Summary of The Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking

growth-hacking.md

These are the summaries found on each chapter of [http://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking/]

I don't claim any rights to the text, and I'm simply storing them for my own bad memory .

Chapter 1 What is Growth Hacking

[http://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking-chapter-1]

• Marketers are important, but early in a startup you need someone with a narrower focus on growth.
• The nature of internet products has produced a new way to think about growth. Product features can now be directly responsible for growth.
• Distribution channels are being redrawn, and those that understand the movement of people online will have control over where they end up.
• Growth hackers, using their knowledge of product and distribution, find ingenious, technology-based, avenues for growth that sometimes push the bounds of what is expected or advised.
• AirBNB is a great example of a company that embodies growth hacking.
• Growth hacking shows us a trend that will infiltrate more than the marketing department. Growth matters and multiple roles within companies will someday reflect that.
• Growth hacking is primarily found in startups, but it will eventually be found in larger organizations.

Chapter 2 the Profile of a Growth Hacker

[http://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking-chapter-2]

• You don’t have to be a programmer to be a growth hacker.
• Traditional marketers can become growth hackers if they narrow their focus and deepen their skill set.
• Most growth hackers are not unethical.
• Growth hackers rely heavily on analytics.
• Growth hackers are proficient at a number of disciplines, but must excel at some of them in order to do their work effectively.
• Despite their reliance on analytics, growth hackers are also right-brained, as they use creativity, curiosity, and qualitative research at times.
• Growth hackers are obsessive about growth. This allows them to persist until they uncover the tactics that will work, and it

Chapter 3 the Growth Hacking Process

[http://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking-chapter-3]

1. Define actionable goals
2. Implement analytics to track your goals
3. Leverage your existing strengths
4. Execute the experiment
5. Optimize the experiment
6. Repeat

Chapter 4 the Growth Hacker Funnel

[http://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking-chapter-4]

• Funnels help guide things which are hard to control, like liquid or people.
• The growth hacker’s funnel has 3 phases:
  • Get Visitors - finding ways for people to land on your product
  • Activate Members - helping people take predefined actions in your product
  • Retain Users - helping people become habitual users of your product
• It’s hard to know what good conversion rates are for your product, but the following things help:
  • Always be improving relative to yourself
  • Find companies online who have published their conversion rates
  • Find allies that will let you see their numbers (and vice-versa).
  • Conversion rates affect each other within the funnel, so view the funnel as a whole.
• You should place your energy into places where you have weak conversion ratios.
• You need to grow some in order to find product-market fit, but you shouldn’t focus on growth exclusively until you find product-market fit.
• This funnel is a simplified version of Dave McClure’s framework.

Chapter 5 Pull Tactics for Getting Visitors

[http://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking-chapter-5]

• Don’t just focus on traffic. It’s important, but it’s not everything.
• There are three ways to get traffic to your site:
  • Pull - You entice them to come to you.
  • Push - You coerce them to come to you.
  • Product - You use your product itself to bring them to you.
• There are 12 pull tactics that we covered:
  • Blogging or Guest Blogging
  • Podcasting or Guest Podcasting
  • Ebooks, Guides, and Whitepapers
  • Infographics
  • Webinars
  • Conference Presentations
  • SEO
  • Social Media
  • Contests
  • Marketplaces
  • Deal Sites
  • LOPA (Leverage Other People's Audience)

Chapter 6 Push Tactics for Getting Visitors

[http://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking-chapter-6]

• A push tactic usually involves interrupting the content that is being consumed.
• Push tactics usually cost money.
• Since money is involved with push tactics you must understand the lifetime value of your customers (LTV), so that you don’t spend more money on a customer then you’ll make from them.
• We covered 4 push tactics:
  • Purchase Ads
  • Promo Swap
  • Affiliates
  • Direct Sales

Chapter 7 Product Tactics for Getting Visitors

[http://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking-chapter-7]

• Most products don’t go viral
• Product tactics have an amplifying effect on other tactics
• We covered 6 product tactics:
  • Network Invitations
    • Phone Contacts
    • Email Contacts
    • Social Contacts
  • Social Sharing
  • API Integrations
  • Backlinks
  • Incentives
  • Organic
• Getting traffic is a recipe, not a single ingredient
• Getting traffic is a recipe that is always changing
• Don’t just copy the traffic recipes of other startups

Chapter 8 how to Activate Members

[http://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking-chapter-8]

• Getting visitors to your product is not enough. You need to activate them.
• Activation is when someone takes an action that you decided was necessary for the success of your product.
• You should only have one activation goal for any given section of your product.
• Activation goals will vary based on your product.
• We covered 6 activation tactics:
  • Landing Pages
  • Copywriting
  • Calls to Action
  • Onboarding
  • Gamification
  • Pricing Strategies

Chapter 9 how to Retain Users

[http://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking-chapter-9]

• Retention might be the most important aspect of your funnel.
• We covered 8 tactics to retain users:
  • Staged Traffic
  • Speed to Aha
  • Don’t Fear Email
  • Alerts and Notifications
  • Exit Interviews
  • The Red Carpet
  • Increase Value
  • Community Building
  • Make Them Happy

Chapter 10 Tools and Terminology

[http://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking-chapter-10/]

• Growth hacking is a process, not just a set of tools, tactics and terminology.
• 7 terms were defined
• We covered 6 product tactics:
  • Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
  • Viral Coefficient (K)
  • Cohorts
  • Segments
  • Multivariate Testing
  • Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
  • Lifetime Value of Customer (LTV)
• 4 Kinds of tools were covered:
  • General Analytics
  • Event/People Based Analytics
  • Niche Analytics
  • Custom Analytics