What are the best tools to get you started growth hacking
You’ve already heard about growth hacking and how it can help your startup go from zero to profitable in less time than you might think. However, while reading about success stories and understanding the mechanics of growth hacking is vital, that kind of knowledge can only get you part of the way there.
If you’re interested in hacking your way to growth, then you need to utilize the right tools and the proper mindset to get to where you want to be. Fortunately, because we live in a digital age, there are a plethora of tools available.
Today we’re going to be looking at the top growth hacking tools, as well as discussing how they work and how to make sure that you’re utilizing them effectively.
Growth hacking tool checklist
When researching and testing tools for growth hacking consider the following:
- Does this tool directly help me solve my growth problem?
- Are special expertise needed to use this tool I don’t have?
- Is this tool cost effective?
- When I scale is this tool still cost effective?
- Does this tool have integrations that connect with other tools?
- Can I start using this tool right now?
- Can I get basic results within 7 days?
These seven checkpoints allow you to evaluate any given tool within 5 minutes. The purpose isn’t a thorough review, as you will need to shift through several tools but rather for short-listing purposes. This checklist is best done within teams where multiple views can be taken into account. Ideally teams with cross-functional capabilities will give the best outcomes. If you don’t have a team like that find some friends or other experts who you can barter time and expertise with.
WHAT IS A GROWTH HACKING TOOL?
Although we could say that a growth hacking tool is something that helps you achieve growth, that’s putting it far too broadly to make any sense. Instead, let’s break down the elements of these tools that can help ensure that you’ll achieve growth.
- Fast and Efficient – if your tools are working too slowly or not providing enough of a platform for growing your startup, then how can you succeed?
- Scalable – as your business grows, your tools need to keep up the pace. If they can’t scale up to meet your demands, then they’re not worth your time.
- Cost-Effective – although some of the tools we’ll show you do cost money, they won’t break the bank. The best growth hacking tactics use lean methods that don’t require much capital.
- Single Focus – since all you’re trying to achieve is growth; you need tools that don’t bog you down with a lot of extra features. You may have to use multiple tools to get to where you want to be, but each one should be ideally suited for a particular part of your overall strategy.
Simply put, a growth hacking tool is an app or a program that helps you stay focused on growing your business. Some of them will be suitable for finding new users, while others will provide valuable insight and analytics that can help you optimize your web pages. No matter what, though, they will become integral to your growth hacking strategy. If one tool isn’t working for you, don’t hesitate to drop it and find a replacement (if necessary).
ONE TOOL TO RULE THEM ALL?
As we’ll see, most of these programs are designed for a particular task. Because of that, you will have to combine different tools to get the results you need. That being said, you will first want to outline an overall strategy so that you can figure out which tools are going to provide more benefits than others.
For example, if you’re looking to boost your subscriber list more than anything else, you need tools that can help you find new leads and get them to sign up quickly and easily. For that, you may need an exploratory app that helps refine your searches, as well as an app that enables you to create effective CTAs that will grab users and encourage them to sign up.
That being said, other tools that aren’t directly focused on that objective (getting more subscribers) can still help if you know how to use them. A social media promotion app can help find new leads and direct them to your funnel. An analytical tool could tell you what parts of your landing page are least effective so that you can eliminate them and boost your conversion rate.
Overall, by combining each tool with a single goal in mind, you can figure out which ones will add value to your strategy and which will detract from your objective.
TOP GROWTH HACKING TOOLS
Social Media
For the most part, you shouldn’t be looking to grow vanity metrics, such as likes, shares and follows. While these numbers can be useful to see how your audience is engaging with your brand, they usually don’t translate well into cold, hard sales.
That being said, you can still use social media tools for growth hacking. As we mentioned in our example above, you can use them to find and cultivate new leads based on your follower list. Typically speaking, you want to use these tools as a stepping stone toward something more tangible, like subscribers or paying customers.
This tool is useful when first launching a product or service, as it allows new users to “pay” for the privilege of using the product by tweeting about it. Essentially, this is an excellent way to get influencers to start talking about your brand on social media, and it can propel your online presence.
With that in mind, this is a limited-time tool. It’s great for boosting your brand at first, but you need to start charging more than just a tweet to use your product eventually.
The other great thing about this kind of tool is that it can show you how well your product spreads across the internet. If more and more people are paying with a tweet, then you know you have something viable. If it doesn’t go anywhere, then it may be time to go back to the drawing board. After all, if people aren’t interested in “paying” with exposure, how can you expect them to pay real money?
This tool is everywhere online, and it can help you figure out what content is gaining the most traction. Simply put, this program allows you to embed a link where users can click to tweet about it instantly. You can customize it to include links or snippets of text, making it even more useful.
Overall, when it comes to growth hacking, this is more of a generic marketing tool, but it can help boost your brand online and show what’s engaging with your users the most. If no one clicks to tweet about anything, then you know that they’re not excited about it.
