Growth hacking sounds like something difficult, possibly quite technical, and the exclusive domain of shoestring startups. But the startups that have made the most of growth hacking, such as the Airbnbs and Spotifys of the world, have used growth hacking tactics to become some of the biggest, best-known brands in the world. Any business — of any size, in almost any industry — can do the same. It just requires a bit of creativity.
And while growth hacking strategies for e-commerce, or more generally, can employ technical (i.e., digital, web-performance-based, or SEO) tactics, some of the most effective accompanying actions are basic and personal, while others are blanket, untargeted efforts. When building an e-commerce marketing plan, some of the most significant touchpoints and conversions companies can generate come from adding a personal touch or simply from being more visible in the world. Success comes from finding the right mix of growth hacking tactics for your business.
One of the best e-commerce marketing tips you can apply is never to rule anything out. Whether it’s a fully integrated end-to-end marketing and sales campaign, or simply adding a handwritten note in every customer order, growth hacking is about finding what works for you, big or small. It should contribute to a healthy boost in sales or number of quality leads (i.e., growth) and promote customer retention (i.e., reducing churn so that growth reflects true growth rather than making up for lost ground).
What is growth hacking for e-commerce?
“Growth hacking” is a misunderstood term. Many creative agencies, digital marketing firms and self-styled growth hacking gurus will define it more narrowly than will best suit all businesses. And while growth hacking isn’t as haphazard as a “throw it against the wall and see what sticks” approach, although you will be trying out a number of different, and potentially new, things, it deserves a more comprehensive definition.
What is growth hacking?
We’ve previously defined growth hacking as follows:
“Growth hacking is exactly what it sounds like: your marketing efforts, regardless of what they are, should first and foremost be focused on how to achieve growth, e.g. new leads, sign-ups, subscribers, conversions, customers, sales, etc. ”
What is growth hacking for e-commerce?
Extending this previous definition more specifically to online retail, growth hacking for e-commerce applies the full range of relevant marketing efforts and growth tactics (even some that may surprise you) to a given e-commerce growth hacking strategy to boost sales and other key performance metrics.
Strategizing for growth once again takes us back to basics: challenging your assumptions by looking at performance data, gaining deeper audience or customer data to gain a better understanding of their needs, and mapping their journeys, and identifying an ideal customer profile. Without these fundamentals, it is hard to make data-informed decisions on everything from customer acquisition tactics to how and where to market your products or offer.
Growth hacking: The usual suspects
Because the standard approach to growth hacking is usually a “taste and see”, rapid-fire set of experiments, the backbone of growth hacking has been digital in nature. We believe a digital-only approach is often too restrictive, but it is key to the mix and therefore important to understand and embrace.
Some popular and effective digital growth hacking tactics include (but are not limited to):
- Personalized home or landing pages
- Real customer testimonials and reviews
- A/B testing of all visual and content elements
- Exit-intent pop-ups
- Buy again e-mails
- Live chat functions
- User experience/performance, e.g. page load times, etc.
- Discount/coupon offers for repeat purchases
- Loyalty programs and benefits with exclusive offers
These, and many more, activities and tests will generate a lot of data and help to optimize outreach and campaign success. If done properly, they are the gold standards in any e-commerce marketer’s toolbox. It is not, however, enough.
The surprising thing about growth hacking is that it’s not all digital. Some of the best e-commerce optimization tips we’ve seen succeed in the wild have been at two ends of the offline extreme.
Growth hacking surprises: Two ends of the offline extreme
The e-commerce customer journey is notoriously challenging to map. Customer journeys are infamously twisty, in that they are not linear, not always completely online, tap into multiple devices, and sometimes can be stop-and-start in nature. This complexity makes it difficult not just to create accurate attribution models to get a better picture of where in the journey customers convert, but what kinds of marketing activities prompt action: what do customers do before they convert? Each of these steps may be contributing significantly to the ultimate conversion; weighting their influence appropriately is one key e-commerce growth hacking tip.
Let’s take a deeper dive into this complexity, and how growth hacking efforts can be surprising at two extremes — both in their form and results.
Making it personal
We’ve hammered the point home: boosting online data-driven marketing strategies can involve numerous offline tactics. The least costly and most effective of these include personal touches and individualized attention. This can be anything from including a personal, handwritten note written to accompany each order upon shipment, to throwing in a small token, such as a locally produced candy, with the order. These small steps are giant differentiators that let the customer know there’s a human on the other end of the transaction who sees them as an individual and cares about their business.
Go big or go home
While the other extreme will be more expensive than the growth hacking’s more personal touches, they aim to reach a much broader audience. These activities not only tap into some of marketing’s tried-and-true above-the-line benefits, such as building awareness and visibility, but also reinforce the brand. We’ve seen e-commerce companies, for example, tap into the power of local TV advertising. Visibility and brand aren’t always top-of-mind when thinking about growth hacking, but sometimes growth comes down to the name or visual recognition of a brand.
Growth hacking: Picking the right mix
On and offline marketing tactics can be valuable in supporting your e-commerce growth hacking strategies. The trick is getting the mix right and acknowledging that this can change along with growth, so it’s always a work in progress. Picking your right mix will depend on who you’re targeting, what you want them to do, what you want to achieve, and then testing out, measuring, and optimizing the digital and offline marketing strategies you deploy.
Are you ready to pick your growth hacking mix? Get in touch; we can help you with your growth hacking plan.
