The ascent of a growth hacking professional : Nate Barnwell

High quality growth hacking advices from Nate Barnwell: Sean had helped a number of internet companies achieve incredible growth, and a few of them even had an IPO. Needless to say, Sean became the guy that the valley went to when they needed to grow their user base, and he would take equity and payment in exchange for his services. He essentially became a one man growth shop, setting up systems, processes, and mindsets, that could be maintained after he left. Eventually, he would hand over the keys to his growth machine to someone else, and he would ride off into the sunset. This is where the problems started.

Created in 2013 by Stewart Butterfield, Slack is a messaging and collaboration tool for enterprises. It allows company teams to chat and share in real-time. Today, Slack has over 12 million daily active users with more than 100 thousand paid customers. When designing Slack, however, Butterfield had no intention of being a big hit. Slack was created for covering the communication needs of Butterfield’s team during the design process of Glitch, a games app that can now be considered a fail. From this fail, however, came great success as the team saw how valuable Slack was to them. The market needed such a product where internal team members could communicate easily and exchange project materials quickly, and Butterfield already had one. Since Slack was created for users in the first place with no intention of profit and turned out to be a great product, further development continued accordingly. Slack team always took customer feedback as guidance, replying to every email they received and examining every ticket carefully. This initiation pushed Slack to be a great example of product-led growthWhat is product-led growth? Product Led Growth (PLG) is a business development strategy that leverages product usage to drive customer acquisitions, conversions, and market expansion. It places product on the focus of businesses.

Nate Barnwell growth hacking strategies: Sometimes the best growth strategy a company can employ is standing out — offering a unique experience that sets it apart from other businesses in its space. When monotony defines an industry, the company that breaks it often finds an edge. Say your company developed an app for transitioning playlists between music streaming apps. Assume you have a few competitors who all generate revenue through ads and paid subscriptions — both of which frustrate users. In that case, you might be best off trying to shed some of the baggage that customers run into trouble with when using your competitors’ programs. If your service is paid, you could consider offering a free trial of an ad-free experience — right off the bat. The point here is that there’s often a lot of value and opportunity in differentiating yourself. If you can “zig when they zag”, you can capture consumers’ attention and capitalize on their shifting interests.

Paid ad CPMs and effectiveness change constantly, what worked yesterday may not work today. Similar to stockbrokers, growth marketers stay on top of trends, like Apple’s iOS privacy update, and can communicate market nuances to clients. When should you hire a growth marketer? Growth marketers usually account for about a third of marketer hiring demand — in early-stage startups and fortune 500s — through Nathan Barnwell. They’re our most popular hires, because companies at all stages need more conversions, customers, and revenue. What are the core responsibilities of a growth marketer?? The goal of growth marketing is relatively simple: improve engagement and conversion metrics throughout the marketing funnel.

The first is a product that people actually consider a “must have.” In the startup world, this is generally referred to as “product/market fit.” Once you’ve validated product/market fit, it then becomes important to define an overall success metric. This success metric should be a “North Star Metric” for the entire team to gauge the success of the business. The right North Star Metric tracks cumulative value delivered across a growing customer base. This is a much more sustainable growth indicator than something like registrations, downloads or even revenue (many subscription businesses have inactive users that are still on a paid subscription but will likely churn). Read even more information at Nathan Barnwell.

This action plan should contain a list of action items, deadlines, teams or persons responsible, and resources for attaining your growth goal. The last step before acting on your plan is determining any requirements your team will need through the process. These are specific resources that will help you meet your growth goals faster and with more accuracy. Examples might include: Funding: Organizations may need a capital investment or an internal budget allocation to see this project through. Tools & Software: Consider what technological resources may be needed to expedite and/or gain insights from the growth process. Services: Growth may be better achieved with the help of consultants, designers, or planners in a specific field.