How to get the attention of your favorite expert (new detailed post) I know this woman who runs an online business. I like her a lot — she has a great product, she’s been covered in some great press, and when I’ve met her, she’s really fun to hang out with. But her business is struggling. She doesn’t charge enough and she doesn’t know how to grow her business. On two occasions, I’ve heard her mention cashflow problems. Here’s the interesting part: Looking at her business, I know how she could easily quadruple it in 2 months. It would be presumptuous for me to call her and tell her what to do. Why don’t we ask for help? For a lot of us, we’re worried about “annoying” the busy person. Sometimes, we hate feeling obligated. But no matter what, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot. There is a better way. To show you how, today I’ve invited my friend Selena Soo to share her strategies for connecting with busy VIPs. Selena has done a masterful job connecting with journalists, entrepreneurs, and authors. Take it away, Selena. Now what does this mean for you? Why?
21 Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics Update: Interested in even more Growth Hacking tactics? Buy my book of 100 practical growth hacking tactics! In this deck you will find 21 different areas of startup marketing where you can employ growth hacking tactics. Little tricks of automation or hackery that help you squeeze more out of your customer / user acquisition strategy. It's an extension of a previous deck I created, with a bunch of new content and has been well received at startup events I've presented it at. I enjoy presentations with lots of actionable content so that's all this is. On Slideshare: Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics Growth Hacking is just a good way to describe how marketing is done at a startup. There is a particular focus on the application of technology. The deck speaks mostly for itself, but I'll add some minimal notes between them in this post. A good growth hacker needs to focus on two types of growth. Buy the Growth Hacking Handbook for even more growth tactics!
Apple's New iPhone 5C and 5S: the Results of Creativity or Innovation? - Alan Iny and Luc de Brabandere by Alan Iny and Luc de Brabandere | 8:00 AM September 10, 2013 Every idea, no matter how ingenious or successful, will eventually need to be replaced with a new one. But business leaders, as human beings above all, tend to cling to their existing ideas, beliefs, and other mental models — or what we call boxes — longer than they should. When Apple first created its highly disruptive, history-making iPhone, the company unleashed years of innovation not just in its phone offerings, but in a seemingly infinite stream of related accessories and applications. Creativity can be defined as people’s ability to change their perception of reality; by doing so, they can then create new ideas, hypotheses, approaches, and other “boxes.” Innovation can be defined as a change in reality. Incremental innovations — think of BIC introducing double-bladed or triple-bladed razors once they were already in the razor business — do not require the creation of a new box.
Intro to Growth Hacking Pintrest, Facebook, Zynga, Dropbox, AirBnb… What do they all have in common? They’ve all used growth hacking techniques to grow their user base from zero to millions (and sometimes hundreds of millions). Growth Hacking isn’t viral marketing (although viral marketing is part of it). Growth Hacking comes to solve a very common problem in consumer startups: getting to the first x thousand/million users quickly once the product has launched and the hype has passed. The term “Growth Hacking”, invented by Sean Ellis, and made popular by Andrew Chen, a Silicon valley marketer and entrepreneur, is a combination of two disciplines – marketing and coding: Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of “How do I get customers for my product?” In a recent post, TechCrunch defined the three characteristics of a Growth Hacker as follows: First Steps in Growth Hacking for Startups Growth Hacking Resources: Eze Vidra Latest posts by Eze Vidra (see all)
Whats In Your Bag: Colleen 1. Sunglasses 2. Keys. 3. What’s your biggest accomplishment? What’s the biggest lesson you have learned since starting your career? What’s the worst pitch you have ever heard? How does someone get on the radar of Entrepreneur Magazine for a feature on the site or in the magazine? Colleen’s Louis Vuitton Neverfull Where do you receive your inspiration? If you weren’t Special Projects Director, what would you do? Do you feel your life is balanced between work life + personal life? Soundbytes: What is your most indispensable gadget:My iPhone 5 – I can take beautiful photos of the curries I make with its camera. What’s your favorite app?
Learn Growth Hacking: 35 Resources At many technology companies, traditional marketing roles are transforming into growth hacking roles. In fact, the work has become so popular now that some companies are hiring “growth hackers.” They are keeping their marketing departments and hiring growth hackers to work separately from marketing. So what is the role of a growth hacker? Different from marketers, who traditionally are less technical, growth hackers have one objective – to grow the company. In this post, we’ll give a thorough overview of growth hacking, hiring growth hackers, resources on growth hacks, and additional helpful resources. Introduction 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Bonus! What makes a great growth hacker? Hiring 9. 10. 11. 12. Growth Hacks 13. 14. 13 Critically Important Lessons From Over 50 Growth Hackers – Bronson Taylor has interviewed many growth hackers. 15. 16. 21 Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics – Jon Yongfook gives us 21 growth hacks. 17. 18. 19. 20. Other Resources 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.
