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Success Archieven - Startupboot

Introduction to Growth Hacking

By | Geen categorie, News

Introduction to Growth Hacking

Growth hacking nowadays is actively used by startups and businesses as an alternative way of marketing with the main focus on growth and profitability. The goal of a real growth hacker is to expand a customer base of a business with the use of modest, analytical, creative, and innovative methods.

Here we want to give you some useful brief tips that Growth Tribe (growth hacking gurus for talents in Amsterdam) shared with and that can be used  in your growth strategy right now:

  1. Experiments is everything

It is often hard to be right if you are working online. Gut feelings of the marketers usually appear to be wrong, so only data and numbers can help to prove the assumptions. Thus, it is wise for companies to spend time and resources on experiments’ conduction. In a controlling experiment setting, it is their main and the only target to study consumer behavior and find the best method of revenue maximization through the acquirement of new customers.

  1. Tracking is important.

Tracking is crucial for business growth. However, it is important to track metrics that can actually help with new partners or customers generation (as engagement rate of social media posts, the website bounce rate, conversion rate) instead of visual performance indicators (as to reach or impressions)

  1. Use tools

Growth hacking is based on the usage of handy and modern tools that can help you test all the assumptions in swift time. Surf the Internet to uncover which ones you can use for website creation, automation, social media planning or even persona revealing of the potential leads or customers on LinkedIn.

  1. Make it look like human

Automation is a very important part of scaling business, however, people still appreciate human factor and trust business more if they feel a human interaction. Thus, do not be scared to make a mistake or actually aim at making mistakes in your automated messages and emails to create a feeling of human synergy.

  1. Catch them in 5

You have only 5 seconds to impress your potential customer on your website or social pages. So make a message about your product vivid and clear. The image and design are not everything, copywriting is extremely important in this catching business. Each copy or caption work towards selling the unique point of your business.

  1. Psychographics personas

A buyer persona is a profile of your ideal customer based on real data. However, you cannot get a full understand of your customers with only information about their demographics. It is important to understand things like emotions, values, interests, desires, goals, hobbies, habits and other relevant aspects of their psychological characteristics to understand what and how they want it.

 

 

 

6 Brief and Useful Tips on Growth Hacking

6 Tips on how to become successful while avoiding unnecessary stress

By | Geen categorie

Last week’s event was all about our fresh goals for 2018! Have you set them yet? Our speaker Rob Lacroix definitely talked us through how to be successful while avoiding unnecessary stress.

Now, success is a term which keeps coming back to us at Startup Boot and we have thrown its meaning at you more than ones. Rob has added a new aspect: when trying to become successful, one must acknowledge whether they thrive success because our parents, our schools, our friends or our social system experts us to, or because we feel a passionate drive ourselves. The last one is the valid drive to feel successful. And that is what success is all about right? A certain feeling. if you want to be successful, you stop trying to meet up to standards you’ve been put up with, instead you follow your passion and the sky is the limit. 

When starting a business or setting goals for the new year, rob figured a three- boxed check list to come in handy named RAC:

Recognize there is a challenge
Acknowledge you play a passionate Role in the change
Commit to the change

Make sure you are doing things for the right reasons and success will follow. When putting in the right amount of effort of course! The following 6 tips on a healthy mind-set towards success might help you achieve your success while avoiding stress:

  1. Make careful choices about whom you want to reach your success with. Whether you need a co-founder, employee, freelancer or investor, know what kind of person the company Needs and take the right pick. To find the right person, always keep your eyes open! He might just sit next to you while you’re reading these tips!
  2. Do not do everything yourself. A big percentage of entrepreneurs is suffering from a burn-out. Avoid this by delegating certain tasks. Know your strengths and Make sure people around can you fill in the gaps where you lack.
  3. Make sure your goals are realistic. Unrealistic goals Will only gain you stress. Not the output you had in mind. Plan realistic and smart
  4. Be an athlete!! Not by becoming a sportsman in the world cup nut by copying their habits to success. Eat healthy, exercise and take breaks! This Will bring you the energy you need
  5. Be flexible. Like Darwin said:” it is not the strongest species that survives, nor the most intelligent one. It’s the species that responses best to change”. So be open to change! Does your strategy not fit the present circumstances? No worries, adapt!
  6. Do not give up! Do things not work out? Do not blame factors as competition or the economy. Find the real problem and work on it. Check the RAC again and commit! YOU can Make it happen.

