
• Outcomes are not seen as valuable enough to justify taking action. 

About to be solved 

When a gap is known and actively being resolved, this doesn’t mean there is no opportunity but rather a chance to resolve the gap better than others. This would be a more competitive space but worthwhile to tackle.

Validation checklist for growth hacking

• Highly competitive space 
• Utilize the efforts of others to get an even better solution. 
• Others are not seeking collaboration opportunities. 
• Validated demand and value, justifying pursuing growth in this area  
• Large potential of volume and growth 

CASE: AirBNB saw an unseen market in the area of tourism, where people can use their own houses as hotels. As simple as this might sound, they saw what no one else was getting out of asset management and focusing on service experiment management. While hotel chains continued to invest heavily into assets and branding, AirBNB was able to help people build income using their own properties, meanwhile giving customers a cost-effective experience.

Find a hole – an area where its completely dysfunctional 

A hole is a situation, an element, or a system in part or whole where it is outright dysfunctional. The parts don’t come together well or not effectively and hence create a situation of poor performance.

A big mess

When a hole is so deep, no one wants to tackle it. This is when the dirty work is seen as not worth it. This means people are underestimating growth opportunities and don’t know the value of the outcome.

Validation checklist for growth hacking

• High level of complexity 
• People avoiding investing effort and time 
• Lots of confusion and misinformation 
• Undervaluing potential outcomes 
• Reorganization, rethinking, and a fresh take is needed. 

No one wants the pain.

When a hole is seen as too painful to tackle, no one is willing to invest the effort to find growth opportunities. This is a blind spot because it is highly underestimated, and most do not understand the outcomes.

Validation checklist for growth hacking

• Efforts and time are perceived as too much to justify investing.
• Outcomes are undervalued 
• Few people are actively pursuing. 
• Perceived as low value, low outcome, and not worth it
• The pain is seen as too much, and no one wants to take it on.

Fresh perspective

When a hole is an old problem and seems everyone has tried to find growth, but no one has. This simply means an entirely new approach is needed where everyone is blinded to the possibilities of that hole.

Validation checklist for growth hacking

• New insights others don’t’ know.
• Seeing new ways of solving a problem that has not been attempted
• Has been tried and tested but not working well
• See a different, more valuable outcome than others.
• The investment of time and effort is justified, but others don’t think so

CASE: Ghost, cloud, or dark kitchen as they are referred to aren’t something new, but when the logistical nightmare of the delivery side of the food business turned into an even bigger mess due to the covid-19 pandemic disruption started. The Food and Beverage industry is being disrupted by delivery companies like Deliveroo, not restaurants.  Deliveroo took advantage of the BIG MESS in managing logistics, order fulfillment, and marketing on the front-end of food businesses.

Find a combo – an area where a combination has not been exploited. 

This is when two or more existing elements are combined via an integration that allows them to work together. This will usually create massive cost savings, time effectiveness, and a significant reduction in required efforts. 

Never been done

When a combination has not been attempted, remember, this is about connecting two or more things that exist that work optimally together. Ideally, in this case, something no one has connected the dots with before. 

Validation checklist for growth hacking

• Never seen or done before
• Attempted but not enough efforts put into it.
• Attempted but not done right before
• A blind spot where others simply do not see or understand it 
• Low levels of optimization, not combined well, or more improvements needed. 

Not done well

When a combination has been attempted but not well enough. This is usually because they have not integrated two or more elements well or explored other ways or connections to enhance this specific growth opportunity, 

Validation checklist for growth hacking

• Ineffective combinations for better results
• Inefficient combinations for better results
• Expired combinations that did work but do not now
• Have not explored adding another combination
• Seek creative combinations not attempted before

Optimization 

When a combination exists and is working because it is not effective or efficient anymore. This would be exploring a better way to make it work or a new combination that is more effective and efficient. 

Validation checklist for growth hacking

• Finding better integrations for better results
• Finding better tools for better results
• Finding an additional combination for better results
• Finding a better supplement for one of the combinations 
• Reconfiguring existing combinations for a better result

CASE: Zapier built a whole business around this. They become the combo exploiters of the SaaS world. If the connection did not exist, they made it happen. They took the most popular and highly used services out there and created an easy and effective way to create connections to supercharge and automate your workflow. However, this is a software-based example. Combinations happen across many levels, not just software.

What is a growth hacker?

A growth hacker is an expert focused on the growth hacking process. The growth hacking process is where a growth hacker accelerates the growth of an organization. He/she does this via advanced techniques that are usually not employed by their competitors. These skills include things like strategy, marketing, technology, and beyond. Often this is also referred to as the T-shaped skills. 

