8 Simple Growth Hacking Tips For Early Stage Startups

The term growth hacking is synonymous with startups. However, not many understand how simple yet effective it can be. To explain growth hacking in simple language — it is the rapid experimentation to grow your user base or build better product or generate more revenue or anything which can make your product / startup better or deliver better results.
While building QuackQuack, one of India’s leading dating app, we’ve experimented and implemented many a simple growth hacking techniques which I believe can benefit any B2C product startup.

Here are 8 simple growth hacking tips you can use to help scale up your startup:

1 —  Build for the next billion
A mistake we did in early 2012 was, we were too focused on building our website for people using Internet Explorer. This user base constituted just 15% of the total traffic. While we ignored the remaining 85% using Chrome and Firefox. The result — we wasted time and money. Lest did we realize, that just in a year’s time, the user base from IE had gone down to single digit numbers while we could have built for a larger audience. Realizing our mistake, we did not want to miss the next bus. We realized that mobile-first would be the next big trend and we re-hauled our designs to suit mobile users. Our bets paid off because the below chart will show that more people now use mobile to browse that they use desktop. While building your product, focus on the upcoming trends / platforms / OS / devices. Don’t focus on the obsolete. Focus on where your majority of users are — it could be Android, iOS, VR, Messenger bots, etc.

2 — Keep A/B testing
One size doesn’t fit all. However, A/B testing will show you what can fit many. When we started QuackQuack, we used A/B testing to improve our conversion ratio. A simple example is below where we used two taglines — 
A. Sign up now. It’s free
B. Signup now. Meet singles
Option B got us a 10% increase in conversions over a period of 30 days. We then went on to increase our click-to-conversion ratio from 20% to 30% by changing taglines, button colors, call-to-actions, photos and images, etc. Keep A/B testing to see what works best for users and your product.

3 — Emply only top performers
Over a period, we’ve seen the difference between average performers and top performers. While sometimes you may be tempted to hire someone at a lower cost, you will eventually realize that he/she shall eventually cost you more. At two such instances, we’ve faced this issue of hiring where the performance was sub-optimal and we ended up losing more time while we could have invested in better resources. A top performer, though comes with an expensive CTC, you can be rest assured of faster delivery / results, thus eventually costing less.

4 — Create aha moments for your customers
Your app / product could be a talking point for your users giving you word of mouth publicity if you can incorporate a few aha moments. Aha moments are those delight filled surprises your users get while using your product, which may not necessarily be related to your product’s core offering. A few examples:
a. Sometimes on Product Hunt emails, you’ll see a cat gift at the end of the email
b. Haptik, a chat assistant app, reminded me to watch PV Sindhu’s Olympic final via call and message while I didn’t ask for it. It felt good.
c. If you used Uber on the day, after PV Sindhu’s Olympic final, you would have seen that all cabs on Uber’s screen changed to a shuttlecock. Incorporating simple aha moments in your product can go a long way in upping your ante delighting your users over and above your product.

5 — Focus on existing customers
Many a startups lure new customers with discounts and offers. However, once users signup, existing users are ignored. At QuackQuack, we have a high existing user base who generates revenue more than new users. Giving renewal discounts and keeping them engaged helps boost our recurring revenue. Focusing on new users is important, but focusing on existing users is more important.

6 — Leverage existing users
Adding to point no. 5, existing users are your brand loyalists who can turn into brand ambassadors. We know the fact that some users would prefer not paying for subscription to our app. Hence, we designed a referral program where existing users invite their friends to join, and in turn, users get free subscriptions, this getting a win-win for both us and users.

7 — Use social media for reach, not for likes
Startups often fall to the trap of gaining more followers and likes on their social media pages, whereas, the focus should be on ‘more reach’ than vanity metrics likes ‘page likes’. If you see many a companies having 100k to 1 million page likes hardly get any engagement, lest their contest is so good. We at QuackQuack always focus on more reach than likes. Some of our social media campaigns will show this — Using social media effectively can boost your brand visibility and brand recall. Don’t get pulled down by focusing on the wrong metrics.

8 — Stay healthy
The stress startup founders can go through is immense. Everyday is an up-down graph of mood swings. Keeping yourself healthy is the best thing you can do to your body, mind and soul. A healthy body and mind will help in devising better growth hacking ideas and planning to grow your startup. Meditate, exercise, eat healthy, sleep timely and you will be more fresh than ever to take on the world.