We may be well into 2019, but that doesn’t mean there is no room for improvement when it comes to your various digital marketing strategies. While you’ve probably got at least some type of plan when it comes to your ads, social media, blogs, and more, are you really making the most of these efforts?
Growth hacking isn’t a new term, but it’s one that we find a lot of people aren’t quite sure what to do with. What is it exactly, and how do you use it? Is it something reserved for big brands, or smaller businesses? Is it legal? I mean after all, it has ‘hacking’ right there in the name! Rest easy, growth hacking is totally legal, and can seriously benefit brands of all sizes.
If you want to get serious about growth hacking, here are 5 great growth hacks to dominate 2019 with.
Defining Growth Hacking
Before we get to the actual growth hacks, we figured it was best to start with a definition. So, what exactly is growth hacking? Great question. The term was coined back in 2010 by GrowthHackers CEO Sean Ellis, and as he puts it, “A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth.”
Essentially, growth hacking is all about growing a business quickly and efficiently. Or, as the team over at OptinMonster puts it:
“Growth hacking achieves results FAST, with minimal expenditure. The “hacking” part is about finding clever shortcuts that bring big results.”
While growth hacking is something that any brand can do, because of its nature, it is seriously appealing to smaller businesses who do not have large budgets to spend, but want to achieve serious growth.
So, what are some efficient ways to grow your business without spending a lot of money? What are these excellent growth hacks to dominate 2019? Let’s dive in.
This is one of the best starting points when it comes to growth hacking. Slow site speed can seriously derail any other growth hacking (or just general marketing) efforts you’ve got in place. You’ve only got seconds to play with, and each additional second results in a serious loss of users, and therefore, potential revenue.
In fact, the study from Pingdom, as seen above, says that an increase in site speed from 3 seconds to 7 seconds can result in losing 40% of your visitors. Pretty much, once you get over 3 seconds, things go downhill pretty fast. Pageviews majorly decrease, and bounce rates skyrocket.
Thankfully, your page load speed is something you can easily find and manage. If you see that your page takes over 3 seconds to load, you need to prioritize decreasing that value. While you may need to consider improving your host, you can also do things on-site like making sure your image sizes aren’t too large, removing unnecessary code, reducing redirects, and more. Here’s a pretty great checklist to refer to.
Always stay on top of your site speed and regularly check in to make sure things are loading fast. This is one of the simplest, most effective tactics, and one that every website can benefit from. There’s nothing worse than losing a potential customer because your site loads too slow. There are far too many other factors out there you don’t have control over, but this one you do!
2. Be Smart with Video Marketing
It’s 2019, and you need to invest in video marketing. 83% of you agree that video is becoming more important, and 53% of customers engage with a brand after watching a video on social media.
Outside of knowing that you need to incorporate video marketing in your digital marketing mix, there are some great growth hacks that will help you get the most out of your video marketing efforts. After all, putting together quality video is no easy feat. You want to make sure you get the most out of your videos that you can!
We upload our videos directly to Facebook and YouTube to maximize their impact.
One of our best tips is to share your video natively across social media platforms. That means you should upload your video directly to places like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Each social platform prioritizes video that is uploaded directly, instead of those that are shared from YouTube or other places.
Another video related growth hack? Spend less time on sound and more time on subtitles. If you’ve ever edited any video before, you know how difficult it can be to get the sound just right. The reality is though, today’s user tends to watch videos on mute. 85% of people on Facebook watch video without sound! Why are you wasting time and money on something that people aren’t listening to?
Thanks to smartphones, people are watching videos in public more than ever: at work, at school, on the subway, etc. For that reason, many choose to watch on mute so as to not be a distraction. Subtitles become crucial to understanding the video content, so make sure those are correct, and stress less on your audio. This will save you time and money and result in more video views.
Pro Tip: Struggling to produce quality video content? Check out this list on website traffic tools which features our top pick for video editing software that will help you create stunning videos.
