Case Study: 6 Methods of Growth Hacking

The article mainly introduces two strategic implementation approaches for growth hacking , and discusses six methods from traditional marketing to growth hacking.

In March 2017, Coca-Cola , the world's largest non-alcoholic beverage company, announced the abolition of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and the establishment of a Chief Growth Officer (CGO) instead.

Why was traditional marketing ruthlessly abandoned by Coca-Cola?

Because traditional marketing: it is born from attracting new customers and dies from retaining existing customers .

So, what does this CGO do?

It turns out that he was responsible for introducing growth hacking into traditional businesses, which at Coca-Cola specifically included: strategy, marketing, customers and business, the trinity (Note: in Internet companies, growth hacking refers to the trinity of product development, data analysis , and marketing).

Help Coca-Cola transform into a new retail company that is " user-centric, growth-oriented, and data-driven ."

Today, we will introduce two strategic implementation paths for growth hackers:

Growth Hacking: Strategy Implementation Path 1

Example 1. Keep

Seed users + content marketing + Aha rewards

Starting users: Keep is one of the leading fitness apps in China. It does not rely on advertising, but starts from fitness QQ groups and finds about 4,000 seed users.

Content Marketing:

• First, public relations first: 5 months before the official product launch, Keep produced a large amount of fitness knowledge on nearly 100 vertical communities such as QQ groups, WeChat , BBS, Tieba , Douban groups, etc., and accumulated a lot of attention and reputation.
• The second is value positioning: The value proposition of "Self-discipline gives me freedom" is very clear. It not only reduces the difficulty of content production, but also stimulates the emotional resonance of users and triggers social dissemination.

In June 2016, Keep’s first brand positioning video “Self-discipline gives me freedom” was officially launched. Subsequently, the scale of Keep’s users soared by 20 million in 3 months!

Aha Rewards: Keep has designed a large number of user experiences such as rankings , medals, grassroots KOLs , etc. to recall lost users and improve retention.

Growth results: Keep achieved 100 million users in 921 days.

Case 2. Uber

Seed users + cross-border marketing + Aha rewards

1. Launch users: Uber is one of the world's leading travel service providers, and Uber provides free car services for the Austin Music Festival. Many young people attending the music festival are avid technology enthusiasts, and Uber suddenly became a hot topic in the technology circle.
2. Cross-border marketing: high-density and continuous cross-border marketing events such as sending ice cream, sending flowers on Valentine's Day , sending BBQ ingredients, free 8-hour pick-up and drop-off for NFL players, calling a helicopter with one click, Avengers chariot driver, and Mark Chao turning into an Uber driver, have triggered waves of social dissemination and played a key role in capturing the minds of users at low cost.
3. Aha Reward: Good products are the foundation of all growth. Uber's algorithm optimization is a global leader in operational efficiency between vehicles and passengers. Its Aha Reward is also based on good user experience formed by product iteration.

Growth results: At the beginning of 2015, Uber operated in 10 cities in China and had a market share of only 1%. Half a year later, its share of the Chinese taxi market soared to nearly one-third.

Case 3. DropBox

Seed users + product iteration + Aha rewards

1. Launch user: DropBox is the world's leading online file storage platform. It released a 3-minute video to create a fictional product. The video went viral and topped the Digg.com hot list of the day. As a result, 75,000 people had made reservations before the product was even developed.
2. Product iteration: Dropbox is a file transfer tool with very simple functions in the early days. It started as a "USB drive substitute" and only provided "synchronization of one folder". During the process of product iteration and upgrade, it was extremely focused and restrained.
3. Aha Reward: Dropbox has established a series of very simple routines. If users use Facebook and Twitter to promote, they will be rewarded with 125M free space.

For every new user recommended by an old user, the old user will be rewarded with 500M free space, up to the upper limit of 16G. It’s that simple, yet it’s something that growth hackers emphasize very much, providing users with the pleasure and sense of accomplishment of Aha.

Growth Results: Dropbox gained 1 million users within 7 months of launch.

Growth Hacking: Strategic Implementation Path 2

Strategic path two focuses on the WeChat ecosystem .

