Let’s face it.
Things aren’t going back to the way they were.
For entrepreneurs, it’s “adapt or die”, and many have either pivoted or looked for alternative avenues such as a digital to be able to stay afloat.
However, this season has also seen the rise of digital as a viable medium for companies to be able to adapt and function.
In this article, we take a look at how a lot of small entrepreneurs have resorted to “growth hacking” and how they are leading the way in innovation.
The Pandemic Presented a Leveled Playing Field
From a business perspective, the public health catastrophe that we’re all going through presented a leveled playing field for many businesses.
Everyone was experiencing the same chokes in production, physical distancing meant a lot of “normal’ interactions were now a thing of the past, and there was less operating capital to go around since the economy was in slowdown.
For small businesses, the effects were maximized because they had a lot less to fall back on, thus increasing competition to pick up the slack.
Now competition – from an economic standpoint – is a good thing, it allowed businesses that are alike to innovate, and with innovation came better products and services for the end-user.
This ushered in the new era of digital growth hacking.
Everyone realized that there was an avenue that wasn’t on lockdown.
The internet.
Growth Hacking?
Now, I run a marketing and consulting agency which specializes in LinkedIn optimization and growth hacking, and I found that clients were scrambling to get either pivot towards digital mediums or increase their exposure.
So, why was everyone suddenly trying to hack their growth online?
- The amount of people online increased – the only place that was safe was the internet. Suddenly everyone from prospective clients, collaborators, and partners were online, meaning that there was a sudden shift to cater and “reach” all of them.
- People started getting used to online meetings – once everyone realized that physical meetings were now a thing of the past and companies started implementing WFH arrangements, the idea of a virtual meet was now normal. There simply was no other way to do it. This presented an opportunity for a lot of companies to do purely online lead generation.
- Lead generation online started to become competitive – when everyone is doing the same thing, it starts getting more difficult. We had a lot of clients come in trying to intensify their efforts because they knew they had to step up their game.
- They knew that digital marketing alone wasn’t going to cut it – digital marketing is just the status quo, they needed to get bigger.
Suddenly mediums such as Facebook and LinkedIn were being used to their fullest in an effort for people to compete.
For a lot of people, pre-pandemic growth hacking was just a buzzword. Not a lot of people realized that, it would become a lifeline.
How Does Growth Hacking Work?
Growth hacking refers to implementing a set of strategies to ensure the maximum growth of an organization.
This could be anything from increasing reach to doubling profits.
What matters in growth hacking isn’t how much marketing you do, but how big you grow as a result.
Small entrepreneurs started:
- Turning their web properties into passive lead generation sources
- Moving to more organic forms of lead generation
- Engaging in more hyper-targeted ABM strategies
- Aggressively moving their operations online
- Using mediums such as LinkedIn to do prospecting
- Using a barrage of growth tools to facilitate their growth
What struck my team was instead of entrepreneurs struggling to sell, they were trying to use the pandemic as an opportunity to make a difference in the way they did things.
It Wasn’t About Surviving Anymore…
Small entrepreneurs didn’t just want to survive anymore, if they had kept that mindset it would have been harder for them.
Growth hacking represented a new way for them to build their organizations and adapt to the changing times.
It was what pushed them to innovate in many aspects of their business.
There were other benefits to growth hacking:
- It was easier to develop innovative tactics to sell rather than go head-to-head with bigger players using old techniques.
- Mostly web based so anyone, anywhere in the world could engage in it.
- A lot of the techniques could be layered into what was already being done in an organization
- There was a focus on scalability
- And, more importantly, it was inexpensive to deploy
More than a year into the new normal and all I can say is that I look up to the smaller clients that I have.
They represent the backbone of this economy, the people who are unwilling to give up. They provide jobs, stimulate the economy, and inspire others to keep moving forward regardless of the circumstances.
So, the next time you’re considering digital marketing.
Remember how smaller entrepreneurs hacked it out.
Consider growth hacking instead.
Houston Golden is the founder of BAMF Media, a digital marketing firm that specializes in growth hacking and LinkedIn optimization. Working with Fortune 500 companies and startups, he’s taken BAMF from $0 to a couple million dollars in less than 4 years. He gets a kick out of seeing smaller organizations reach new heights.
