How to Grow My Small Business with Growth Hacking Techniques

As a small business, a question that’s often on your mind, is ‘How to Grow My Small Business with Growth Hacking Techniques?'

What is growth hacking definition?

What are some growth hacks to use in your business?

Is the Growth Hacker Marketing book by Ryan Holiday the right book to learn how to grow your business fast?

Are the strategies clear and easy to implement?

Are there other growth hacker books that you should read instead?

Above all – is it worth the time investment to read Ryan Holiday’s Growth Hacker Marketing to learn how to grow your small business fast?

Those questions and more answered in this summary of Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday.

Further Reading

Please read my summary of Ryan Holiday's other bestselling book, The Obstacle is the Way!

]I’ll also talk briefly about Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, and Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth. And you’ll learn why later!

Definition of Growth Hacker

Growth Hackers are a hybrid of a marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of

“How do I get customers for my product?”

Without customers to buy your products or services, you do not have a business. Old marketing strategies no longer generate results, so as a small business owner, you have to find new strategies to use. And that’s where growth hacker marketing comes in. A growth hacker sees marketing as something someone builds into the product. According to Aaron Ginn,

“The ultimate goal of a growth hacker is to build-a self-perpetuating marketing machine that reaches millions by itself.”

A growth hacker takes something from nothing and turns it into something enormous within an incredibly short window of time. Growth hackers focus on who your customers are and where they are.

“The ultimate goal of a growth hacker is to build-a self-perpetuating marketing machine that reaches millions by itself.” Aaron Ginn0

Now that you understand what growth hacking is, write down some hacks that you can apply to your small business. Where do your customers hangout? What websites do they visit? Which publications do the read? These questions are not exhaustive. They are meant to get your creative juices flowing.

There are four steps to the growth hacker marketing process. This is important to you, if you want to want to answer how to grow my small business with growth hacking techniques.

How to Grow My Small Business with Growth Hacking Techniques: 4 Step Process

Step 1: It Begins with Product Market Fit

 Zero to One

As a small business owner, when you design products, services, and business models, keep in mind that you want them to generate explosive reactions from the early adopters. The people who see and use them first.

Your products/services must fill a compelling need for a real and defined group of people. And you may know by now, that when I read, I never read in a vacuum. I connect what I am reading to what I already know.

In Zero to One by Peter Thiel, he recommends that what you offer has to be at least 10 times better than what’s already out there. So I would add that the product you design should be 10 times better than what consumers have access to.

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Have you read?

Zero to One by Peter Thiel, Book Review

A question that’s worth asking at this point is, how can I move from an Impractical Idea -> Explosive and Practical Idea? This is worth thinking about if your product or services is not where it needs to be, to be 10 times better than what’s on the market.

Product Market Fit

To achieve Product Market Fit, your product/service has to be in perfect sync with your customers. Early adopters will give you critical feedback if your product excites them. They will tell you what’s missing, what you can get rid of, and much more. You can use that feedback to improve the product. Question every assumption you’ve made about your product/service – who it’s for, and why they would use it. Think about how your product or service can solve a problem in an exciting way. Once you have Product Market Fit, it’s time to go after the customers to bring them in.

Step 2: Funding Your Growth Hack

When you use growth hacking techniques, you test your product until it's worth marketing. And your job is to pull customers in. How can you do that though? Create a strategic opening or launch that catches the attention of a few key people, who are your core audience. And make sure that there are other related activities surrounding the launch. This is what's needed for a successful event strategy. One that grabs attention to your new product.

Right now, take a few minutes to think about some novel ways you can use to pull prospects in. How do you attract users to your products?

Growth Hacks to Use to Fund Your Small Business

To fund your growth hack, one key way is to leverage other people’s community. Reach out to websites and publications that have the same types of customers that you are targeting. Tell them about your product/service. Other low cost ways to fund your growth hack are through a Kickstarter campaign; uploading an article to sites such as Hacker News, Medium, Reddit and Quora; posting on Help a Reporter Out to get a reporter to profile you.

And early adopters will spread the word about your products, if they really like it. These growth hacking strategies are clear and simple to use, but requires an investment of your time, especially to write the articles. The articles you upload cannot be self-serving, they have to offer clear benefits to prospective customers. Remember, we said that your product or service has to be at least 10 times better than what’s out there.

