12 Steps to Effective Growth Hacking (www.wepullthetrigger.com)

12 STEPS TO EFFECTIVE
GROWTH HACKING
by trigger (@wetriggergrowth)

UNSURE HOW TO CRACK THE CODE FOR HOW
TO GET STARTED WITH GROWTH HACKING?  
GOOD NEWS AHEAD…

…WE HAVE BROKEN DOWN THE PROCESS IN
12 EFFECTIVE STEPS THAT WILL KICK START
YOUR GROWTH (HACKING) EFFORTS. READY?

1.
HAVE A PRODUCT
PEOPLE WANT!

Having a product that is in demand is critical and
the ﬁrst element you must attend to considering
all your marketing efforts. Straightforward, right?
RIGHT.
At the end of the day, no marketing budget can
sell a product people don’t want!

Remember when Coca Cola replaced their old
recipe with a new formula? People didn’t want a
new ﬂavour. They just wanted the old Coke they
knew and loved!
LESSON LEARNED
Make sure your product is wanted and not
just good.

2.
DEFINE YOUR OVERALL
BUSINESS GOALS

SUCCESSFUL GROWTH HACKING STARTS
WITH BUSINESS GOALS THAT ARE SMART
(SPECIFIC, MEASURABLE, ACHIEVABLE,
REALISTIC AND TIME-BASED.

YOUR ULTIMATE GOAL IS TO MAXIMISE
GROWTH AND PROFITS, BUT THERE
ARE MULTIPLE WAYS TO GET THERE…

EXAMPLES
If you have a startup you may want to break even
or reach a “critical mass” of users or visitors.
Opposite, if you have an established business
that has exhausted its growth potential, you may
need to reach a new target audience or
reposition your product.

DID YOU KNOW…that growth hacking is not only
for startups? Check out this slide deck (image link).

3.
CUT YOUR BUSINESS GOALS INTO
REALISTIC GROWTH HACKING GOALS

SOUNDS LIKE A DIFFICULT TASK? DON’T
WORRY, IT’S NOT. LET’S TAKE AN EXAMPLE
TO ILLUSTRATE OUR POINT.

YOUR BUSINESS GOAL IS TO INCREASE TRAFFIC
This is a good goal, but it’s too broad for growth
hacking purposes. You need one that is more
concrete.
Remember! Growth hacking is based on rapid
experimentation and speciﬁc results.

YOU NEED TO CREATE SMALL,
ACTIONABLE MICRO GOALS THAT
DEFINE WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO DO.

SO, IF WANT TO INCREASE YOUR WEBSITE
TRAFFIC, DIFFERENT MICRO GOALS COULD BE:
- Increase content output by 50% 
- Send 2x more emails to our list 
- Boost website visitors by 35% in the next six weeks

4.
ANALYSE PAST TRENDS
AND RESULTS

UNLESS YOUR PRODUCT IS COMPLETELY
UNIQUE, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE
SOMEONE WHO CAME BEFORE YOU.
SURPRISE.

DON’T LET THIS ROCK YOUR BOAT. USE IT TO YOUR
ADVANTAGE AND LOOK AT THEIR OPERATIONS AND
RESULTS. THESE INSIGHTS WILL GIVE YOU AN IDEA
ABOUT WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T.

THESE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS YOU CAN LOOK
INTO. FOR INSTANCE,
Are your competitors using paid trafﬁc?
Then you should try it to.
Are they creating lots of content?
Consider doing the same.
Is there something none of
your competitors are doing?
Understand why.

BY LOOKING AT WHAT OTHERS ARE DOING,
AND CONVERSELY NOT DOING, WILL SAVE
YOU A GREAT DEAL OF TIME, ENERGY, AND
RESOURCES.

5.
IDENTIFY YOUR STRENGTHS
IN THE MARKETPLACE

HAVING A PRODUCT THAT PEOPLE WANT
(STEP 1) IS THE FOUNDATION OF EVERY
SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS.
SO, HOW CAN YOU MAKE SURE TO
ACCOMMODATE YOUR CUSTOMERS’ NEEDS?

The best way to do that effectively
is by understanding your strengths
and assets in the marketplace…

…SO, FOR EXAMPLE
If you have a massive email list, you should try to
discover new ways to engage it on an ongoing basis.
If your product has unique features that
competitors don’t offer, consider emphasising these
in your marketing efforts.

6.
GET THE TOOLS YOU NEED
TO MEASURE RESULTS

BUT HOW CAN YOU KNOW WHETHER OR
NOT YOU’RE ACTUALLY ACHIEVING YOUR
GROWTH RESULTS?

