Will - PDF - eForms
Sean Ellis, one of the most renowned growth hackers, believes that for companies “agility is no longer a way to get ahead, it’s a necessity for survival”. He successfully helped lots of great startups like Dropbox and Eventbrite get traction and his idea is that using growth hacking, a model to rapidly expand your business using specific tricks and techniques, is a matter of life and death. You have to grow fast to succeed. Right. But how fast will you grow and to what extent?quickwill Figuring out where your startup is heading and how long it will take you to reach your destination is essential to move forward efficiently. Otherwise by trying to accelerate without a clear roadmap, you might just waste a lot of time and energy until you find yourself in a dead-end. So much with survival… Map the road In 1961, E. Rogers introduced the theory of diffusion and adoptionmentioning that, from innovators to laggards including early adopters and an early late majority, the technology adoption cycle goes through different types of customers until they are adopted by a majority. View graph below: This highlights that on the road of your startup’s expansion you have to cater different types of customers and thereby adapt to their expectations and needs. So, as you move towards the highway to growth, be prepared to identify these customers and shift accordingly. This will be your map. Understand your speed The pace at which your startup will grow can be assessed through the innovation diffusion rate. In other words, how long it takes for an innovation to be used by the majority of customers in its defined market. And this is what I believe growth hacking is trying to crack. 30 years after Rogers, G. Moore added what he calls “the chasm” - see graph -which is basically the step from which a niche product starts being used by a majority, also called take-off. This happens if the following 5 intrinsic attributes of innovation are aligned: Relative Advantage: How much better is aproduct or service from what the alternative was before. Ex: email vs post. Visibility: People adopt a product or service when they can see others adopt it. Ex: I can see others using a car but the email is not very visible.