Every venture is born as an idea that you must bring to fruition. However, what you do in the initial growth stage of your organization will totally impact what it will become. Fortunately, new technologies help a lot in this regard and to validate your business idea.
LinkedIn is a formidable platform to make your products and services known to an audience that highly values the launch of new businesses.
For this reason, we will explain how to use this website and some tools like Scrab.in to extend your margin of action, know the market movement, implement Growth Hacking techniques and automate the contact with your potential consumers.
How to validate a business idea?
One of the most frequent mistakes is to start your business with a model similar to that of a mature company.
This includes pretending to have financial liquidity and immediate economic profit without first having “eaten the green”
Beyond being a romantic theme and mere effort, the start-up concept obeys a scientific criterion characterized by exponential growth of a venture through the creation of products, services and experiences that are valid and scalable.
So, what do you need to scale?
When you start with an idea, it would be focused on providing solutions to problems of a specific audience. This audience might not necessarily be within your reach at the drop of a hat. This is where Growth Hacking massification techniques come in.
If you are CEO of your company, we understand that the responsibility you have is abysmal. Even so, we recommend you prioritize your efforts according to the following criteria:
Financial and commercial
Try a simple business: At this stage you will not have much money and the start-up capital is under a lot of risk. So you should think of simple marketing strategies that do not require major investment to make yourself known as a brand. Costs should be kept to a minimum, with products that can be sold quickly.
Find outside investment: Generating a business partnership is important at this stage. Having external investment is even more so.
At the product idea and validation stage (stage of the first product launch, which could be improved) capital should be allocated to building a technology and prototype improvement network.
No formal organizational structure is expected at this stage; much less demanding distribution lines, so you will be able to lower costs in this regard.
Seed capital tends to come through the confidence you can generate with investors, so showing clarity in your strategy is critical.
This capital also comes from the movement you make on social networks, such as LinkedIn, where many companies want to help newer ones to give back to society some of what they got.
Whether through the investment of patrons (Business Angels), startup accelerators or the placement of seed capital, direct much of the money in generating strategies for recognition and expansion in the market.
Remember that it is not about producing “like crazy” to see how you do, but to ensure that the little you do, can generate confidence in people and consolidate your brand. Growth Hacking techniques are intended to permeate the population with quality information about your brand, through content of use value and direct contact.
At the organizational level
Set up a team with a common purpose: It is important that the founding members of the brand have the same vision and purpose. In other words, everyone should be focused on a single initial purpose: growth and stability.
Therefore, everyone must be clear that profits will be low or nonexistent and the work could be intense and unpaid at the beginning. If they are not willing to go through this phase with you, then consider re-accommodating the situation.
In the startup phase, uncertainty is as present as the need to evolve. Risk is imminent, but daring to do things is what makes the difference.
Simple and optimized organizational structure: Ego and sectorial/divisional vision can lead you to create labels and departments in a structure that is still empty. So you must learn to work with a horizontal structure, which can evolve according to the potential demonstrated by each person.
Certainly, a phrase from D. Trump could have a place here. “Watch, listen and learn. You can’t know everything. Anyone who thinks they know it all is destined for mediocrity.”
Staff must be technically prepared, second only to their investigative eagerness and versatility in the face of change. Personalities and functions must complement each other to reach and contribute to the growth of the organization.
At the technological level
This is perhaps the high point of emerging growth strategies. The versatility of your technological network will be the “icing on the cake”.
The use of collaborative networks and social networks is free, accessible and allows you to massify content.
The intensive use of the Internet and information technologies will allow you to make the income you need. In what ways could your products or services help people? What kind of people? How many people can you reach? What content should you publish?
Certainly, the need/problem your idea focuses on is “still there” latent in the population, but you must give people a chance to know what makes your products quality and why they are convenient for them. In the same way, since you are a “newcomer”, you must explain who you are and what makes you tick.
This could not be achieved if you focus on an aggressive approach that emphasizes only the monetary or transactional value, but you must offer content that demonstrates the value of use of your product, its impact, benefits and profitability. In addition, you must highlight what makes you different from others and legitimize yourself as a connoisseur of what you do and sell.
Obviously, “knocking door to door” will not reach everyone you should reach (besides being a demonized strategy).
Your technology platform must allow you to:
✔️ Conduct market research.
✔️ Segment the population depending on country, location, gender, company of affiliation (by name and size of the organization according to its number of employees), level of study, degrees, specialty, title or specific academic training, skills and/or years of experience.
✔️ Increase the number of leads you have within your reach, within specific and well-targeted niches. At the same time, you will be able to see how the market responds to your publications, promotions, giveaways and downloadable content.
✔️ Direct responses, comments and reactions are inputs to improve your brand.
✔️Strengthen the Personalized Customer Service department.
Technology Platform for Growth Hacking in a Startup
Growth Hacking should be an approach present in all areas of action of startups.
To ensure success, you must create an automated platform to implement these strategies ranging from idea validation, business model, product evolution, to lead acquisition and customer maintenance over time.
Having tools whose price you can afford without generating a major impact is crucial to manage your venture in the startup stage.
It is striking how LinkedIn, having all the attributes you already know, still lacks native automation tools. But, this has not represented any problem because Scarb.in generates support for the automation of messaging and profile scans within LinkedIn.
Using Scrab.in to develop Growth Hacking strategies is very easy, since it allows you to manage and direct your efforts towards a specific sector of the population. The consumers of your content will have the impression of having a personalized contact.
