PR ON THE GO July 14, 2023

Global PR & Growth Experts present:

The Ultimate Guide To Growth Hacking Strategies For Entrepreneurs

We asked PR, marketing, and growth experts worldwide for their best growth hacking tips and strategies. The result is this idea guide for growth hacking for indie makers, startups, and creators. Let's go:

12 Growth Hacking Strategy Ideas

1) Increase The Mileage Of Your Content

Paige Arnof-Fenn, Mavens & Moguls

"Content Marketing is the new PR and a great way to build your brand, increase your visibility, raise your profile and attract more clients/customers. Content is only growing in importance and to balance quality and quantity/get more bang from your budget, opportunities to repurpose/refresh/reuse content are everywhere.

An effective hack is to repurpose content by turning a series of articles/blog postings/newsletters into a book/e–books then turning every piece of content/media hit into a tweet and share links to the content on all your social media platforms. Turn articles into infographics and video your talks to share over social media. Once you have a piece you are happy with it makes sense to get as much mileage out of it as possible.

Find creative ways to leverage your thought leadership so that your audience finds you easily. It does not take much time to repackage articles that contain outdated information or update your keywords, the possibilities are endless and pay off quickly with increased traffic and engagement.

It's no longer only about churning out fresh material, refreshing existing content from prior years you not only maximize your previous investment but the traffic drives the rankings too. Research shows that audiences need to be exposed to things many times before they take note so even though you may think your content is already out there chances are no one is sick of reading it yet trust me."

2) Invest In Brand Ambassadors

Emily Reynolds-Bergh, R Public Relations

"One growth hacking tactic that can leverage PR for business development is influencer collaborations. Identify relevant influencers in your industry and create partnerships where they endorse your brand or product. This can involve sponsored content, product reviews, or ambassador programs. Benefits include increased brand exposure, credibility, and access to new customer segments through the influencer's audience!"

3) Double Down On Customer Satisfaction

Dan Troha, Softball Ace

"Doubling down on customer satisfaction is the key to magnifying growth and overcoming the numerous obstacles to business success. I started as an information systems expert and SAP consultant, and two failed businesses later, I now understand that business success lies in the hearts and minds of your customers.

Embracing empathy in your brand appeal strategy by creating exceptional user experiences and forging deep connections leads to unyielding loyalty and long-term success. The discerning entrepreneur should master the thinking patterns of the customers they serve and customize unique products and services that lead to unbreakable bonds with the clientele."

4) Practice Empathy-Driven Marketing Communications

Martha Marchesi, JK Design

"I cannot emphasize enough the importance of demonstrative business empathy in sales and marketing communications—the kind that fosters authentic brand storytelling and sustainable consumer-brand relationships.

Empathy-driven emotional intelligence is a key sales and marketing strategy. It should be upheld as a brand’s North Star from which to craft its story, develop inspired positioning and brand architecture, empower its sales force, create engaging content, collaborate with its creative team, transform the typical e-commerce experience into a story-driven customer journey, measure results and so much more.

Here are a few tactical ways sales and marketing professionals can readily exhibit empathy in brand messaging to create a more deeply engrained bond with the audience. These include:

• Addressing common and specific customer pain points like that related to productivity, financial, processes and support.
• Employing storytelling that highlights relatable customer experiences like that related to cost savings, productivity, efficiencies and customer support.
• Utilizing genuine customer testimonials, stories and case studies that articulate those first-hand brand experiences."

5) Newsjacking

Katherine Fleischman, do-tell

"Newsjacking is a strategic PR growth hacking tactic that leverages trending news or events to generate media coverage and increase brand visibility. Here's how to execute it effectively:

Stay informed: Stay up-to-date with relevant news and trends in your industry or niche. Set up Google Alerts, follow news outlets, and monitor social media platforms to identify timely opportunities. Identify relevant angles: Once you spot a news story or event that aligns with your brand or expertise, brainstorm unique angles that offer valuable insights, opinions, or solutions related to the topic.

Act quickly: Speed is crucial in newsjacking. Develop a compelling press release, blog post, or social media content that ties your brand to the news story. Make sure to provide a fresh perspective or unique value to grab attention.

Reach out to journalists: Contact journalists and influencers who cover the topic and offer your expertise as a source or contributor. Craft a concise and personalized pitch highlighting your unique angle and its relevance to the current news.