T–shaped skills for growth hacking

The T-shaped approach is spread across sections of skills that are combined towards a specific skill set. The T-shaped process isn’t the only model but one of the most popular for growth hackers. This brings into play several aspects like:

LEVEL 1 – skills and capabilities that are driven by the growth hacker mindset

1. Front-End Code
2. Service Design
3. UX Design
4. Behavioral Psychology
5. Stakeholder Management
6. Augmented / Virtual Reality
7. Finance
8. Omnichannel Marketing
9. Distributed Ledgers

LEVEL 2 – skills and capabilities that are driven by the growth hacker mindset

1. Analytics
2. Conversion Rate Optimisation
3. Experiment Design
4. Funnel Marketing
5. Automation & APIs
6. AI & Machine Learning
7. Branding / Storytelling
8. Copywriting

LEVEL 3 – skills and capabilities that are driven by the growth hacker mindset

1. Paid Social
2. Organic Social
3. SEO/SEM
4. Tools Marketing
5. Marketplaces
6. Sales
7. Email Marketing
8. Content Marketing
9. PR / Influencer
10. Qualitative Research
11. Virality
12. Retention
13. Mobile Optimisation
14. Landing Page Creation & Optimisation
15. Lead Generation
16. Revenue Testing
17. User On-Boarding
18. Lifecycle Marketing

These 35 skills over three levels are what help determine a good vs. a rising growth hacker. This helps growth hacking teams also manage diverse skills across the whole spectrum.

In conclusion, a growth hacker is a person who manages a growth hacking process where they aim to accelerate growth to achieve disproportionate results. 

What is the Growth hacker mindset?

Four main taxonomies determine a growth hacker’s mind: driver’s reach, decisions, and tools. The combination of the four forms the underlying idea of aching disproportionate results.

Drivers — 

The drivers are the underlying motivations and stimuli that inspire how growth hackers think and take action.

Mischiefness

They deeply need to break the rules, as they do not believe in the rules they have not benefited from governing and limiting their way of life. Therefore this underpins their thinking to find a way to break the rules to their benefit. 

Curiosity

They are fascinated by digging deeper into how things work by asking the big why questions. This allows them to understand theories and phenomena better to map out their mechanics to manipulate them toward their benefit.

Status quo 

The general rules over institutionalization drive their need to challenge the establishments surrounding them. This allows them to break the rules and change the norms of how society around them works. 

Reach —

Growth hackers have a goal to reach as many people as possible without the general population knowing how they did it.

Focused

They have an extremely focused approach by pinning done abstract problems and creating unique structures to solve them.

Collaborative

They have a resourceful approach where they work with like-minded people and find other cross-functional people to reach their goals effectively. 

Value-creation 

They focus on creating value with monetization, often trying to reach the masses to make a change. 

Decisions —

When hacking growth optimization is the goal to solve at a high level, there is no one solution to a single problem but finding the fastest, easiest, and cheapest way.

Creativity

Growth hackers are resourceful; they find simple, fast, and digestible ways to solve problems. One of the challenges for growth hackers is thinking too technically. 

Experimentation

They run tests and lots of them to determine the most optimal approach to getting results using all possible avenues.

Data-driven

They make decisions based on data, even if the data might potentially be blinding. Data helps determine the most optimal options.

Tools —

Growth hackers seek new tools, optimize existing ones, and find optimal ways to connect them to solutions. 

Systemization

For a solution to work, it needs to be automated, and when automated, the probability of scalability is a lot higher when seeking exponential growth.

Optimization

When finding the right tools and connecting them, the goals are optimizing the way they work together. This holistic approach helps maximize optimization. 

Technology  

Technology enables automation, scalability, and integration, which underpins growth even if you’re a non-tech company.

The mindset of a growth hacker is defined by how they solve problems. The elements described above are the most common thinking patterns of growth hackers.

14 Growth hacker habits

Growth hackers have 14 critical habits they work with. They do not work with all of them as a strength at once. You will find a single strength supported by three other habits and the rest for development over time. The 14 habits are:

1. Openness 
2. Flexibility
3. No ego
4. Risk-taking
5. Fresh perspective 
6. Generosity 
7. Curiosity 
8. Team focused
9. Listen before action
10. Cohesive approach
11. Consensus
12. Diplomatic
13. Action driven
14. Collective win

Remember that these habits help support the T-shaped skills.

01. Openness 

They use an open approach to gain resources, using them, and find solutions to growth problems. This often is the underpinning factor behind their creativity. 

02. Flexibility

When using an open approach, they work flexibly to solve growth problems knowing they don’t have the exact solution but need to be flexible in finding it. 

03. No ego

They focus on removing their ego from the equation; this is often challenged by technical thinking – blinding them to find creative solutions. 

04. Risk-taking

They take bold yet calculated risks, often progressive, to manage unknown facts that are not seen early on. 