Growth Hacking Techniques for Startups using Scrab.in
1. Links to other pages
You have to make the most of all your digital information sites. The idea is to use collaborative tools to give a single body to your website, external content and social networks. Therefore, make the messages on Scrab.in short, concise and persuasive, but giving the opportunity to know more about you through a common thread to another portal.
This mechanism, based on backlinks or linkbuilding, will allow you to be known. It doesn’t matter if the customer doesn’t consume your product right away. The important thing is that you will enter their range of known brands, leaving anonymity behind. In terms of SEO, you will see that the traffic will improve a lot on your pages, which will make your portal appear in the first places when a search is performed.
Additionally, it serves as a strategy of integration with other companies (either for financing, sale of cheaper inputs, advice or knowledge sharing) which will make you part of the business community.
In any case, it is a strategy that does not require a lot of time, no special infrastructure or too many people to carry out, just what you need at this stage of growth!
Using Scrab.in you will be able to send direct messages to your aggregates, in a massive and automated way. You will be able to attach:
- Links to your website, so they know who you are and about your story.
- Links to promotions, prizes and gifts, which are the most eye-catching things.
- Links to products from sponsors or portals that pay commission.
- Links to friendly companies.
- Links to social networks where you show content about the value of your product or service.
- Links to invitations, press articles, quotes, servers with downloadable information, directories and donations.
As an example, it is worth analyzing how podcast production has grown in the last two years. Basically, it has become a widespread and profitable business. Why is something that is surely an independent production profitable? Well, the technique of backlinks or linkbuilding has helped creators a lot.
Basically, many artists enable links for donations in exchange for exclusive content. For this reason, ventures that used to do something for free are now reaping financial success.
In the beginning, everything was done with little investment and little revenue. But through Growth Hacking they managed to position their product, refine the technique (validation), generate links (advertising and donations), make WOW gifts (exclusive content and prizes) and position themselves with the help of influencers (or become influencers themselves).
With the investment of 3 thousand $, many postcateros boast 30 thousand $ per month through platforms such as Patreon.
2. Outbound Marketing, free gifts and samples
Outbound Marketing is a more aggressive, direct and one-way style, but it tends to be effective in reaching the customer – being careful not to generate a rejection in the first few minutes. When using Scrab.in for Outbound Marketing you are more likely to succeed if you convey confidence and clarity in the first 30 words.
You have to start from the idea that people are more willing to read an InMail message in their inbox than an annoying intrusive advertisement.
On the other hand, with Scrab.in you can integrate links for the acquisition of free samples. Free samples should be targeted to your hardcore leads. In the end, people will say their appreciation and end up buying your products. In the worst case scenario, they will give you recommendations for improvement or tell you it’s not what they need.
You can also reward your customers’ initiative and commitment with gifts. The key point is to generate a rewarding, unexpected and memorable WOW experience for customers by giving them more than they expected. It doesn’t always have to be something physical, it can also be downloadable content, a time definite subscription to a program, original tutorials, etc.
Being a direct strategy, it is done with greater fluidity and generates responses that do not have to be “read between the lines”. They are concise and direct answers, even if they hurt a little!
3. Cumulative membership
In this case we are talking about the referral system, where people who join earn benefits for including other people to your organization. Through Scrab.in, referral links could be sent to hundreds or thousands of people within 1 or 2 weeks.
Initially, the benefits could be tiered depending on the level of rapport new affiliates show. That is, you could pay the referrer $1 for every 20 people who click on their invitation to learn about your products. But you could also pay them $3 for every 10 people who buy your products because of their referral. Thus, you would be increasing the reward for helping you find quality customers.
In this system, the investment is low compared to what you gain in terms of revenue, recognition and validation of your products. In addition, the payment would not always have to be monetary, but could be samples and rebates on your products and services.
In conclusion, it’s a win-win situation. Your brand grows, referrers get benefits and customers find what they are looking for.
4. Use of APIs
APIs allow two or more applications to communicate, for the convenience of the user.
It’s not something you can see somewhere on the screen, but it’s something you’ll already be very familiar with. For example, APIs make it possible for you to log in using another social network, post photos on one social network, but, instantly, they appear on another, or you can listen to music from an external portal from a native portal, and so on.
With Scarb.in you will be able to use/link to APIs for:
✔️ Link to an inventory system to verify product availability.
✔️ Link to a payment system, within the same screen.
✔️ Send information remotely to another program.
✔️ Link to servers.
How to automate Growth Hacking content for your Start-up, with Scrab.in?
✔️ In Scrab.in you can enter the “Invite action” section and then enable the “Message on Invitation” bar to send invitations to people who are 2nd level friends.
✔️ You can use a robot to automate the creation of a 2nd level contact base using the “Scrab.in review profiles” bot, within a specific niche. To learn more in depth, go to the article “how to automate LinkedIn messages”.
✔️ Once you have received the connection acceptance, you can enable the “Send direct message every” bar at the bottom right, near the bottom of the page, to send a direct message to every 1st degree LinkedIn person in a massive and automated way.
✔️ In a week, you can get up to 2,000 profile visits and, statistically, have about 500 to 800 responses from people who would be interested.
✔️ When you enter “Your prospects”, Scrab.in will show you the personal data, phone numbers, emails and companies they work with.
We have given you all the information to validate your business idea and scale. If you need or we have missed something use the comments and we will help you.
