Contrary to how growth hacking sounds, you'll be relieved to hear that it has nothing to do with hacking into computers or firewalls. Rather, growth hacking is a term that encompasses strategies to improve growth. It is usually used for startups that need to grow massively within a short amount of time. They are usually restrained by tight budgets.

Growth hacking works by finding out what helps a company grow and working for those strengths. Driving traffic to websites through good SEO and powerful sales funnels are great ways to do this. There's plenty of experimentation to discover what works to stimulate growth for different companies. Growth hackers test multiple marketing and ux strategies to improve the growth of companies within a short period. A common way that growth hackers work is by utilising a funnel. The growth hacking funnel illustrates 5 stages of a new customer. They are:

1. Acquisition

2. Activation

3. Retention

4. Revenue

5. Referral

While growth hacking is inclusive but not limited to marketing, the term 'growth marketer' is often used interchangeably. These are highly skilled teams that use strategies to maximize the reach and potential for improving sales and revenue for a company.

Growth hacking doesn't just end at creating a one time sale. Rather, it deals with not just the acquisition of a customer but retention for long-term business relationships with a company. Growth hacking also works to tap into the power of customer referrals.

A good example is DropBox grew 3900% with a simple referral program. By offering customers free cloud storage for each referral the customer completed. The result was a largely successful growth for the company with new customers and significantly added revenue.

Why Is It Gaining Popularity?

Growth hacking is gaining huge popularity around the world and especially in Hong Kong because of the importance of establishing growth in companies all around the world.

The appeal lies in the effectiveness of being able to grow a company organically. At the beginning of the growth hacking funnel, customers are exposed to products through targeted marketing. Moving forward, customer retention ensures that relationships are established with the customers making them more likely to refer their friends and families. This is powerful because it leverages the contacts of the customer to grow companies even further.

This is an effective way to expand the customer base and boost revenue. For this reason, growth hacking has gained popularity over the past few years, with more and more organisations looking to boost their sales through effective growth hacking.

This demand has led to the roles of growth marketing and organic sales grow exponentially, with further expansion expected in the future, making this role highly sought after by professionals in the field of marketing and sales.

Read Also: The Incredible Rise and Ever-Evolving Applications of the “Growth” Hacker

Demand For Growth Hackers In Hong Kong

The industry is expanding at a rapid speed, with more and more companies looking to take their businesses online, and users regularly sharing personal data online and web cookies tracking every click, marketers have been able to gain unprecedented insight into consumers and serve up solutions tailored to their individual needs. This leaves a massive scope for growth hackers as well, both new and experienced. The role is alluring because of its positive potential for growth and personal development. Common career paths for growth hackers are:

• Growth Hacker

• Digital Marketing Specialist

• Marketing Strategist

• Marketing Analyst

• Product Manager

These roles pay above salaries in Hong Kong, owing to their high demand. High pay is one of the most attractive factors for choosing a career in growth hacking. At the same time, it is important to remember the responsibilities that come with higher job roles and the additional skills that they demand.

What's The Salary Range For A Growth Hacker In Hong Kong?

Growth hackers in Hong Kong enjoy a higher-than-average salary, most likely owing to the expanding industry demand. Salaries for a career in growth hacking can start from the lower end of HKD 200,000 per year. More experience can bring up the average salary for a growth hacker, marketing expert, and marketing analyst to around HKD 800,000 per year. The growth hacking market outlook in Hong Kong is overly positive. Companies like Uber, LinkedIn, PayPal, and Instagram are on the lookout for top growth hackers with the talent to perform well in growth planning and analytics. With larger companies, it is more common to see larger growth hacker salaries. While programming isn't essential to participate in a team of growth hackers, it is an added skill that can boost your career even further.

Essential Requirements And Skills For The Role

The skills required for the role of growth hackers vary from company to company, depending on their requirements. In general, growth hackers are expected to have a keen eye for detail, analytical, and have a strong work ethic.

Without strong attention to detail, it's difficult to pinpoint strategies and opportunities for growth in an organisation. Growth marketers can correctly identify such chances to boost companies' growth through effective marketing techniques.

Analytical skills are paramount for a growth hacker. Being able to create a growth marketing framework is essential for being able to execute plans efficiently. This means that they can pick out trends and play to their strengths.

By creating reports and studying marketing data, a growth hacker can find pain points and work towards mitigating losses for a company. Retention and growth strategy planning makes all the difference when it comes to growth hacking. A strong work ethic is primary to the field. While dealing with large advertising budgets, marketing projects, and multiple customers, without a strong work ethic, it is difficult to effectively scale a company over time.