3. Reward Social Shares
It may be tempting to purchase a bunch of social media followers, but don’t do it. It’s a quick way to build up your numbers, but long term, you aren’t doing yourself any favors. Instead, we recommend rewarding your customers for being active on social as a way to quickly build up a legit following.
As you can see in the above Instagram post, skincare brand MyChelle Dermaceuticals has really nailed this concept by creating their exclusive ‘Clean Beauty Club’ that rewards users for performing various activities on social.
Best of all, incentivizing your audience to be active on social benefits both you and your audience. For them, they appreciate getting rewards, and for you, you increase your social media presence and exposure and can generate some powerful social proof. It’s a win win situation.
Why pay for marketing when you can have your audience promote you for free (or almost free- make sure you follow through on whatever rewards you offer!) That’s not to say that paid marketing is bad, but if you’ve got a limited budget, cultivating user generated content is a great way to build your following without spending a fortune.
4. Partner with the Right Influencers
Image credit(s): YouTube. The brand FabFitFun relies heavily on influencer marketing, especially in the form of ‘unboxing’ videos that are shared on YouTube and other social platforms.
If you think that you have to spend a lot of money to get involved with influencer marketing, you would be wrong. While you can partner with major celebrities, they aren’t your only option when it comes to influencer marketing. The above image shows some of the more popular influencer videos for FabFitFun. Notice none of them are celebrities!
In fact, many companies find that working with smaller influencers actually results in better results. Not only can you get better results, because the influencers are smaller, you can partner with them for way less money. When it comes to finding the right influencer it isn’t just about their audience, it is also about their following size!
Partnering with a few smaller influencers is a great way to quickly get your product or brand in front of a much larger audience. It is a great way to build exposure quickly by tapping into these influencer’s audiences. To further the impact of their posts, include their own discount code that they can share with their followers. This helps to encourage their audience to actually make a purchase and can give you a good way to track how effective the partnership really is.
There’s no denying the power that social media has today, but with changing algorithms and increasing competition, it can feel like you have to spend a fortune to produce real results. That doesn’t have to be the case! The right influencers can help you build a following (and increase sales) for a much more reasonable price.
5. Retarget via Web Push Notification
Finally, you can’t deny the power of a great web push notification! Web push allows you to quickly and easily capture each user that lands at your website. With the click or tap of one button they become a subscriber that you can target with smart, personalized campaigns.
In particular, retargeting subscribers that abandon their shopping carts is one of the best growth hacks to quickly increase revenue. We recommend retargeting them and including a coupon code (like the example above) to really optimize you campaign. The current average abandoned cart rate is still around 70%, but by retargeting those users, you can reclaim a lot of sales.
Best of all, this campaign (along with others) can easily be automated, making it a quick and easy way to engage your audience, boost traffic, and increase revenue. If that’s not a hack, we don’t know what is. Web push also represents an easier, quicker, and cheaper way to target users both on desktop and mobile devices. Don’t take the time or spend the money to build your own mobile app, retarget your users with web push!
Wrapping Up
Participating in growth hacking simply means you are focused on growing your business quickly and efficiently. From improving your site speed, to retargeting users, making the most of your video content, smartly expanding your social media, and working with influencers, these are the best growth hacks to dominate 2019. It is possible to experience serious growth without having to spend thousands on advertising or software!
Growth hacking isn’t about working harder, it’s about working smarter and optimizing your marketing strategies to produce the best results. These small changes, or hacks, can add up to serious growth for your business. Who doesn’t want that?
What is your favorite growth hacking tactic? Is it something we didn’t mention? Let us know by sending us a message!
Looking to get started with web push notifications? Get started for free with Aimtell, or learn more about web push by reading our Beginner’s Guide.
Tags:
abandoned carts, automation, digital marketing, ecommerce, growth hacking, growth hacks, growth hacks to dominate 2019*, retargeting, web push notifications.
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