Growth Hack Strategies: Stage 6

Summary: The following would be a finale of 6 part series- where we will dive into the various growth hacking strategies defined specifically for each stage. But wait, stages of what? Read more to find out !

Before we delve into the next stage, a quick recap of “Pirate Metrics (AAARRR)” for growth hacking strategies- divided into 6 stages, which are: Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue and Referral. 

If you missed out on what entailed in the previous series of blogs, read about Stage-1~ Awareness, Stage 2- Acquisition , Stage 3- Activation, Stage 4- Retention , and Stage 5- Revenue to get a quick recap..!

So after we have created enough “awareness” of the product and brand within the target audience, and moved onto “acquiring” customers . Have the customers download the app to use the product/service once, it's time to “activate” the customer into a regular customer. We also got them to pay for the product offerings and generate “revenue” for the business. It's time now to ensure they show customer loyalty by giving referrals. 

 Converting customers into brand ambassadors. But how? 

Stage 6: Referrals 

Will those customers invite other potential customers? 

You know you’ve arrived in the market, when customers market, sell and refer your products organically. In a sense, it’s (somewhat) free marketing and proof that you’ve established your brand presence in a tangible and respectable way. Customers are also a lot more likely to purchase from brands or businesses that their friends and family recommend. 

The absolute best way to drive growth is through referral. Why would you spend large sums of money on marketing to people’s deaf ears if you can just have people they trust rave about your product to them. 

To really drive referrals you need to have a systematic process in place that incentivizes and generates them on a consistent basis. 

Example: Dropbox developed their referral program as a key driver for growth. 

Growth Hack Strategy for Referrals: 

• Introduce Referral programs based on success based fees payout models. 
• In such programs, be specific about who you want them to invite within their network, as the brand ambassadors must be saved from over-thinking about it. Be clear about how the gains of a successful referral would be shared. 
• Campaigns and contests 
• Two essential KPI (Key Performance Indicators) to keep track on: 

(i) Net Promoter Score (NPS)- an index ranging from 0-10 and measures how willing customers are to recommend your company’s products or services. It depicts customer satisfaction that could lead to customer loyalty 

(ii) Viral Coefficient: it is the number of users a customer refers to you. A viral coefficient of two would mean that one customer on average refers two new customers to you. Your viral coefficient needs to be larger than one to have growth 

Conclusion: To summarize, the AAARRR (Awareness -> Acquisition -> Activation -> Retention -> Revenue -> Referral ) framework is the simplest and most effective way to look at optimizing your business and measuring growth. 

Growing businesses in the competitive environment is already hard, and without a well planned growth hack strategy, startups have little to no chance of survival. 

The crucial thing to understand is that growth hacking is not some magical wand that would do wonders overnight. Build your growth hacking strategies by understanding the uniqueness of your business, your customers, and what makes them tick, and you’ve created the secret sauce!