We sat down with a growth hacker and found 7 growth hacks that do consistently get results

Last October, We wrote The Success Secret: How the Best Startups Start Up (and How You Can, too) and came across a problem. When you're first starting out, it's too easy to get caught up in little details and stop making forward progress.

We'd planned to end the book on the customer journey & initial branding guidelines. But when you're on your first handful of customers or trying to hit MRR, your first hurdle will just be getting MORE:

• more traffic,
• more traction,
• more customers —
• and ultimately, a better understanding of what your next moves are. That's where growth hacks actually come in handy.

So we sat down with @FabianMaume, professional growth hacker and founder of QApop, to understand the truth behind the buzzword. (The interview is in the eBook. 😎🤙)

What's growth hacking, really

Growth hacking is all about setting small goals, moving quickly, and being creative with the resources you have. As you plan experiments, don’t think: I need more money to compete on Google AdWords. Instead try: How can I leverage my budget and skills to get 2 new customers this month?

Fabian:

"If you’re early-stage, doing only “marketing” won’t be rewarding. People won’t subscribe, they’ll churn after a month of using the platform, and so on.

Instead, you need to understand where people are getting value and how you can make your product more rewarding.

Growth hackers [...] test a new channel, see if it’s working, and if it’s not, try something else until you find something which gives you results."

Why it's worth your time

Growth hacking isn't magic. You can't use it to shortcut your way to market fit or profitability.

For best results, pair with hard work and diligence. Beforehand, you should have already put in the time:

• validating your idea,
• understanding your audience & angle,
• and getting 2+ people to actually pay you (or getting way more than that onboard, if you're not monetizing yet)

If that's true, and you're willing to temper your expectations and dig in, growth hacks can absolutely be worth it.

We recommend using a 4-step framework. 👇

What you need for any growth hack

Review growing pains and get customer feedback
What's been difficult so far? What's gone great? Who's churned and who's been stalwart — and why is that? You don't just want to look at it from your POV, so make sure you're keeping lines of communication open with your customers. Their opinion matters a little more than yours 😉 Use this information to...

Figure out your achievable early goals and prioritize ONE
Immediate goals may be "Get 5 new customers this month" or "Increase web traffic by 100%." Think of things that are achievable in a 3-month timespan or less. Which one realistically aligns with your abilities and expectations?

Plan the experiment
Once you know what you want to achieve, you can work backward to cement the rest of the plan. Call it OKRs, call it KPIs...the heart of the matter is you need most of the info on what you'll do, where you'll do it, what you'll need, and how long everything will take. We have a more detailed breakdown in the book.

Analyze results and adjust
A growth hack, like any marketing campaign, may work how you intended, may far exceed expectations, or may fall way short. All these results matter less than understanding why that was the case. This will prepare you to keep learning and moving forward.

7 legit growth hacks to try

These are far from the ONLY growth hacks that work.

But in our research, these were the ones that were best suited for a range of experiments, fit into the 4-step framework, and lend themselves well to different products/industries.

You can find a little more information in our DIY Startup School Notion and we'd be happy to share case studies, examples, and more resources.

1. Free consultations and advising on social media

We've all seen the posts: "I am an X expert, tell me your problems and I'll give you Y." This is super effective for data gathering as well as good old-fashioned promotion. But it MUST be rooted in a genuine desire to help, and can be time-consuming.

2. Chat boxes

My marketer swears she hardly ever even LOOKS at a chat box on a website, but study after study shows they can improve conversion and customer satisfaction. You can implement one in a number of ways to suit your market, product, and capabilities.

3. Social listening

If you have a relevant following of your own, you can simply reach out and ask them what they need in order to serve it.

If you are trying to grow a following and establish your expertise, piggyback off other people's popular posts or in their replies. It takes some time and some grind, but you can't substitute that either way.

4. Landing pages

Socials make audience-building easy, theoretically, but landing pages make things yours. If you really want to gauge interest and motivation (in terms of CTR or signups, for example) you're going to need a separate page to send people to.

These days they're incredibly easy to set up and allow you to test your messaging, CTAs, and the like.

5. Content curation

You can get your start collecting and recommending helpful resources for people. You don't need an entire oeuvre of your own work before starting a mailing list or write-up series. Just offer useful things and start conversations. But — ideally — still add some personal flair to set yourself apart.

6. Launch something

I feel like the effectiveness of launches is controversial. I've seen contradicting evidence. This one certainly depends on your customer base, product itself, and how much you have riding on it.

Keep this in mind: it's a bit of a popularity contest and they don't need to be a huge, grand affair. Think of a launch just as another "something" you can do:

Build or make something cool, do some hype-building before and marketing the day-of, get some traffic and attention, and then it's over. You'll always have the thing you made, so try to make it something you can keep leveraging for emails, upsells, etc.

7. Skill swap

This is less an audience growth hack and geared more for achieving a "tangible" goal, like taking your app from MVP to polished.

If there is something you need that'd be difficult for you to do on your own, don't be afraid to just ask someone for it. Offer them something valuable in exchange from your skillset.

This has been a bit of a long one, but if you've made it this far thanks for reading!

Check out our DIY Startup School for Solopreneurs for more how-to help.

May link up the studies and examples if anyone is interested. Will need to rummage through the research folder so let me know!