05. Fresh perspective 

They focus on finding new ways to solve existing problems by finding new solutions not yet attempted or poorly executed. 

06. Generosity 

They are open-handed to negotiate and broker the acquisition of new resources by being generous to open new doors.

07. Curiosity

They look deep into the whys. This helps them find unseen possibilities not seen by asking excellent questions and often challenging the status quo. 

08. Team focused

They often are challenged with trust, but they thrive by forming collective learning and efforts when developing their small groups of trusted people. 

09. Listen before action

They focus on getting useful quality information before managing their risks and coming up with better growth hacks quicker and easier. 

10. Cohesive approach

They focus on developing networks beyond their teams for the exchange of know-how and cross-development opportunities. 

11. Consensus

They focus on developing a common approach to ensure buy-in and momentum to generate the energy needed to undertake large initiatives. 

12. Diplomatic

They are often challenged with being diplomatic, which ensures relationships supersede technical barriers to solutions.  

13. Action driven

All their know-how and tools are geared towards taking action, leaving little space for theories that waste time and do not get results. 

14. Collective wins

Finding ways that everyone wins in the process, including those directly involved, even if their role is minor in the overall outcome. 

These 14 habits are specific to growth hackers; they often draw on these habits as their core capability. With the focus on a single superpower among these habits, growth hackers must develop their habits.

Hiring a growth hacker

As a growth company, you will need a mindset that is built on growth. Let’s learn about what works best for growing a team. Are there any good companies that hire growth hackers or a website? Allow Andy Johns to answer his own question. Tell me the most important point of an interview with a growth hacker? Hopefully, the answers you find on Quora will explain your question better. Can you list the interview questions of growth hackers?

Recommend the best questions to raise before hiring a Growth Hacker. Should we hire hacking companies or one that provides real money development hacking? Why not? Share your thought or opinion over there on Facebook or Twitter.

Breaking this all down, one of the main tools used in the field o growth hacking is the “T-Shaped” skills. This is essentially a method to evaluate the cross-section of skills needed and used for a growth hacker. A growth hacker needs to be cross-functional but good at many different parts all at once. The T-shaped skills challenge the traditional marketers; a few things like

1. strategy overall
2. marketing strategy
3. marketing departments are obsolete
4. Analyzing data and data analysis
5. growth rate
6. learn growth hacking
7. viral marketing strategy
8. viral ideas
9. viral tools
10. digital marketing strategy
11. advanced marketing campaigns
12. how to manage potential customers
13. how to acquire new customers
14. true north concept
15. reverse engineer
16. more traffic is not enough
17. advertising
18. going beyond search engines
19. going beyond basic analytical skills
20. going beyond landing pages
21. going beyond your own website
22. mastering repeat users
23. mastering viral loops

One last but important note, growth hacking is not digital marketing; this is one of the biggest misconceptions in today’s world. Growth hacking has many more aspects to it beyond marketing or digital marketing.

Why should I learn growth hacking?

Growth Hacking refers primarily to data-driven market leaders. It stresses analytical thinking. A growth hacker measure analyzes, tests, compares the product, refines, and repeats. Online courses are the best way to master growth hacking.

You will need different kinds of courses to supplement yourself and become a growth hacker. These topics include growth hacking courses and data analytics courses, primarily programming courses.

Please leave us a little more space in your comment on this article if your view was not reflected in this text when we should have. Top growth hacker courses in 2022 are listed here.

Learning from the top Online Growth Hacking & Marketing Courses

These growth hacking courses have been curated by experts providing an overview of this new dimension of marketing. CXL has a 114 hour Online Growth Marketing course, making it one of the most time-consuming marketing online courses. Growth Tribe Academy provides live and interactive courses which encourage active learning and ensure that students completed the course as soon as possible.

The HypeBomb course was aimed at people starting businesses and companies. The Demand curve course is meant to help you learn the general spectrum of growth marketing to get the opportunity to gain business development experience of each market segment and industry. This video tutorial will introduce you to google search advertising, Facebook e-mails, and Google AdWords.

Tipping away from the mainstream growth hacking course, there are special places where advanced, and high-speed training occurs. one of those sources is the growth ninja school run by best-selling author Nader Sabry of Ready Set Growth hack.

What you will learn at growth ninja school

Growth hacking courses are designed to take you from strategy to action in an effective way.

Growth Skills

Learn foundation growth skills to supercharge your startup, cooperation, or government organization

Advanced techniques

Develop advanced strategies, tools, and methods based on heavily guarded secrets of the fastest-growing companies in the world

Your formula

This blueprint training is designed to formulate your own customized formula that works for your own growth.

Examples of growth hacking?

