So guys. Hi, uh I'm Yani Bisan from Sri Lanka. And today I'll be talking about growth, hacking tips and tricks for all start ups and entrepreneurs.Um mm If you have any questions regarding this, uh please feel free to email me or chat, chatting here, we can drop a message on linkedin or Facebook or Twitter anything you like. And um I'll be more than happy to help you. So the topic we're talking today is growth hacking tips and tricks and these are the contents uh for the whole speech. And um when coming into the term growth, hacking, the majority of the users of this is start ups simply saying this is the bri and budget for start up. And each year thousands of start-ups emerge from every industry all over the world, but only a few remain stable and make a difference, others collapse. And we may be thinking to quit to the frustration of unsuccessful results or maybe because of the latest pandemic these days.

If you're into start up or thinking of joining a one, you definitely do not need to form the latter category I mentioned earlier. So what should you do? This is simple but highly logical and you can always improve the results. With your common sense, you can become this growth hacker that every start up wants growth hacking is that much popular nowadays and will be a highly demanded skill in your future. Since everybody wants to grow, you can be a natural with their tips. So the beginning of the concept growth hacking was started by Sean Ellis in 2010 and I'm not going to talk about it much. So, a traditional marketer has a broad weave and understanding of marketing, but still this was not the skill for start ups. These skills are really demanding in big companies, but what start ups need is something different. They need to grow. And this is where growth hacking comes into life. A true growth hacker does not need bigger budgets or expenses. What you really need is the growth. He can make a dead mouse into a bigger company chain with his beaming skills. And this is the example I take always a dead mouse into a bigger company chain. And for example, you can take Facebook, Airbnb and Instagram and you know the history of these companies, you know what they have done and you know what I'm talking about.

So what growth hacking actually do generally a start up uses analytical, inexpensive, creative and innovative methods to expand their company's customer base. And this is growth hacking, use it wisely and your start up will rise up to this. So let's talk about each of these strategies in short.

But first of all say you have this awesome idea in your mind, but you may have targeted the whole wide world. Now, my dear friend, this is where most of the start-ups get their own terms. So rule number one do not target the whole world, the narrower and precise your target audience is the bigger you get your first passing rate. Think of Instagram, this is photo uploading and target audiences narrowed down to that point. Other strategies and features comes next that this narrow audience at first is important. So it helps you to identify your target and their actual need. So the first rule to remember is to target a minimum crowd and then you can think of who would get the maximum benefit from your product, be specific and describe a real person as best as possible. So if you take an example, if you want to sell your beauty tip based software, then go your Children the whole bunch of women. Now, if I were you, I tell you like this, a 20 female who is beauty conscious lives in Colombo. This because that's my city, whatever the city is, is skinny that she, she's skin conscious. And just after a higher studies teenager and spends most of her time online, that means uh handling a software is not a problem for her.

So you should be this much detail or maybe more than this to find your ideal customer, then only you can address the real needs of your customers. Then these ideal target customers will do one of the most important things in marketing. Word of mouth in the digital world, word of mouth can be in the form of sharing the good name of your product. So without actually spending $1000 on the VMO for advertising, you have got free positive side advertising and this is the very tough growth hacking. So rule number two, create a product or a service that people tend to buy as an actual need. In short, create something that customers actually want or create the need for real. Sometimes you have to invest a huge amount of money and in return, you may get nothing. The reason behind this is users do not need these products. For example, I may take Neo Coke and Crystal Pepsi. Some of you may have heard of these products and both products were launched with a higher advertising budget and ended up failing. They could even recover the expenses.

The reasons reason behind these failures were the very same. We spoke earlier. Users did not actually want those and old products were restored with the old care. Of course, you should not want this ill fate for you to happen to avoid this. Always try to understand your customer, try to understand what they actually want. Word of mouth matters in this case also say your product is bad. The news travels fast and almost everybody knows that. So you do not have this third eye to know the exact feeling of the customers. But you can always take feedback. So the third eye can be awakened, always take feedback. So you have this awesome idea of your product. But before starting to build it, start asking and answering questions regarding it, then feedback, take your feedback right away. Uh If the status is good, start building it. But in this one point, take feedback again, you want to take a few feedback round before you release the final outcome. And this final outcome with constant feedback rounds is um with less defects rather than an average outcome. Finally, a prudent and worthy product can be released.

And after the gran release, updates can be added with constant feedback at par with customer needs. Apple, Uber, Instagram side ground are few of the famous companies that treat feedback as an important part in their business. So there is another side of this section create the NUC product.

