Growth Hacking - it's not gardening, so what is it and how can you use it?

What is a Growth Hacker?
"A growth hacker is a person who is completely focused on and dedicated to growth." Every decision is shaped by growth. Every strategy, every tactic, and every initiative, is executed with the objective of growing. Of course, traditional marketers care about growth too, but not to the same extent. Remember, their power is in their obsessive focus on a singular goal. By ignoring almost everything, they can achieve the one task that matters most early on.

They are making their mark in technology. Job advertisements are starting to appear all over the web looking for growth hackers. Companies big and small are itching to find these tsunamis of growth and are often recruiting aggressively. Sean Ellis was right when he first coined the title growth hacker in 2010 when he wrote, "Where are all of the growth hackers?" They are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of "How do I get customers for my product?"

Growth hacking has become an essential element of starting and growing a new business. Therefore, it might be useful to take notice of some of the following tips and tools which can help you and your business. It's no secret that growth is the key to business success. Without growth, profits remain flat, which is why we have seen so much interest in the process of 'growth hacking' among startups of all kinds over the past few years. But when it comes down to it, growth happens through marketing, and the best marketing happens when you use the best tools.

Here are 5 of the marketing tools you should consider when it comes to boosting your business' growth:

Unbounce:
Landing pages are extremely important when it comes to converting visitors into customers, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that it can be difficult to build and test them thoroughly. Unbounce makes this process much easier. With a drag-and-drop interface, the program makes it easy to setup pages and create forms - even if you don't know a line of HTML code. With the program's wide variety of templates and seamlessly-integrated A/B testing, Unbounce is one of the best tools out there for turning shoppers into buyers.

LeadzGen:
As digital marketing becomes more and more obsessed with conversion rates; increasing conversions by a few additional percent can make a huge difference to the bottom line, and that's where LeadzGen provides an edge. LeadzGen is a cloud-based marketing intelligence tool that automatically tracks your website visitors, finds their company and contact information, turns those visitors into leads, and feeds your sales pipeline. Try this free tool to discover who exactly visited your website and how to contact those prospects.

Maptive:
These days, plenty of marketers talk a big game about big data, but few of them actually use the information they have to make meaningful decisions about their businesses. Maptive gives you an easy way to mine your data by allowing you to upload a spreadsheet of addresses and see them laid out on a custom map. Use this free tool to determine where your products are selling best, uncover the best spots for an upcoming marketing tour or answer any other question you have about the geography of your data.

Typeform:
Online surveys can be dull and robotic - and these dry forms certainly don't encourage interaction. Instead, Typeform helps you create surveys that are fun, interactive, and enjoyable to look at. The user experience looks and feels great, allowing you to acquire more data through your forms, as well as make the data more useful. With Typeform, you can adjust survey questions fit your brand, as well as use the integrated analysis feature to reveal patterns and trends. Over time, this will help you adapt your message and your product lines so that you continue to grow.

CrazyEgg:
Want to know how visitors are behaving on your site? CrazyEgg shows you where they click, how far they scroll, what they watch, and more. In addition, CrazyEgg's heat-mapping tools allow you to segment your traffic and determine whether certain design or content elements are resonating more with one group than another. This can give you plenty of meaningful feedback on your site, without having to run dozens of A/B tests. It's an easy to use, affordable tool that will make a big difference in your messaging and growth.

No one can manage growth alone, which is why it's so important that you have the right tools in your arsenal. These 5 tools will give you a great start when it comes to growing your customer base, managing your social media presence, and improving your conversion rate - virtually guaranteeing your company's growth and success.


Conclusion
Growth hacking is a mind-set more than a toolset. It is a singular mind-set of achieving one goal above all other goals. All that matters is growth. They choose not to be multi-taskers. They seek not the path of being a jack of all trades. They seek only absolutely and complete mastery of being driving forces of growth. They harness a set of disciplines learned through doing and out of necessity. They have a common attitude, an internal investigation process, and a mentality unique among technologists and marketers. This is a mind-set of data, creativity, and a yearning curiosity which allows a growth hacker to accomplish the feat of growing a user base from zero into the thousands and millions.