Step 3: Turn 1 into 2 and 2 into 4 – Going Viral

 Contagious: Why Things Catch On

How easy is it for customers to spread the word about your product? You have to do something remarkable. That’s a way for your product to go viral. And you have to create a powerful incentive for people to share your product. In the book, Contagious by Jonah Berger, he talks about the principles of contagiousness – the steps to take to go viral.

6 Principles of Contagiousness: STEPPS

1. Social Currency: How do people look or come across when they talk about a product or idea? Craft the message, so they look cool, smart and so on, to get the desired impression. People want to feel like an insider.
2. Triggers: How do we remind people to talk about the products and ideas? What triggers will make people talk about your ideas and products? How can we create products that link to the environment, so they are at the tip of people’s tongue?
3. Emotion: How can you create products that push emotional buttons? Emotional things get shared, so have to figure out the right emotions.
4. Public: To share something that goes viral, people have to be able to access it. Make products and ideas more public.
5. Practical Value: How can we craft useful content? Create product and content that solve people’s problems, people will spread the word. Find ways to highlight the incredible value you offer. Package knowledge and expertise so people can pass it on.
6. Stories: What broader narrative can we wrap our idea in? Great analogy is the story of the Trojan horse. Build a Trojan horse with your ideas as stories inside – stories that people want to retell.

Now that you understand the concept of growth hacking a bit more, as well as the principles of contagiousness, how can you engineer virality?

Have you read?

How to Write Viral Content: A Look at Contagious by Jonah Berger

Step 4: Close the Loop: Retention and Optimization

Growth Hacking is about maximizing return on investment. Operating a small business successfully means that you are always tweaking and improving your product/service. To scale your business and retain your customers, you have to be in touch with them. You have to know what’s really on their minds about your product.

And you have to make it easy for them to tell you what they think. Have a mechanism in place to get feedback from your power users. Teach customers how to use the product and service to get the best results. Motivate them past any hurdles they may encounter.

Have a growth hacker marketing mindset to market your small business. Anything that grows your small business is marketing. Anything that gets customers is marketing. And growth hacking allows you to experiment to find out what works and what doesn’t.

How to Grow My Small Business with Growth Hacking Techniques: Big Lessons

1. Cheaply test concepts, then improve the product before official launch.
2. Reduce barriers to entry.
3. Aim for WOW Factor.
4. Build your email list.

Other Growth Hacker Books

I firmly believe, that if you want to master a topic by reading books. You cannot read one book. You need different perspectives. I recommend that you read about five books on the topic, so you can compare and contrast, using the ideas and strategies that are most relevant to your business.

Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday is an excellent book. But keeping in mind, with my philosophy, I think you should read other books as well. Before the year is out, I plan to also read Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, and Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth.

On the website Growth Hackers, they recommend the following five books:

1. Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday
2. Viral Loop by Adam Penenberg
3. Contagious by Jonah Berger
4. Lean Startup Marketing by Sean Ellis (This book is not available for purchase!)
5. Growth Hacking by Jose Casanova

I have read Contagious, though I haven’t written a review yet.  This post is based on my detailed notes on Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday. I haven’t read the other three books on the list. I own two books that are not on the list, and I plan to read them. Both of the books were highly recommended by credible sources. Pick which five books you plan to read, then read them.

How to Grow My Small Business with Growth Hacking Techniques – My Thoughts

When I write about a book, I try to include my knowledge and wisdom on the topic. I hopefully added value for you. You will find information in this post that’s not in Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday, and that’s a great benefit for you. When I started the post, I asked a few questions that you may have:

1. What is growth hacking definition?
2. What are some growth hacks to use in your business?
3. Is the Growth Hacker Marketing book by Ryan Holiday the right book to learn how to grow your business fast?
4. Are the strategies clear and easy to implement?
5. Are there other growth hacker books that you should read instead?

I have answered all the questions, and I hope I have done so to your satisfaction. I have also given you some additional information, to make this post more valuable.

UPDATE: First published in 2016

 Growth Hacker Marketing Contagious: Why Things Catch On Zero to One Viral Loop Growth Hacking  Traction Traction

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