Well, actually this is uh for big companies but still signups can practice to do it by small T for example, Apple created the wireless charging feature for the latest iphones, but they did not send any on their default back. So iphone users need to buy these wireless chargers separately which costs nearly $50. And this is one of the best examples for creating the need for the product. So all these points we were talking about are the products or ideas that you already have but say you do not have any specific idea that doesn't matter. So for free, check the use of your social media, create a personal blog or youtube channel, the main uh target the main niche. You thought your business would be the ensure it contains a valuable post through those. This will definitely give you the idea of the user's preferences.

You can get a broad idea of what they like and dislike and this is getting feedback. You have now collected your first round of feedback and you can build a strong list of flows through this process which will help you to market your product. So as you see, this is hassle free and risk free method for a start a group hacker should equip this chip in the in his toolbox with mock important. So now we have a validated product and have targeted the audience and what's next next? We can actually start to work before this. I were to bring in an acronym, a double eight triple R. And this funnel stages can be drawn as acquisition, activation, retention, revenue and referral. And this uh acronym is also known as P metrics uh let's dictate. So the third, uh the first one, the first area of this acronym is acquisition ma'am. That will be the rule number three in our speech. That is how you get people to know you by your name, as I mentioned earlier, after you have an idea and target your crowd. Now it's time for you to act, check your validated idea into the market. This is where a CEO paid advertising, word of mouth, public relations all come up. Uh Just a small tip.

Keep in mind to keep a simple budget spending $1000 on paid advertising and receiving a lower traffic or getting a higher bounce rate means either the target audience was around one or the expectation is somewhat different. So this acquisition can be done in three different ways in referral traffic, in sticky traffic and in paid traffic. So uh referral traffic, if the same are going viral, you can either provide a free value added service or something that your product goes viral. People tend to share these types of products with promotions, take advantage of social media at this point and also take advantage of quality backs. I repeat quality backings. But if something goes wrong and the expected outcome could be met, make sure to change the strategy quickly and do not stay on the same strategy too long. So the next day is to traffic and it gives the best use experience ever as possible. Facebook as an example uses this strategy very powerfully. Facebook users use it as they have glued into it and all the strategic ways have become so successful in Facebook that always come up with a simple, nice idea to keep your customers in yours as long as you can, these increased session durations and number of sessions will definitely be an advantage.

So the other thing is pay traffic, pay traffic can be used for products such as hardware or other services and also in software products. Also that it's not much recommended. But what you keep in mind is to decrease cost, increase profitt. So spending unnecessary amount of money is something to avoid in start ups. So the next A is activation and that would be the rule number four in our speech, how to give us a happy first experience giving happy first user experience is the key to activation. This can be easily measured in Google analytics by looking at decision duration. When a business spends a longer period than a minute, navigating through site pages or an app, we can say that there is something for him to stay longer. This time impacts c since we don't know why the user made his choice to stay longer, make everything for him to stay longer, make the process is clear and simple. Your strategies as easy signups logins as users do not want to stay too long on these processes. If you can avoid taking very personal information, like credit card details, that is advantage. As many users do not want to reveal that private information, then only the happy experience will be made out from the first visit. So don't forget, as long as you make them happy and satisfied, a successful sale is around the corner. Just remember to get natural traffic, giving the best experience. So the next r the first R in our speech is retention and that would be the rule number five.

So now we have gained some users and give them happy first experience, not what's next. Uh You have to persuade them to come back again or try again as returning customers tend to spend more money than a first time user. This repeated customers or loyal customers tend to buy more compared to others. Even though this fact remains unharmed. Over years, most companies do not follow this. They spend the majority of their budgets to gain new customers but not to retain customers as a group hacker.

You should definitely make a set of loyal or retaining custom base and also do not forget to focus on them and focus on their demands as they are more likely in the buying behavior than this is a workshop, trust me. So radio customers roaming around and zero moment of truth, you can always use your own strategies. And this zero moment of truth is a concept by Google. You can search if you're interested in. And uh these old strategies I've said is uh I take email as an example. So how do I use emails to use the retention and to attract users at once Facebook, aliexpress, linkedin and many other repeated companies use this tactic when you can log in this account for some time, they send you this attractive email of what you have missed with the allowing message that they missed you and come back soon.

And this this clever and again live chat with the online customers is also another engaging campaign for the users to see and to come back. Use tactics like bots if you cannot actually attend to live chat, as users trust this live chat do not break into break the trust by not responding to them. If you have already established a live chat on your website, uh These are many more strategies like this and you may create your own bonds when you go ahead with the business. So the most important are our uh speech is revenue. This is the main point in start ups and every business, the start ups, the revenue generating model is really important. You may want to have a good team with a good front office in future. But at first, you may get stuck with negative cash flow and be frustrated. And that is natural for a start. Use the men strategies and anything that you can think of to overcome the situation like special campaigns, google ways, email campaigns, reducing shipping charges. These will change your days. Every big company was once a start up and most of them have faced the same situation less or more.

