Introduction
Coined in 2010 by Sean Ellis after his successes with startups such as Dropbox, growth hacking has become essential for increasing the market presence of a product or a company. So what is growth hacking? It’s a set of marketing methods that favor fast, low-cost experimentation with new ideas across a variety of channels, such as social networks and mobile apps, with the aim of optimizing customer acquisition, activation, retention and monetization. This is what we call the AARRR model.
Far more than a simple marketing tactic, growth requires the integration of data and user feedback to improve the product itself. It calls for close collaboration between developers, designers, engineers and marketers, all united by the common goal of rapid product growth. Growth hacking is a cross-functional discipline that optimizes low-value tasks and integrates digital tools to maximize ROI and avoid human error.
This guide will immerse you in the most forward-thinking tactics of the moment, taking into account today’s ethical and practical challenges, and will conclude with practical tips for excelling as a growth hacker in today’s digital ecosystem.
Exploring growth hacking today
The discipline is booming, drawing on cutting-edge technologies and integrating with innovative digital platforms. Growth hackers need to stay agile to seize new opportunities in a landscape that changes fast. Let’s highlight the key current trends of the job.
One thing that is essential to understand in order to grasp the activity is that it is a constantly evolving subject, BUT you have to settle on a tool stack and then enrich it. Often, and all the more so with the advent of AI, specialists bet on new tools that promise great things with ChatGPT, but you should never abandon everything for another stack. The goal is to iterate and grow your toolbox, not to change everything.
Adapting to new technologies and platforms
You need to stay one step ahead, adapting to the latest technological tools to reach and retain users. Virtual reality, augmented reality, chatbots, voice assistants and connected objects pave the way for more captivating, personalized and interactive user experiences, improving engagement and satisfaction. In addition, a presence on rising platforms such as TikTok, Clubhouse and Discord is essential for creating attractive, viral content, nurturing a close relationship with communities and encouraging word of mouth.
But as I said in the introduction, there are fundamentals. For example, before creating a TikTok account, make sure you’re already established on LinkedIn. By definition, the growth hacker has to anticipate and be first on the next acquisition trends. Yet if you keep the customer acquisition curve in mind, most of your customers will be on “traditional” channels like LinkedIn. It’s a channel that every growth specialist must master and innovate on.
Integrating artificial intelligence into growth hacking strategies
Artificial intelligence (AI) is proving to be a major asset, automating and refining growth tactics. AI makes it possible to create targeted ads, segment audiences precisely, deliver tailored recommendations and predict behavior. It also provides valuable help in analyzing customer sentiment and generating quality content, from blog posts to podcasts. In short, AI is a source of creative inspiration, drawing on data analysis to innovate.
For example, at MirrorProfiles, we use it actively every day, in particular to produce content and message ideas faster, which we then rework by hand.
Our view on growth hacking
We’ve been working in this field for more than 7 years now, and over the last 2 years or so it has been diluted into several jobs. In other words, salespeople have become business developers who master automation tools such as Waalaxy, Lemlist, Hey Reach or La Growth Machine. Marketers have automated their sequences and reporting via more advanced CRMs such as HubSpot or Salesforce. New roles have also appeared, such as SalesOps, whose job is to maximize ROI and support business developers; they are big users of MirrorProfiles, for example. It lets them equip their teams with dedicated accounts rather than prospecting from employees’ personal LinkedIn accounts.
In conclusion, growth hacking is, in our view, increasingly standardized and leaves less room for real hacks. The growth hacker is becoming more professional, and the job is increasingly based on data analysis to improve performance.
The growing role of advanced data analysis
Data analysis is essential for evaluating the performance of growth initiatives and for testing new ideas while optimizing costs. We need to master the collection, processing and interpretation of data from a variety of sources to identify effective growth indicators and spot problems as well as opportunities. We also need to use advanced analysis techniques such as machine learning, deep learning, big data and data mining to reveal trends and correlations, shedding light on strategic decision-making.
The most innovative growth hacking strategies
Growth hacking continues to evolve, offering experts in the field new ways to stay ahead of the competition and generate value for their customers. Let’s look at the methods that are making waves right now.
Automation and personalization at scale
Combining automation with in-depth personalization is essential to significantly improve user experience and retention. Innovative tools now make it possible to personalize interactions on a massive scale, without losing the human touch that makes all the difference. Take solutions like Plerdy, which customize pop-ups, forms and notifications according to user behavior, or Udemy, which offers online courses tailored to the specific needs of each learner to boost engagement. Or MirrorProfiles, which lets you rent one dedicated LinkedIn account per target: you specialize an account on a single one of your targets, which lets you grow its network solely on that target and, above all, address dedicated content to it.
In short, hyper-personalization is the big trend of the moment in growth.
