Deep Dive

A.k.a in-depth analysis.

Growth Mindset

Growth hackers often emphasize that growth hacking is more of a mindset than a specific job description. The actual tools and techniques they use are broad and varied, but what makes them effective is the mindset they adhere to. The growth mindset is about believing that you are capable of learning whatever you want, persevering in the face of difficulty, challenging yourself, learning from failure, believing that your efforts and attitude are more important than your knowledge or capabilities, and above all, being laser-focused on attaining your growth goals no matter what.

Guest Posting

When you write blog posts or articles to be featured on the blog or website of another organisation. The purpose of this is to create a win-win scenario in which the other organisation benefits from the valuable content you’ve written, and you benefit from the exposure of having your content featured on an external website with its own audience. In most cases, the post will include backlinks to your own website/content that will drive traffic and improve your search rankings.

This can also refer to accepting guest posts from others to publish on your own website or blog. Having well-known figures guest post on your site can increase your own legitimacy as a brand and generate more traffic.

Hack

The “hacking” in growth hacking refers to the innovative tricks, shortcuts and strategies used to grow a company. They are typically high-impact, low-cost solutions that fall outside the methods normally used by traditional marketers. The term is comparable to “life hacks” in which making small, clever adjustments to your life’s routines can result in a huge impact and desired results.

Heatmap

A visual representation of a web page that shows you where users look, what elements they interact with, where they click and how far down the page they scroll. Heatmaps are extremely useful in understanding how users interact with your website, allowing you to find and remove obstacles and improve the usability of your pages.

Hustle

To put it simply, when you hustle it means that you give 110% of your efforts to a given task. You pursue every potential avenue, knock on every door and leave no stone unturned in pursuit of your objective. It is about pushing yourself, working with persistence, not giving up, having the courage to try things outside your comfort zone and maximising all your efforts until you attain your goal.

ICE Score

This is a methodology for ranking ideas in a backlog. The “I” stands for the impact you expect an idea to have towards your goal. The “C” stands for how certain you are that the idea will contribute towards your goal. And the “E” stands for the ease of implementation. For each idea, these 3 attributes are scored from 1 to 10, then summed and divided by 3. The resulting number is the ICE score which can help you prioritise the testing of your ideas.

Ideation

A fancy word for brainstorming.

Influencer Marketing

The practice of marketing to, through or with individuals that have a great degree of influence over your target market. It can involve selling your product or services to an influencer, having an influencer market your offerings to your audience on your behalf, or having an influencer become a direct advocate of your company. This strategy is used to both expand your reach and also increase consumer trust in your brand. Celebrity endorsements and giving free samples to journalists in your industry are two examples.

Iterating

This simply means trying and trying again until you discover what works best. It’s a process of experimentation where you make small adjustments to your products, websites or marketing channels until you find out the most effective setup. You use the data analysis of previous attempts to inform each new one.

Landing Page

A landing page is a single page on your website designed for a particular purpose. It is where visitors “land” when they come to your site from a particular promotion or source. It might be a page for getting users to sign up for an event, subscribe to a newsletter, or download a file. A good landing page is typically designed around one clear call to action, or desired action. They are frequently the subject of A/B testing.

Lead Magnet

Because most visitors on your site are probably not ready to purchase right away, the first step in activating them and plugging them into your sales funnel is to get their email address or contact information so you can pursue them later. A lead magnet is something you use to basically “bribe” your visitor to give you his or her contact info. Free downloads, e-books, e-courses, free trials and other promises of valuable goodies are commonly used to get your visitor to opt-in and hand over their info.

Lean

Lean is simply creating more value with fewer resources. It’s about understanding what drives customer value and continually focusing on maximising it. The final goal is to offer your customers a perfect value proposition through a perfect value creation process while wasting nothing.

Leverage

Growth hackers often use this word as a verb. They leverage an asset to get a larger than average result by putting in the same amount of effort. They may leverage their relationship with an influencer, for example, to gain a guest posting opportunity on a big website.

Lifetime Value (LTV)

This is how much a customer or client is worth to you over the entire duration of your relationship. If you charge a monthly fee and have an idea of how long, on average, a client will use your services, you can calculate their LTV. This is often used to put a cap on your customer acquisition costs (CAC). In a simple scenario, as long as your LTV is higher than your CAC, the acquisition costs are worth paying for.