One drawback of any social media plan is that you have to be consistent. Unfortunately, you don’t always have time to send out posts and updates via social channels, which is where this tool comes in handy.
You can integrate CoSchedule into your WordPress site (although it’s not exclusive to WordPress), and it will post your social media for you. Using automated tools is always a great idea when growth hacking and this system will free you to focus on other parts of your overall strategy.
Analytics
Part of growth hacking is cutting out anything that isn’t working and focusing all of your attention on what is. However, unless you have the right analytical tools at your fingertips, how can you know what’s gaining the most traction? Here are some killer programs that can make analysis so much easier and more efficient.
If you want to know almost anything about what people are doing on your site and landing pages, Google Analytics can tell you. It provides insight on visits, click rates, and more, making it an ideal tool for both standard marketers and growth hackers.
The only downside is that it doesn’t collect data with any particular goal in mind. While you can tailor the reports to fit your needs, you will need to have a much better idea of what to do with the information so that it can make a difference in your growth strategy.
Whereas Google provides a lot of hard data, Kissmetrics helps you understand it by breaking it down in easy to understand ways. Overall, this tool is all about helping you connect with your audience by seeing how they interact with your page, including browsing habits, length of stay, and more. You can get much insight into how your site and landing pages are affecting users and adjust as necessary to be more effective in the future.
Like Kissmetrics, this tool provides both analytical details and a lens with which to focus that information. It gives heat maps, detailed reports, and everything else you need to figure out to optimize your landing pages to get results.
Sales and Traffic
A huge part of growth hacking is boosting the number of people signing up for and buying your product. While analyzing behavior and understanding your audience better can be a large part of the strategy, what ultimately counts is the number.
With these tools, you can expand to a much wider audience and make sure that your brand and your message is seen by as many as necessary to drive rapid growth and expansion.
If you want to figure out where your customers are engaging the most, then this tool will be essential to your growth hacking experience. Colibri can show you conversations happening about your product (or your industry), as well as connect you to those audiences so that you can promote yourself accordingly.
When it comes to sales, having this kind of insight is crucial because it allows you to tailor your message to fit your buyer’s persona. These days, taking a more focused, niche approach to sales tactics is the name of the game, and Colibri makes it easier to do that.
One of the major detractors for your growing success is people who bounce off of your landing pages. While there are many different reasons for this, BounceX helps you understand why your bounce rate may be so high.
Although the analysis would be enough, this tool is even better as a sales tool because it enables you to create compelling CTAs that can convert leads that may be trying to leave. Coupling both insight and action together can yield some incredible results.
This tool can seem like it’s spying on your customers, but it’s all in service of helping you grow your brand. This program provides tons of insight and information about the habits of your leads and how they browse online. Then, you can target those leads with pinpoint accuracy, using both the insight you’ve gained as well as precision timing.
Overall, you can boost your traffic and sales numbers substantially when you have this tool working for you.
Like BounceX, this tool enables you to create CTAs quickly and easily for your site or landing page. You can build different CTAs for various objectives, such as collecting email address or getting feedback from your users. It’s a super simple tool, but it can be more than useful, provided that you know how to use it.
Retention/Customer Interaction
Getting more traffic is one thing – keeping the customers you have is another. Sure, you may get 10,000 emails, but if only 100 of those people actually buy your product or service, then you have a pretty abysmal capture rate.
If you want to keep your customers engaged and ensure that they aren’t a one-time user, then these tools can help you develop a better long-term retention strategy. When it comes to profitability, retaining your current customers is always better than trying to find new ones.
Customer Resource Management (CRM) tools are going to be essential when interacting with customers and building relationships. Nimble is an intuitive program that lets you manage all of your contacts seamlessly, no matter where you collected their information.
Once you’ve compiled everyone into a single place, this tool will then notify you about who’s talking about your brand online, as well as other time-sensitive options like birthdays and job changes.
Part of developing a long-term growth hacking strategy is finding out what your customers want (and what they don’t). Mopinion is a mobile-ready tool that enables you to solicit this kind of feedback on a regular basis so that you can adapt your approach accordingly.
Not only does this insight help you retain your current customers, but it can assist with adopting a new strategy for bringing on new leads. The more data you can get back from your user base, the easier it will be to connect with them and drive more growth.
As users go through your lead and sales funnels, this tool will track how they interact with your various messages. If there are certain points in the funnel where many people drop out, you can see that happen in real-time and make adjustments as necessary.
Amplitude also helps you connect with users by letting you reach out at different points in the process so that you can talk to them about how your product or service is helping them. By taking a more personalized approach, you’re much more likely to get customers for life.
Bottom Line
Although these aren’t all of the growth hacking tools available, they are more than enough to help you get started. By utilizing each tool’s benefits in a cohesive strategy, you can maximize your brand’s potential and achieve your objectives that much faster. Simply put, with the right tools, you can do anything.
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