A growth hacking course can help boost your career by providing you with the experience and training to be more confident in your role. It can give you the skills you need to excel in the career.

Personality Traits For Success In This Industry

Indeed, some people are more attuned to being successful in the role of a growth hacker. Those who can identify trends, work to their strengths, and have good teamwork skills will find that they are better suited for this role. Some of the skills that are key for a growth hacker are:

Team Work

Teamwork is important for nearly every role in business. However, for growth hacking, it is even more essential. Growth hacking often involves multiple facets of operations that need to be performed by a team that works like a well-oiled machine.

Collaboration between analytics, reports, and ad campaign strategies are essential for effective growth hacking. Without proper teamwork, it is impossible to effectively boost a company and make a drastic change to its bottom-line. There are 4 tools for more collaborative and customer-focused teams.

Communication

Good communication is key, especially so when it comes to growth hacking. Following on the importance of teamwork, growth hackers need to be able to communicate effectively if they are to perform well.

Good communication skills are paramount to being able to work to their strengths to improve revenue and customer retention. Dealing with members of other departments like sales, marketing, and event management allow growth hackers to better understand businesses. Affiliate marketing and influencer marketing are examples of situations that require communication skills.

Data Analytics

When it comes to growth hacking, there is plenty of analytics that need to be performed to understand a company's needs. As a growth hacker, you'll need to understand where the bulk of the revenue for a company is generated, its main selling points, and customer demographic data. North Star Metrics and Growth Metrics are integral parts of being a good growth hacker.

Usage of tools like Mixpanel, Google Analytics are important in this field. Only through the ability to gather and map data is it possible to get a better, top-down view of the working of a company and how to effectively boost its revenue. There are plenty of data points to keep in mind, such as customer age bracket, customs, tastes and preferences, and much more.

The best growth hackers can leverage on technology to generate reports and effectively strategise on them. For this reason, a growth hacker needs to be proficient with data analytics.

Read Also: Unlocking New Efficiency: Data Analytics for Sales and Marketing

Opportunities In The Growth Hacking Industry

There are plenty of opportunities in the field of growth hacking for young professionals that are interested in solidifying their career. Several roles, like product management, e-commerce, digital marketing, software engineering and fintech are branches of growth hacking that offer opportunities to make a difference in the market.

A smart idea implemented by Hotmail was to append a line of text at the end of sent emails with a line of text with the link for signing up for a new account. Paypal's idea was to reward users to sign up. For each successful referral and sign up, users have rewarded 10 dollars each. It's a prime example of a company leveraging its bigger budget of nearly USD 60 million to growth hack users faster.

Growth hacking works as an excellent, relatively low-cost way for companies to spread awareness of their product and acquire new customers. There are many opportunities that growth hacking provides for young professionals. Just some of the examples are:

• Blogging

• Podcasts

• Email marketing

• Webinars

• Ebooks

• Programs and courses

• Influencer marketing

• Affiliate marketing

Types Of Business Functions And Industries Hiring Growth Hacking Professionals

Companies of all sizes can benefit from growth hacking methods! While startups can benefit the most from the added growth and expanded customer base, even established companies often use growth hacking to boost their presence and bottom-line.

Airbnb is a prime example of being able to leverage smart and powerful growth hacking to their advantage. To source leads and acquire potential customers, they used Craigslist, a popular listing website to find people looking for a place to stay. This led to plenty of success for AirBnB growth hacking. Companies like PayPal, Uber, LinkedIn, and Facebook are at the cutting edge of growth hacking examples, being able to leverage large growth budgets, strategic planning, and worldwide expertise to attract millions of daily users and referrals.

Conclusion

Growth hacking is fast becoming a hot career for professionals all around the world. It's for a good reason too, because of the career paths and rewarding salaries everywhere in the world, especially Hong Kong. Creative planning, regular analytics, and experimental strategies make up a regular part of a growth hacker's career.

Reaching out to customers through vlogs, seminars, podcasts, and webinars can be powerful for spreading brand awareness. Leveraging customer referrals is an important part of the growth hacking funnel. DropBox was successfully able to grow its customer base using referrals and is a good case of smart growth hacking.

Growth hacking isn't exactly synonymous with digital marketing and isn't mutually exclusive. Instead, they work together to complement each other in boosting a company's presence in the market. To add to this, growth hacking has multiple great career paths, including Product Manager, Digital Marketing Specialist, and Marketing Analyst.

Read Also: 2021 Career Guide: Digital Marketing in Hong Kong

Digital Marketing related courses

• Digital Marketing and Growth Hacking

• Introduction to Product Management

• Database and Data Engineering

• UX Design

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