Business Basecamp
21: Ramli John – Growth Hacking to Grow Your Business.
Today’s episode is about how to look at Growth Hacking. Ramli John, a successful growth hacker and Lean Start-up specialist shares the basics of Growth Hacking.
Some Example Growth Hacks:
- AirBnB: How did they grow to a Billion dollar company? One of their growth hacks was tapping in to Craigslist. AirBnB realized that their customers were looking for places on Craigslist and people on Craigslist were listing their places. They created a program that would automatically post their listings on Craigslist. This allowed them to piggy back traffic. This was so successful that when Craigslist figured this out they had to shut it down.
Lesson: Look for places that your customers are spending lots of time, and see how you can leverage this.
- Drop Box: How did they get users to grow referrals? Drop Box gave an incentive of an extra 500MB of storage for every friend they referred to Drop Box. Rather than paying monetary incentive for referrals or getting users to pay, Drop Box saw the value of turning existing customers in to a referral engine.
How to get started with Growth Hacking?
1. Start measuring ‘stuff’.
By measuring data you will see how customers are interacting with your platform or business. But you already knew this. Even in ‘old-school’ businesses you’re already talking to clients, start paying attention to how they use your service.
2. Ask yourself why people are doing what they are doing?
Why are they doing something and equally why they are not doing something. See if you can find quick experiments to test your hypothesis.
3. Ask the question “How can I get my customers to do _________”
Good questions lead to good answers. Case and point.
4. Become the scientist.
Run a simple test to see if your hypothesis is correct. Ramli mentions that when Edison was inventing the battery after 8000 ‘failed’ attempts he was asked “Why do you continue?”. Edison’s answer was “I now know 8000 ways that don’t work, bring me closer to finding a way that does.”
The lesson: Focus on the growth hacking journey, not on the result. The journey will provide you with the result.
5. Talk to engaged users and obsess about what makes them tick.
Your most engaged users will provide you with the most insight. Focus on them. Understand who they are and why they are so motivated. After all, if you have a small group of dedicated die-hard fans, they will become your tribe that will bring on all their friends. Seth Godin mentions that you only need 1000 of these diehards to cause massive change in the world. Who are your die hard fans?
Book recommendations:
Don’t make me think written by Steve Krug
Suggested interview on Air BnB story