Engage on social media: Share your content across social media platforms, utilizing relevant hashtags and tagging relevant parties to maximize visibility. Monitor conversations and engage with users to spark further discussion."

6) Incorporate Gamification

Josh Amishav, Breachsense

"Incorporate gamification elements into your product. By applying game-like features, rewards, and challenges, you can incentivize users to take certain actions. This can include earning points, badges, or levels for completing tasks or achieving milestones. Implementing progress tracking and leaderboards creates competition which naturally increases engagement. Offering exclusive perks or unlockable features motivates users to reach specific goals. Integrating gamification within your product or services creates a more enjoyable user experience which increases usage as well referrals."

7) Join Professional Slack Communities

Anton Levytskyi, antonlevytskyi.com

"The power of networking should never be underestimated. There are online communities that connect thousands of like-minded professionals worldwide.

By joining thematic Slack channels, you gain access to potential content partnerships, guest posting opportunities, link exchange collaborations, social media cross-promotion projects, exchange of industry knowledge and best practices, invitations to online and offline meet-ups, and more. At no cost!

In short, Slack communities serve as fertile ground for valuable collaborations and organic media coverage that can propel your sustainable brand to new heights.

Pro tip:
To find Slack communities that are relevant to your brand, use the “+slack” search operator, e.g. “climate +slack”, “ecommerce +slack”, “sustainability +slack”.
You will be surprised how many opportunities for free content promotion, PR and networking there are!"

8) Start A Referral Program

Alina Gegamova, LETA Capital

"Referral strategies work if the product marketing team knows how to apply them thoroughly. Paypal case can prove it.

PayPal's decision to run a referral program stemmed from the universal question faced by every company: "How do we acquire more clients?" Realizing the high costs of advertising and challenges with potential partnerships, PayPal focused on organic and viral growth, offering monetary incentives of $20 for account sign-ups and referrals (later reduced to $10 and $5). The referral program led to a remarkable daily growth rate of 7-10%, propelling PayPal to reach 100M users. Despite divergent opinions on why they eventually discontinued the program, the network effect and exponential growth established PayPal's value. Building a successful referral program entails having an innovative product that resonates with the digital tech community, offering double-sided rewards, and providing a fitting incentive such as cash for PayPal's online payments focus."

9) Leverage Established Platforms

Bryan Clayton, GreenPal

"One growth hacking strategy that I’ve tested extensively and can highly recommend involves leveraging existing platforms to drive growth. In the early stages of building your business, think about it, you don't have a large customer base to work with.

So, one effective way to tap into a massive audience quickly is to piggyback on an established platform that caters to your target demographic.

Let me explain how we executed this with GreenPal: We effectively utilized Craigslist to acquire our first customers.

We posted about our services on Craigslist, which already had a massive user base looking for lawn care services. Then, we redirected interested customers to our platform. This strategy allowed us to quickly build our customer base and establish our online presence without significant marketing expenditure.

On the other hand, it's essential to make sure the platform aligns well with your product or service."

10) Implement Save-For-Later Functionality

Lee Bellon, Wishfinity

"99.8% of targets don't buy in the moment. They're either too busy, don't have the funds, or won't buy for themselves. Sellers must offer their targets an optional save-for-later call-to-action, allowing buyers to keep track of things they're considering and return once they're ready to buy. Wishfinity provides makers, manufacturers, merchants, creators, startups, and other sellers a free method to provide save-for-later functionality to their targets throughout digital marketing, IRL, and product pages."

11) Start Live Streaming

Steve Pugh, Roadmap MBA

"The biggest growth hack we found for our start up was live streaming. On platforms such as LinkedIn, traditional video always did ok but its organic reach was limited. With livestreaming the hack we found was that when broadcasting it gives a notification to your full contact list each time that you've gone live, instantly hitting 20,000+ people, which is a 100x improvement on how the same content could do organically. Steve Pugh, Founder, RoadmapMBA.com"

12) Simplify Sign-Ups And Logins

Ashu Dubey, StableMind AI

"Entrepreneurs can significantly streamline their growth by simplifying their signup/login flow - a strategy that can yield a near-guaranteed 10-15% boost at the top of the sales funnel. Despite often being overlooked in startups, larger companies consistently leverage this approach with dedicated teams. Simplification can be achieved by implementing social logins, eliminating the distinction between signup and login processes, and incorporating auto-login features."

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