One common myth about growth is that it seems to be promoted as “all about the hacks”. There are often case studies published of startups achieving growth from one specific hack.
This presents a very distorted image of what’s really happening. Presenting growth case studies in this way might be good for click-throughs but hides the process the startup team has really followed to get there.
As we’ve already seen in Chapter 3, The process involves 4 stages:
- PHASE 1: Research Phase
- PHASE 2: Ideation Phase
- PHASE 3: Experimentation Phase
- PHASE 4: Integration Phase
This means, that to reach any level of growth, a startup team much:
- Gather a lot of data
- Target metrics that really matter
- Generate a lot of ideas to improve the metric
- Fail multiple times in the process of experimentation
- Deploy various tools and resources to implement the experiments
- Try out various marketing “hacks”, tools, workflows, to find what fits the process the best.
- Upgrade and change the hacks, tools, and workflows based on the evolution of the campaigns.
The only thing that doesn’t change when we move from one startup to another and look at all their growth studies is the PROCESS.
That’s the common factor among all startups.
Those who followed the process, knowingly or unknowingly, got the growth they wanted.
Morever, there are many examples of “one-hack-wonder startups” that got some success with an experiment and could never repeat the results in future due to lack of process.
Most growth marketers don’t have a solid process they follow – and I mean even the most experienced ones. I’ve spoken to many of them personally.
These are the same marketers who say “growth marketing hacks” are short-lived which is 100% BS and I can tell you that because I focus on growth marketing process integration.
So now that we’ve established the importance of the process, let’s learn to build this as a mindset.
How to build this mindset:
- Start by finding systems that have transformed many people or businesses and have proven to work for them
- Once you’re sure you have a blueprint, stop thinking about new input or even process improvements (initially) and just stick to the process. This can be applied to your personal life, health goals, and any other activity.
- For example, If you’d like to lose weight or gain muscle, you already know the process. You don’t need more information about it. You just need to trust the process and follow the steps and you’ll definitely get the results you want.
- This will start making you more “process-oriented” which will help you build and scale growth campaigns with ease.