Viral growth: the new acquisition levers
Viral expansion relies on a product’s ability to be promoted by users themselves. Identify new acquisition channels to trigger this snowball effect. For example, platforms like TikTok, Clubhouse or Discord can be springboards for viral content and the creation of a strong community. The newsjacking technique, which consists in using current events to highlight your offer, is also an effective way of capturing the public’s interest. For example, as I write this article, the show “Qui veut devenir mon associé ?” (the French version of Shark Tank) is airing on French television. Many companies are therefore staging themselves on LinkedIn to announce their presence OR announce their absence. These are generally extremely interesting posts because they sit between hot and cold content. They are often humorous, so they attract a lot of reactions and comments, and at the same time they talk directly about the product.
What’s more, the rise of B2B influencers on LinkedIn is no longer a surprise. It’s increasingly common to see posts sponsored on LinkedIn by well-known figures. Influence used to be reserved largely for B2C; there is no doubt in my mind that a B2B market now exists on this subject.
Cross-domain collaborations as a growth engine
Building partnerships with players from different sectors can catalyze the growth of your company. Whether with influencers, specialists or organizations sharing similar values or audiences, these alliances can prove highly beneficial. Platforms such as GrowthRocks can also make it easier to find and set up fruitful collaborations with other growth hackers across different fields. But above all, the market trend in growth tools is “all in one”. In other words, end customers no longer want a technical stack of twenty or so tools; they prefer to centralize management in tools that offer several features. For example, MirrorProfiles is natively integrated with Hey Reach. Together, these two tools let customers cover most of what growth can offer when it comes to LinkedIn prospecting.
The ethical and practical challenges of growth hacking in the age of the informed consumer
As a rapid growth strategy, growth hacking raises important ethical and practical issues. Growth hackers need to tread carefully to preserve their reputation and effectiveness in the face of increasingly complex challenges.
Privacy protection and regulations
The collection and use of personal data are at the heart of growth hacking. This approach inevitably raises questions about privacy and compliance with regulations such as the GDPR and the CCPA. You need to ensure data security, respect users’ rights and comply with data protection laws. It is essential to be transparent about how data is used and to obtain clear consent from consumers. In the event of a data leak, a rapid response and open communication with the affected parties are imperative.
For example, high-volume email prospecting techniques required huge databases to run. And because of their size, the ways of obtaining these databases were sometimes not very ethical. Today, almost all automation tools advocate quality over quantity. However, if we remove volume from emailing, we remove a large part of its effectiveness. On average, the response rate to a cold email campaign is 3%, whereas on LinkedIn it is 25%. I’ll let you do the math, but it is both more ethical and more profitable to go through LinkedIn. More ethical because, to send a message on LinkedIn, you first have to send a connection request; if the person accepts, that is when you can send them messages.
Balancing rapid growth and sustainable development
While growth hacking seeks to generate accelerated development, this ambition can sometimes contradict the principles of sustainable development. Indeed, the strategies adopted may generate peaks of activity that are not sustainable. It’s easy for an expert to contact tens of thousands of people in a week, but keeping up that pace over a year is either extremely costly or ineffective. It is more worthwhile to build quality databases in order to contact thousands of people per week. This pace is more sustainable and, above all, adapts to the company’s production capacity. A company must learn from the mistakes it makes with previous customers; the aim is constant improvement for the end customer.
For example, at MirrorProfiles, we chose to take our time before really accelerating, in order to spot all the gaps we might have.
Conclusion
Growth hacking is the art of boosting the development of a product or company through innovative marketing tactics. With the relentless evolution of technologies and online platforms, growth hacking opens the door to new possibilities. However, it also comes with ethical considerations and practical challenges that should not be underestimated. To excel in this field, creativity, innovation, agility, analytical skills, teamwork, transparency and responsibility are essential qualities. When it comes to LinkedIn, growth can rely on MirrorProfiles dedicated accounts to secure volume (proportional to the number of accounts), compensate for the declining effectiveness of emailing, specialize prospecting by target and, from an ethical standpoint, avoid using employees’ personal LinkedIn accounts.
FAQ
What are the 3 pillars of growth hacking?
The three essential foundations are:
- Acquiring new users: this is done by selecting and testing web channels precisely suited to your target audience.
- Customer retention: keeping existing users through continuous improvement of the user experience, building loyalty and strengthening their engagement.
- Increasing usage frequency: encouraging users to reuse the product or service frequently, by offering them additional value and reinforcing their loyalty.
How does growth hacking work?
It is a set of marketing strategies focused on accelerating a company’s growth in an innovative and cost-effective way. This approach relies on meticulous data analysis, the implementation of rapid experiments and the ability to identify and exploit growth opportunities.
Why become a growth hacker?
Becoming a growth hacker offers the opportunity to develop both your technical and creative skills. This role is crucial for catalyzing a company’s rapid growth by deploying original marketing strategies with viral potential. However, to have a significant impact on an organization’s performance, solid training and in-depth experience are required.
Who invented growth hacking?
Sean Ellis, an American entrepreneur and investor, also founder of the GrowthHackers community, created the concept in 2010. This method aims to boost the growth of a company, particularly a startup, through innovative marketing strategies based on data analysis.