The Secret to a Strong Branding Message? Focus. Entrepreneurs are hustlers. We wear many hats. We're like the chameleons of the business world, adapting to whatever we need to be at any given moment in time. It is no wonder so many of us struggle when our ventures gain critical mass and it comes time to focus our brand. In the mind of the customer, you get to be one thing. You don't get to be five things. Your one thing is the unique value that your brand delivers. Related: Why Startups Should Take a Big-Brand Approach to Marketing Your customer doesn't care what you want to be. It's very tempting to try to be everything to everyone. Positioning is the art of sacrifice -- of sacrificing the things you could be to uncover the one thing you should be. I know what you're going to say next: "But we do more than one thing! You think IBM doesn't? That's OK. Related: Grow Your Business By Getting Back to Basics What makes a powerful one thing? First, your core message needs to have an emotional and rational side.
Growth Hacking 101 Howdy, Munchkins! This is exciting as exciting can be, because after 8 months of developing our website (well, it could have taken us a week but our clients meant more to us) we finally get to sit down and start sharing our knowledge with the world. So, you may have noticed that Ranky isn’t your ordinary munchkin, the one you can find in every mud hut or a cave near you. Ranky is a Growth-Hacking munchkin, and so we feel the responsibility to elaborate a bit on just what the f*ck that is. Growth Hacking’s Historical Big-Bang I have known this story for 10 years, but only when the blogosphere started yapping about it, did it hit me: This is the first online Growth-Hacking incident, and it’s freaking awesome. Back in 1996, a couple of employees in a Technology firm developed a small web-based emailing platform, to keep the bosses from monitoring their private messages. What happened then, you ask? Fun Fact: One of the Co-Founders was Indian-American. No Wrongs, No Rights, Just GROWTH A. B. C.
Forget What Your Customers Need; Branding Is About What They Want The following is the second in the series "Marketing Like the Big Brands," running every other week in which marketing expert Jim Joseph shows entrepreneurs on a small-business budget how to apply marketing strategies used by big brands. Being a brand is what separates you from your competitors and creates a much stronger connection with your customers. There's a major distinction between advancing your marketing efforts and actually transforming yourself into a brand. If you want to be a brand -- which should be your ultimate goal -- you need to understand the difference between what your customers "need" and what they "want." Need. Want. Related: Why Startups Should Take a Big-Brand Approach to Marketing "Want" is an emotion, and therefore represents the more connective benefits your business and brand offers. Let me illustrate. But let's say you personally choose a shirt brand that targets a younger more stylish consumer. Related: 3 Content Marketing Lessons From Big Brands
What is growth hacking? Just when you think you can know everything there is to know about digital marketing, someone slaps you in the face with a new phrase. During my first year at Econsultancy I’ve been making a point of writing beginner’s guides to any new terms or phrases I find particularly baffling, or that I might suspect other people may find baffling too. Today I’ll be looking at growth hacking. Of course the phrase ‘growth hacking’ isn’t actually that new. Let’s check Google Trends for the term. July 2012 saw the beginning of the rise of growth hacking. So why explore it now? Which then led to the following mini debate… Growth hacking or just good marketing? And then when we’re done we can spend some time figuring out what ‘fwiw’ means. Definitions of growth hacking I feel immediately resistant to any term that uses the word hacking, as the connotations rarely seem positive. First let's take a look at a few different sources for a definition before resorting to Wikipedia. And that’s what shakes things up.
How to Outwit Your Competition Decades of experience have taught me that making thoughtful improvements to existing products is a consistently profitable way to innovate. An effective way to come up with ideas is to start by surveying the market in a familiar industry and asking: What's missing? Maybe a potential demographic has been completely overlooked by industry leaders. The question to ask is: How can the products already out on the market be made better? 1. Choose a specific market that intrigues you. Related: A Startup Aims to Fill a Hole in the Housekeeping Market 2. Take my guitar pick business. Related: Fresh Idea: The Unlikely Inspiration Behind Food-Saver FreshPaper 3. My interactions with consumers confirmed that there was an untapped market for unique, fun picks. Innovations can come from anywhere. Related: Forget What Your Customers Need; Branding Is About What They Want The author is an Entrepreneur contributor.
How to Craft the Perfect Social Post [Infographic] Looking to maximize the effectiveness of your social media posts? Look no further. Bookmark or print the handy infographic below from social-campaign company My Clever Agency and reference it anytime you get befuddled. Some things to keep in mind for each of the major social networks: Pinterest: Posts without human faces get repinned 23 percent more.YouTube: Make sure your file name reflects your clever title.Facebook: It’s okay to post after your business closes. Of course, what works for one company might not always work for another. Take a look. Related: How 122-Year-Old General Electric Is Killing It on Social Media