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What if your path to becoming a marketing mastermind was through acting like a mad scientist?
That’s exactly what growth hackers are doing today in order to get more leads, more traffic and ultimately take the marketing world by storm.
While the advice of growth hackers is often vague, the principles of the practice are rather simple. That is, rapid experimentation of marketing techniques combined with free platforms such as blogging as social media as means of growing an audience. Once a profitable niche or audience is discovered, savvy growth hackers then exploit that channel until it’s time to move on to the next one.
Growth hacking isn’t so much about breaking new ground but uncovering diamonds in the rough in terms of marketing. Perhaps one of the best way to put yourself in a position to uncover new revenue streams is about challenging yourself as a marketer. Any of the following challenges are fair game for marketers looking to break a sweat in order to uncover more leads, traffic and eventually, cash.
Monetary Challenges and Goals
Perhaps the most obvious means of pushing yourself as a marketer is to set monetary milestones. When you have an end-goal in mind in terms of how much money you want to make, whether it be a few hundred of a few thousand dollars in the span of the month, it’s much easier to motivate yourself to stay on the grind.
Take, for example, trading guru Tim Sykes’ penny stock challenges. Sykes’ students are getting insane results (think: thousands per day) as the result of his challenge putting a fire under them and forcing them to put in the hours necessary to make it happen. And what does Tim Stykes Challenge cost? Little more than an investment of time and energy.
The idea here is to have a light at the end of the tunnel and something that you’re looking to achieve from a financial standpoint. Maybe it’s $1,000 this month and $2,000 the next: the sky’s the limit when you have a goal in mind.
See How Long You Can Go Without Spending
With so many free platforms out there for marketers and bloggers alike, there’s no doubt that today’s growth hackers can go quite far without spending a dime. Through free WordPress plugins to social media sites, the bread and butter of modern marketers isn’t always dollars and cents but rather common sense. Expensive software is often overrated, especially in the era of organic traffic and totally free marketing tools.
Challenge yourself to see if you can cut the cord with some of your paid subscriptions and instead rely on freeware. Likewise, see if there are any cost-cutting measures you can take beyond your business life (think: cable television or other subscription services you aren’t using) as means of keeping more cash in your pocket for the sake of your company.
Form New Work Habits
Sometimes our success as marketers has less to do with what we’re spending or trying to make and more to do with breaking and forming habits. For example, consider the following which could ultimately supercharge your productivity and ensure that you actually focus on your business:
- Spending a day or two per week working remotely as means of giving yourself some fresh air
- Experiment with your work hours: perhaps you’d be more efficient by blocking off morning hours to get down to business versus spreading your work throughout the day
- Take a distraction-free approach: perhaps use productivity hacks such as the Pomadoro technique or noise-canceling headphones while you work to keep yourself laser-focused
Whatever you decide to do, make sure that you continue to challenge yourself as means of growing. Literally. Rather than allow your marketing efforts to grow stale, consider the possibilities when you push yourself to the limit and try new techniques.