Alright, so let’s get started. What are the best examples? So the first thing is that I want to explain that growth hacking is not exclusive to technology. Technology companies have been the best to exploit growth hacking, but they’re not the only ones.

Traditional and technology examples

So I’m going to give you three traditional examples. I’m going to give you three new school examples of technology companies who’ve done this. And so, you can see a spectrum of examples of how this works. So it hopefully helps you hone into what are some great examples of this happening. Now, number one, McDonald’s. I love McDonald’s are awesome. Awesome, awesome stuff. All right, so roughly 50 years ago, McDonald’s had implemented a growth hack, they started building their own billboards, right? So keyword here is building their own billboards, and the growth hack was that they put it on busy freeways on exits right before one of their restaurants would be available in roughly one to three kilometers. The reason being, they want to get you hungry with that beautiful BigMac picture and help you take action on it within one to three kilometers because guess what?

McDonalds drive-thru and Kodak growth hack

You can just drive right through. That’s actually how they built their drive-through business. Amazing, right? The next one is Kodak, right? Kodak is one of these super-scaled companies of its time. So one of them actually implemented several growth hacks, but one of my favorites is the disposable camera. So you’d pay once you get a camera with the film and the production costs all in one. But the beauty of it is that these cameras would be available in convenient places that you’d want to take pictures that you would have probably forgotten to take your camera. And remember those were days when we didn’t have mobiles with cameras on them, right? Very different times. So they would put them in places like tourist attractions, like right at the entrance we were like, Oh my God, I ran out of film or I forgot to bring my camera or I need another camera or whatever the case may be.

FedEx Growth Hack

They hit you up in the right places, right? The next one is FedEx. So it used to be called federal express. When they actually pulled this off, they focused on optimizing their supply chain to do overnight delivery. And that’s how they became known as the logistics. Somebody who would just do overnight delivery and open up the whole express business because of this growth hack. And that’s why they shortened their name from federal express to FedEx. Right. So that’s a traditional example. So let me give you some newer ones. So Dropbox is a very famous one. Their biggest growth hack is their ability to get their customers to do more referrals. Um, it’s a lot more sophisticated and deeper than that. I’m just keeping it as simple as possible. But they built a sales force using their customers who can bring incredible, profitable customers for them.

Airbnb vs. Craigslist

And the second is Airbnb. Another classic, uh, they basically tapped into Craigslist, which was a listing service. So when they didn’t have the volume to get people to go to their properties, they would automatically list them into Craigslist and drive the traffic straight to them. And they were essentially lifting the traffic from Craigslist. Brilliant growth hack YouTube. So I don’t know if you know this, but YouTube used to be a data video dating service to start with, and then they pivoted into video hosting. And finally, what we see today, but their biggest growth hack before the video. Now, this is the strange part because we got so used to it. We didn’t even think this is an impossibility, but the videos were not shareable. That is, that is the biggest growth hack they’ve done. They are the ones that made them embeddable both through several places.

The growth dilemma

That’s what they mastered. That’s how they grew. That’s the growth hack that they did. Now it doesn’t matter if you’re a traditional tech company, but technology is central to what you do. The reason being is that it accelerates what you’re doing at low cost and low resources. So if you recall, when we talked about the growth dilemma earlier, when I talked about what growth hacking is, so you might want to go back to that video; we talked about the idea that you didn’t, you would not have enough resources to reach the growth goal. And so that would be the growth dilemma. And on the way to solve that dilemma is growth hacking, which is using fewer resources to get more out of what you’re doing to get disproportionate results, right? So tech is at the center of that. All right, so head downstairs to the comments.

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Introduction to growth thinking — growth by design, how to thinking design, and growth hack.

GROWTH BY DESIGN – Most Growth Hackers struggle to get traction for new ideas. A lack of guidance and exact next steps are to blame. Imagine if you could grow a new concept from beginning to end, with a framework to move from thought and action in a fast, simple, and low-cost approach. Actioning ideas with precision isn’t easy; with the growth thinking, science-backed design system built by the top minds in growth hacking, it’s a simple, well-structured yet creative system that allows you to find growth. 

Growth thinking is a fast, easy, and simple way to prototype growth hacks. This enables growth by visualizing a growth hack in abstract and then detailing them into a systematic approach. This makes it easy to develop and improve growth hacks and generate new, better growth hacks.  

Benefits of the growth thinking design methodology — 

1. From idea to action – accurately and rapidly turn growth hacking ideas into execution quickly and cost-effectively,  
2. Think at scale – quickly and effortlessly find methods to take an abstract growth hack, structure it, scale it, and 
3. Save time and money – rapidly prototype your growth hacking ideas saving time and money.  

This methodology uses a design system that Visualization, Systemize, Optimization, helps Rapid development, and instills Collaboration.