For any business owner, growth is a priority of the highest order, and this rings especially true for small businesses. It can appear challenging in terms of the budget or even the time-bandwidth in a lot of cases.

As a founder, you will be required to take the necessary measures to scale up, and this is where growth hacking steps in to boost sales. It means experimenting with different marketing and development techniques to figure out what works for your particular product or service—hacking as a term signals towards a shortcut or a quick way to achieve fast and efficient results. Increasing the customer base while maintaining minimal costs is the key, but the question is how.

In this guide, we plan to educate our readers on how to ‘hack’ growth hacking so that they can build enough momentum for their businesses and enable them to stand the test of time. In case some competitor comes up with a similar idea, these tips and tricks can provide you with the correct weaponry to solidify your feet in the ground and believe in your product.

Always Have a Strategic Plan in Place

Without sounding overly simplistic, we cannot emphasize more on the importance of having a well-charted growth plan in place. Knowing the targets is not enough if the pathway to achieving those numbers is blurry. Have a growth plan. Have a map to success in place, but note that merely having a map is not enough. The plan should be viable, sustainable, and transparent to other stakeholders. Dreams need an action plan, and it is only then that they have any chance of coming true.

Market your Content for The Win

According to Hubspot report, 70% of marketing divisions of companies investing in content marketing in 2020, it is safe to say that content marketing costs less as compared to other marketing methods and can reap great results. As a matter of fact, in 2019, 51% of companies claim that updating their old content proved to be the most effective tactic to achieve growth. Blogs are an engaging way to communicate directly with the audience and position your business positively in their minds. It is also a great way to build trust and accountability. From a technical perspective, blogs can help increase web traffic, improve SEO ranking, and grow the customer base.

Retarget Using Social Media

Retargeting is one of the best ideas you can employ to reap the great benefits of growth hacking. The journey from a customer’s online shopping cart to them purchasing the items can be long enough. And this where retargeting comes into the picture. It happens that marketers use platforms such as Google and Facebook to subtly remind customers of the items they could be interested in purchasing. Social sharing and social media has proved to be an excellent technique in bagging that sale. When the customer sees the targeted ad on some other website they are visiting, they are likely to return to their shopping cart and checking out.

Automate Away

Automation is a vital step in ensuring that your business is productive. It implies that you can leverage software capabilities to perform time-consuming and taxing tasks in an automated manner. For this, you need to assess your needs and ascertain which software would be the most beneficial for your business. CRM or Customer Relationship Manager and Marketing Automation are the two most popular automation must-haves for small businesses.

CRM is an excellent tool in project management as it allows teams to work in tandem while giving a comprehensive view of all the contacts in the company database. Marketing automation software automates tasks such as increasing brand awareness and attracting fresh leads. They also offer email marketing, lead generation web forms, landing page builders, etc. Many CRMS these days also offer all in one functionality by combining sales, marketing, and other business processes on the very same platform.

Garner Feedback

You can opt for asking your customers about what is working for them and might not be. Companies that are receptive to feedback believe that they have room for improvement, and improving the user experience or customer service is a great way to boost sales. Better customer service is possible with useful pop-ups or sending emails to clients based on their recent purchases.

Look for Industry Influencers

Influencers are social media celebrities with a huge fan following various platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Youtube, Tiktok, Pinterest, etc. Small businesses can leverage their popularity by forming personal relations to promote products on their social media accounts. Establishing a relationship increases brand exposure on an exponential level. You can even host webinars with them and place your product strategically.

We hope that the tips that we have enlisted above help you in growing your business. These are techniques that are proven to be effective in enlarging your user base. Driving demand upwards should not be the only priority; however, providing your customers with a seamless customer experience is extremely important.

About the author:

Hardik Oza is an SEO practitioner with more than 9 years of experience. He helps companies to grow their businesses. He shares his thoughts on additional publications like SEMrush, Search Engine People, Social Media Today, and few more. Follow him on Twitter.