DEFINE THE VARIABLES THAT ARE NECESSARY TO
TRACK THE RESULTS AND ASK YOURSELF
- Do you need to track incoming trafﬁc by source? 
- Do you need to know how many people watch your
videos all the way through? 
- Is it important to see how many people “bounce”
from your website by leaving immediately?

AND ONE LAST CRUCIAL THING: IDENTIFY
THE DATA YOU WILL BE MEASURING YOUR
SUCCESS BY.
GET THE RIGHT SOFTWARE (e.g. Google
Analytics, Heapanalytics, Mixpanel).

ARE YOU CAUGHT IN YOUR MARKETING
EFFORTS? WE NEED TO TALK!
CONTACT US

HURRAY!
You’ve ﬁnally reached the step where the
actual growth hacking process begins!
First element in deﬁning your experiment is to
write it down and the idea behind it.

EXAMPLE
“We believe that publishing 10 blog posts/week
will improve organic trafﬁc by more than 15%”.
This will help you make sure to focus on
one thing at a time without losing track of your
various objectives.

REMEMBER! GROWTH HACKING IS
ABOUT LONG-TERM LEARNING, AND
AS SUCH CONSTANT SPLIT-TESTING IS
CRITICAL TO ANY EXPERIMENT.

8.
DEFINE YOUR IDEAL
TARGET AUDIENCE

WHO IS THE TARGET OF YOUR MARKETING
EFFORTS?
…and don’t say everyone. You don’t want to
reach the broad masses. Really!
This will most likely result in a mixed bag of
prospects who don’t necessarily want your
product, and that would be critical.

TARGET PEOPLE WHO INHERENTLY
WANT WHAT YOU’RE OFFERING.
This gives you the highest ROI, and it
will provide you with the possibility to
faster conﬁrm or reject your hypothesis.

LET’S FINISH STEP 8 WITH AN EXAMPLE
Apple doesn’t make computers for everyone. They
have a smaller market share (12.8%) than both
Hewlett-Packard (27.1%) and Dell (24.5%). However,
one Apple Mac gives as much as 7x the proﬁts that an
HP PC does.
This is only possible because Apple has a clearly
deﬁned target audience.

AS MENTIONED BEFORE, GROWTH HACKING IS
ABOUT RAPID EXPERIMENTATION.
THIS MEANS THAT THINGS CAN, AND OFTEN DO,
GO SIDEWAYS.

Therefore, you need to schedule
your growth hacking efforts.
Don’t start experimenting with
code of your website if you've
got a large inﬂux of trafﬁc
ahead.

AFTER HAVING PREPARED AND PLANNED
YOUR EXPERIMENT, IT’S TIME TO PRESS
THE START BUTTON.
THE GROWTH HACKING PROCESS CAN
NOW FINALLY BEGIN!

IF YOU’VE DONE EVERYTHING SO FAR, THIS
SHOULD BE THE EASY PART!
Your analytics are in place (step 6),
your hypothesis is clearly deﬁned (step 7),
and you know who you’re trying to reach (step 8).

Even with all the planning you’ve
been doing so far, it’s almost
impossible to keep track of each
and every variable.

PREVENT ANY MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF
YOUR RESULTS BY ALWAYS KEEPING A
CONTROL GROUP.
This group must receive marketing efforts
consistent with what you’ve done in the past
while you experiment with your test group.

This way, you'll be able to see which results are
random and which are a direct consequence of what
you did. Once this is done, you can begin to…

12.
MAKE CONCLUSIONS AND
REPEAT THE STEPS

HAVING RUN YOUR EXPERIMENT, IT’S TIME
TO LOOK BACK AT YOUR HYPOTHESIS!
Was it correct? Were there any
unexpected results?
If you failed to get the results
you predicted, what did you
learn from the experience?

IF YOUR EXPERIMENT DIDN’T GO HOW YOU
THOUGHT IT WOULD, DON’T CONSIDER IT A FAILURE.
EVERY EXPERIENCE GIVES YOU KNOWLEDGE,
AND THAT, ULTIMATELY, IS WHAT GROWTH HACKING
IS REALLY ABOUT!

WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT GROWTH
HACKING AND GET STARTED YOURSELF?
REACH OUT TO US
contact@wepullthetrigger.com
STAY UP TO DATE ON OUR BLOG
www.wepullthetrigger.com/blog
CONNECT VIA LINKEDIN
Trigger: Growth Hacking Agency
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER AND INSTAGRAM
@wetriggergrowth

12 Steps to Effective Growth Hacking (www.wepullthetrigger.com)

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