Let’s face it, growth hacking is a bit of a rubbish phrase. But, it’s the buzz word so many marketers use now. But what does it take to be a growth hacker? In short, test, learn and grow your customer base. Some would say, GSD (GET SHIT DONE).
We use a number of tools for our agency, some of our favourites we share below. If you’re looking at marketing in 2020, make sure you have these (or similar) in your skillset.
Give us a shout if you’d like to know more about any of these and more specific examples of how we use them.
1. Instapages
Without a doubt the best landing page software we use. It’s not for SEO, but if you want to quickly test and deploy PPC campaigns, Instapage is amazing. We use it for a number of our clients so we can run optimized PPC campaigns. Don’t burn dev time building PPC landing pages, use Instapage first. See what works and then build that. Using Instapage as the backbone of our PPC campaigns in 2019 has seen us significantly change paid performance for some of our clients. Treble CVR and reduce CPAs in a third are just some of the metrics.
2. Google Data Studio
If you don’t use the BI suite from Google, you should. Digging into GA or Google Ads for other members of the team isn’t ideal. If you support founders or senior team members, using Data Studio allows you to create simple reports to give them the top-line summary. We obviously do in-depth reporting for clients, but we find having realtime stats is also valuable to a number of them.
3. Mixmax
We know when you are reading our emails!!!! Mixmax allows us to know who is reading the information we send them. We use it for sales follow-ups, scripting and also PR circulation. Mixmax allows the team to optimise their time for follow up calls when prospecting or contacting journalists. We have custom made PR distribution lists so having this tool allows avoiding costly software costs for PR broadcasters.
4. Zapier
What a tool this is. We use Zapier for a number of clients. It helps funnel and automate leads to software. For example, we use it for lead generation distribution from adverts on Facebook. We then use zapier to API into slack, CRMs and google sheets. We’ve also used zapier with instapages to script deep into user journeys to boost conversion rates.
5. SEMrush
There are plenty of SEO tools out there, we use SEMrush. We use it both for research, crawls and monitoring of SEO rankings. There are also some amazing add ons now into google sheets to score your SEO content.
6. Hotjar
Hotjar is old now, but it’s still a hugely valuable tool. Anyone which isn’t watching customer journeys can’t fully understand conversion rate blockers. Each month, we spend time looking at user flows to make sure our landing page/funnels are tip-top.
7. Promo
Promo.com is a handy video maker. Lumen5 is similar but we now use Promo to create quick facebook adverts. More suited to startups and firms without large production budgets, it gives you a quick cheap way to create/test facebook adverts.
So, that’s a quick rundown of some of the tools we use. Go get’um tiger.