Interested in the subject or do you want to learn more on how to reduce stress? Check out Rob’s website!

Best of wishes to all of you for a successful 2018! 

 

Perfection is the enemy of perfectly good

By | News

What would be the ultimate process to launch a company perfectly? Well this question got swopped out of my head last Thursday during our Startup boot event, because I have learned that ‘Perfection is the enemy of perfectly good’.

I guess that I still haven’t figured out what it means exactly, but when you think about it there’s a certain truth to it. Perfection is when everything is flawless and could not get any better. When something is perfectly good, it is good! Something good can always be better. So, thriving for the perfectly good instead of perfection makes you able to keep growing your company by keep making it better. But for starters: Good enough is good enough.

But, how else can you prevent a failure? In a previous blog, we discussed how failure is the road to success. This is definitely the truth. You can even find your success in your failure. Does this mean that you should not try to prevent as many failures as you can though? Of course not! There are a lot of things to prevent a failure, doing your research and having a plan for starters. ‘Failing to plan is the same as planning a fail’. The second learning to catch me off guard. Off course, you need to be bold, take a risk and jump in the deep sometimes to reach your goals. Still the greater goal behind these jumps can be planned.

And what to do when things do actually go well? What if you are on your way to achieve your goals: your product is launched, it has over 10.000 users and you receive a lot of media attention? Keep in mind that things can always change (for the good and the bad). We have been told how the process of becoming a successful company, can actually cost the founders their success or even their company. In this case, the investor ended up owning 50% of the company, the vision had changed and with that, the motivation of the founders dropped. This resulted into a ‘worst case scenario’ where the founders decided to quit the company. The big lesson here is not only to keep an investor from owning half of your company, but to make sure you are prepared for anything, keep your motivation in place and be able to react quickly as an entrepreneur.

These were three learning goals taught to us by Maarten Boer, Jeroen Malotaux and Rik van Dijk during our Startup boot BBQ event at Eenvoud Media. The subject of the event was about launching a business or product, experiencing failures and turning those into success. There was one important lesson our speakers all agreed on: FOCUS!

To turn launches and failures into a success, you need a lot of things of course. Think about the product itself, a budget, a marketing plan, people and so on, but none of these things matter as long as you and your organization do not have focus. In order to make it all happen, you need to see the bigger picture and be able to focus on the important things to make your goals happen. Make sure to focus on growth and balance, not the golden ticket and you’ll find yourself achieving you finest dreams.

The road to success.

By | News

If I could only.., I want to be better in.., we need more results.., I want to be more successful.. Everyone recognizes at least some of these ambitious thoughts. Failure seems to be our biggest enemy. We always strive to be more successful in our life or career and that’s a good quality when running a company. But what is success and what is failure?

Failure is part of the road to success.

Learning from mistakes is what makes you grow. You do not want to make the same mistake a second time so you make sure to handle the situation different next time. This is what makes a person or business grow and become more successful.

Maurice Hennequin taught us this same lesson over coffee. Friday morning he shared his story with us during a Startup Boot event. Maurice started his career with another definition of success than he has today. He started out as a man of traditional ambition of success through wealth. While traveling the world for his job, he created a check list of things he wanted to achieve. This resulted in a list of 20 boxes to check. And over the years, he found himself checking off all of these boxes;

– Become a million dollar man
– Buy fast cars
– Have several businesses
– Have a family
– And much more

Throughout the years this made Maurice successful and proud of himself. What happened? Following the financial crash in 2008 he faced a period where his business and life were becoming less successful (the failure), a situation he had climb out of (the road to success). This failure gave him insight and an opportunity to live a different life and redefine the meaning of success. He recognised that it wasn’t material success or social status but in developing meaning, purpose, generosity and humility. He realised that success was an inner journey and while this may sound cliché his personal rendition seem to give everyone in the room a little something more to think about.

Another lesson we have learned that was the lesson of Veronica Guguian, a marketing consultant for startups and SME’s. She said not only to have an end goal, know your audience, measure everything you do in order to improve, be present for your audience so you can build a community around your brand, but also to remember that not all companies in the market are your competitors. Some companies can make for great partnerships. One company, especially startups and SMEs, will not be specialized in all aspects which can make your company grow. Instead, different companies can work together to combine their knowledge and become successful together.

The road to success. A lesson well taught by Maurice Hennequin, founder of Keen Folk and businesss coach and Veronica Guguian, owner of SPIN Ideas.