They have used this marketing strategies to its finest, to overcome these issues and their frustration has switched to revenue and hanging on for a while with the difficulties to reward you later. Then I promise you, I know you can have uh you can see a simple email or a simple, nice text message will change the fate of your business. This is what growth hackers actually should do in a start up, Set the idea validate it, test it, measure it and repeat until you reach your target growth, hackers should know the way of doing this. So now the last are referrals. Many companies hire the best marketers and best analyzers to create complex track processes and many other plans for attracting customers. They spent millions of dollars just to advertise their products. But start ups cannot do this or even if they can, they shouldn't do this as probably discussion earlier.

So what start ups can do to have college referrals or back wings? Well, just a simple question would do the trick. Would you recommend this company to a friend? And this simple question has done a lot. Trust me. This can be presented in many ways when the sale is on board and maybe uh as a question, maybe has no answers or maybe as a skill or maybe a star rating. So this net promoter score is a layout that many companies use this, this to make their referral code apply. So you can get a clear idea of the types of customers you have and can act accordingly. If the customers belong to the middle type here, you can need to pay extra attention to them so that you can set them before going to some other product. When it comes to promote analysis, you have to take the calculation as per the image and see which way you're heading and then act accordingly. Other than the extra loyal customers, the customers will the product as soon as a cheaper or easier alternative shows up. So you can you have to pay good attention to your products quality as well as your customer's behavior. So uh this conclusion and the most important part is continuous improvement. This is very critical stage. Most start ups omit the step once they have met their target.

But this would be the starting point of the disruption. People will find better alternatives if you do not improve from time to time. Now we have good referrals also and you have good revenue and you're doing really great. So continue with these good guidelines or steps, you just follow with some experiments to improve. Otherwise, if the product remains the same for some time, users would find more advanced fund from outside ping their daily changing needs. So you have marketed the product and sent emails and in many other strategies to attract uses. But you forget to add this step guide anywhere or couldn't email the guidelines, you find, uh you would feel that he's abandoned and much leave the product because of this. But if you took care of it continuously, even after the sale, you could have saved the customer by either sending him the guidelines or updating the product with his tech guide. And this is why feedback is important. So almost all the companies in the world practice these improvements iterations and this is a must for a start up. As you can see, this is the group we are talking about. This is the target, do practice this improvement steps. And I guarantee that you will get 100% success as customer satisfaction is the key to success. So I hope this would encourage you to learn and practice growth hacking or else this would give a tiny start up owners out there. Um So that's it.

And thank you for listening. Um If you have any questions or any queries, contact me this uh via this uh Twitter, linkedin, Facebook or email, I'm more than happy to help you. And if you have any questions, you can drop in this chat also and enjoy the conference and precious guys. Thanks, he and me. Thank you so much. Thanks so much, Tika. Thank you, M Santi. You're so welcome. Yes, of course. It does affect a lot because uh at the end of the day, what we need is revenue and the traffic is the one who generates the revenue. For us. So traffic is really, really important. Hey, Shannon, thank you for the question. Will they come? That's a lot. Actually, you can, you can, you know, email campaigns are like a talk. You can just send email to grab their feedback. We can just ask their opinion about the product. There's so much you can think of the good things with your business since I don't know about your business. But uh, it's different uh from industry to industry, but there will be many things depending on the industry, but just email is uh one of the best tricks actually. So you can grab the returning customers giving promotions. Uh some uh promotions with email campaigns would do the trick neatly. And thank you, Primo. The great. Thank you. Thank you, Hasani.

Mm Any questions or else you can connect me with linkedin uh like it's in uh block my hand this summer, I can drop the linkedin profile. This is it. If any of you interested, interested, please uh drop a message. I will help you as I can. Yes, of course, I would, I would definitely do that. Um If the guys can reach to us and we are trying to reach to tech ladies. Also, we have this Facebook group also uh pri a public group of tech ladies in Sri Lanka. So we are trying, trying so much to help everyone in any way we can. Uh we will definitely help and if they if they can reach us or if we can reach them, we will definitely help. Thank you. Uh Since you guys have no, any other questions, I guess. So, I would take my leave and if you guys have any questions, please feel free to ask. I have dropped my linkedin here so you can drop me any message you want about the this uh entrepreneurship. I'm always here because I'm a, I'm doing FCO also and uh I'm doing crazy Zuma. Uh I'm co-founded Graza Grama is an online uh CV gene generating tool. So if any of you need uh to use uh uh online tool, generate your resume, generate your CV. Uh Please feel free to check resume. I believe it's really good. So, um and I'm checking my leave here. Thank you so much for joining with me today and enjoy the conference. Bye bye.