Regardless of the industry, growth is a common objective. Enter the extremely popular and slightly controversial term of growth hacking. But, growth hacking is more than another Internet buzzword. In fact, it’s a mindset that must be adopted in order to attain scalable growth.

In this episode of Stay Paid, Luke and Josh take a deep dive into the concept of growth hacking and provide listeners with tips on how to adopt the mentality.

Key Points

• Growth hacking is a mindset
• Focus on what helps you grow today
• Use your failed ideas as a stepping stone

What is growth hacking?

Thanks to Sean Ellis, growth hacking has been a term since 2010. Like mentioned above, it’s not just another Internet buzzword—it’s a mindset. According to Ellis, “A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth. Everything they do is scrutinized by its potential impact on scalable growth.”

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not necessary for smaller businesses to act like corporate America in order to grow. The key is in the execution and micro actions. It’s okay not to know where you’re going. Instead, focus on what helps you grow today, and what resources are available right now for the next level.

The growth hacking mentality

For service-based professionals, adopting the growth hacking mentality is a must. Consider asking for a referral right after the close and rely heavily on the reciprocity effect—the act that if you do something nice for someone, they will want to do something nice in return.

Shoot for those happy deals and leverage people’s happiness. By doing such, you’ll be able to capture more referrals because your client’s satisfaction is still fresh in their memory. For instance, right after a home is closed makes for the perfect opportunity to ask for a referral.

Use an “AHA” moment to your advantage. This will help to steer you in the right direction and line up your next moves. Twitter’s moment was getting people to follow others with their suggestions feature. Our moment was utilizing the filming of editorial videos to shoot testimonials. This showed us how much our clients love how they look with our product, which changed the game for our marketing efforts, and taught us the importance of emotional intelligence.

Tips to implement growth hacking

Test small and scale

Let’s face it: the majority of your ideas will fail. However, the key is to use your failed ideas as stepping stones to get to the next idea. In order to fully embrace the growth hacking mentality, you must test, measure, and understand your goals. If you are going to fail, fail faster.

Unfortunately, too many people tend to fail at a system level and not at a micro level. An example from our company is they tend to cancel our product after only 1 or 2 mailings, and jump ship. However, it’s important to fail at the micro level and continue to persevere. Test at a micro level to see if you can find success, and give it time to yield valid results. Stop chasing every shiny object, and find something purposeful.

Be unique

And lastly, do what no one else can do. If you’re a leader, do what only a leader can do. This will not only help to distinguish yourself from the crowd, but also to set the best example for your team.

Action Items

Following the podcast, our goal is to provide you with as many actionable tips as possible. This episode includes…

• Ask yourself what you believe that clients appreciate the most about doing business with you.
• Compare your guesses to clients’ beliefs by asking up to 15 clients.

Download the Relationship Marketer’s Guide to Growth Hacking eBook here.