Startups are dealing with different challenges from the generating idea phase, through idea validation, product development, user growth, user engagement and retention to developing revenue streams and finally generating revenue and scaling the business.
Most often questions during the idea validation phase
One of the scariest moment for every startup is a process of idea validation on the market and user acquisition growth. Why is that? Idea validation is the moment when co-founder becomes aware of his idea impact on future users. Are they willing to use, how this future product will solve their problem? Why they should use his product and not the existing one on the market.
Are they willing to pay, how often they will be using the product or service? How fast they will adopt a product or service? How fast user growth will be? What specific online marketing channel startup should be using in order to attract users? How much this will cost? What type of ad startup should use? Search ads on Google, or Display Google ads, what keywords to choose, how much they will cost, is there competition for those keywords, should startup create ads on Instagram or Facebook, Shapchat or Twitter? What is the lowest possible cost per acquisition and is it possible to get users, validate idea by using growth hacking methods? Would it be better if startup simply hires a digital marketing agency or maybe it’s a better solution to have in-house digital marketing specialist who will be fully devoted to developing different digital marketing channels, perform tests, analyze results, implement learnings and improve current online channels? How much would cost if startup hires digital marketing agency and would it be cheaper to hire in-house digital marketing specialist employee? What is the difference between digital marketing specialist and growth hacker?
What you can expect if you hire a digital marketing agency?
This model of collaboration usually happens in the first phase of idea validation. Only co-founders who secured investment can jump into this adventure. A digital marketing agency has the capacity to meet clients requirements, often times, has powerful software, licenses, access to powerful ad networks, many skilled people who will work for you. Corporate digital agency style is definitely impressive, list of previous big clients and achieved results can be impressive too, case studies will make you wish to hire them. And it’s fine as soon as you are getting results for your money. At one point you can start noticing they don’t have time to promptly react to your requests. Often, you will notice that they are running the same campaign without suggesting a new copy, new creatives. You will notice that you can not rely on the agency team since they are simply not dedicated to your business. Digital marketing employees are usually organized in several teams and running campaigns for several clients. You will often wait from three to five days to get a response to your requests. It takes usually from three to five days for changes to be implemented. As a co-founder of startup you usually don’t have time to wait so long. Collaboration with digital marketing agency can work while the startup is developing a brand awareness campaign and buying traffic, trying to compete with competitors and gain some piece of impression share. Having in-house experience digital marketer who will work with a digital agency can help you to better control digital marketing agency efforts and get more results for your marketing budget. Find out how Adriatic Digital can help you to analyze campaign results that your digital marketing agency provides for you. Learn what are the most common mistakes while collaborating with your digital marketing agency. We have been managed work of various international digital marketing agencies and can analyze and improve results.
What is the actual difference between growth hacker and digital marketing specialist?
Growth hacking is one of the most popular business method implemented by startups and it’s often mistakenly understood as a free method of validating a business idea and user acquisition growth. In it’s basic, growth hacking method covers numerous activities conducted by a person who is skilled and curious enough to dive into data and implement tests in order to find out which specific action can generate viral customer growth. In a widely spread startup ecosystem, having a growth hacker in the team is a must, but it’s far from the truth that it’ll cost nothing. Growth hackers are experienced digital marketers willing to explore and perform the various tests, implement learnings about the customer’s behavior patterns, spot trends within the data, try different techniques to generate user growth, engagement, retention. It’s often mistakenly understood that digital marketers spend enormous advertising budgets without powerful effects that growth hacking techniques have. Let’s demystify this statement. Inserting referral links into email signature, giving 10$ for each recommended friend are well known techniques for a decades before growth hacker appeared as IT occupation Although many growth hackers act like they invented, for years known, free techniques of acquiring users for free, the real power of growth hacking lays in people who are interested in finding hidden data patterns about specific user behavior and adjusting product to their needs, adjusting application based on various users responds. And not only that, the real power of growth hacking lays in combining learnings about user behavior with paid digital marketing techniques.
Conclusion
What is the best option depends on many factors? If you have money and want to outsource your digital marketing strategy implementation, then you will most probably hire some digital marketing agency. If your startup is in the early stage, then you might want to try doing all digital marketing campaigns by yourself. If you are not experienced then experiments could be time consuming and maybe not quite well performed. You may experience difficulties while trying to figure out what kind of channels you should test, how to properly set campaigns, what is the best copy for your ad, which ad format to choose, how to perform AB test, how to set properly tracking code and facebook pixel code in order to accurately measure results, which specific KPI’s (key performance indicators) should be taken into consideration, how to fix ad delivery problem, how to fix and improve ad relevance, how to calculate return on ad spent, which specific campaign goal would work better for your startup or business. In that case, you may want to consult some experienced digital marketing specialist to explain, advise and set campaigns properly. Contact us to discuss more custom growth hacking strategy and tests that you, or your growth hacking team can launch n order to improve user growth, engagement and retention rate. Be aware that there is no free growth hacking strategy, there is only different options and possibilities to apply learnings about user behavior patterns with your app, service or physical product. We can help you to develop combining custom made growth hacking and acquisition strategy in order to acquire users, engage and retain them. Let’s talk