Case 4. NetEase Operations Class

Professional users + WeChat distribution + Aha rewards

1. Launching users: NetEase cooperated with Lizhi Micro Course to mobilize the top 10 users who ranked in the Lizhi Micro Course promotion scholarship to start the first wave of cold start . Subsequently, we launched promotions targeting operational personnel in conjunction with major operational public accounts , forming a second wave of cold start.
2. WeChat distribution: NetEase Big Course’s products are good and influential. But the core is still to utilize the mature distribution system of Lizhi Micro Course and the distribution infrastructure provided by the WeChat ecosystem. Users generate their own posters and forward them to their Moments and WeChat groups . There is a very obvious CTA (call to action) on the poster, "XXX, I have signed up, and I will wait for you on the road to advancement."
3. Aha rewards: ranking list + bonuses, etc. Whenever a new user joins, old users will receive a message immediately: "You have earned another XX yuan." It is simple and crude, but effective.

Growth results: In less than 16 hours, this course priced at 39 yuan sold 130,000 copies.

Case 5. Mint Reading

Interested users + WeChat community + Aha rewards

1. Starting users: "10 minutes a day, read 4 original English books in 100 days." Like Keep, this value proposition is very clear and targets a broad range of users who are interested in reading. Reading and fitness are similar in that they both require a strong desire, but it is difficult to persist in the behavior for a long time. Whoever can solve the problem of "persistence" will find a breakthrough in performance growth.
2. WeChat Community: In essence, Mint Reading is a business model of "WeChat group reading + friend circle check-in". Establishing a WeChat group is a necessary basic skill. Showing off reading experience on WeChat Moments is both a form of heteronomy and a form of conspicuous consumption.
3. Aha Rewards: Integrate the Aha reward mechanism into the entire community operation . Including 20 yuan coupons, paper copies of English classics, points, levels, medals, rankings, etc. The "Check-in on WeChat Moments for 80 consecutive days" campaign allows others to see your persistence, hard work and progress, and comment and like them, which enhances users' confidence in learning and is an excellent emotional motivation on the user side. This mechanism actually transfers the task of attracting new users to old users, and it is truly a model of zero-cost customer acquisition.

Growth results: Launched in June 2016, the English original reading program has been opened for 39 issues to date.

Case 6. Pinduoduo

Downstream users + WeChat social networking + Aha rewards

1. Starting users: 1 billion WeChat users - 560 million Taobao users = 440 million users with no financial credit. Where do these users spend their money? Obviously, Pinduoduo has found a huge blank market, namely the vast number of "consumers outside the Fifth Ring Road".
2. WeChat social networking: Pinduoduo uses WeChat Moments and WeChat groups to implement multiple batches of group buying, payment, sharing, downloading, retention and other behaviors, allowing users to complete payment quickly under the stimulation of price as much as possible, and continuously recall lost users. Without considering product quality and intellectual property protection, Pinduoduo's AARRR efficiency is indeed much better than that of ordinary micro-businesses.
3. Aha Reward: As the online traffic entrance for offline ten-yuan stores, Pinduoduo has had a huge impact on offline rural stores. The prices are low, and the products and services are slightly higher than those in rural stores. For Pinduoduo's main consumer group, every shopping trip is an Aha reward, and every group purchase means opening a "micro online store" for Pinduoduo.

Growth results: Within two months of its establishment, without any advertising, Pinduoduo's user base exceeded 12 million. Since its establishment, it has gained 300 million users in 3 years.

What are the essential differences between growth hacking and traditional marketing?

Our view is:

1. Traditional marketing is information-centered advertising bombardment, with post-event review; growth hacking is user-centered two-way screening, with full quantification.
2. In traditional marketing, good products are promoted by merchants, emphasizing "simple repetition until you vomit"; good products in growth hacking are derived from user experience, emphasizing "Aha at every step, luring you in to go deeper."
3. In terms of traffic introduction, traditional marketing focuses on attracting new customers, sales gross profit margin, and input-output ratio; growth hackers focus on retention, customer repurchase rate, and low-cost customer acquisition.
4. In terms of user touchpoints, traditional marketing is centralized and radiated; growth hacking is fragmented touchpoints.
5. In the cognitive system, traditional marketing focuses on capturing user attention and creating hot spots and eye-catching products; growth hackers focus on developing useful product features and creating an Aha moment self-rewarding user experience.
6. In terms of demand management, traditional marketing focuses on "attention-memory-desire", and its ultimate goal is to stimulate users to have high desires and realize "desire monetization"; growth hackers focus on "behavior-experience-Aha", and can realize "time monetization" when users are in a low-desire state.
7. In traditional marketing, the concepts of marketing, sales, and operations are relatively clearly separated; growth hacking has integrated strategy, operations, marketing, sales, products, data, etc.