Your Default View Will NOT Make Your Business Growth

Article inspired on Kissmetrics webinar ¨How to Find the Big Growth Opportunities Hiding in Your Data¨ hosting Morgan Brown, thanks you guys ;) (sorry about my english writing, its been a while). Many people are talking about Growth, Growth Hacking, Growth Hacks and many other cool words to talk about the most important and relevant aspect in any companie, GROWTH. Some of them are until triying to understand or measure the difference between Digital Marketers and Growth Hackers, others knows the importance of growth, but they dont know how or where to start. I made this article for those guys. I feel like we´re living one of the most important times in business, we can track whatever we want, get data is no more anafortable asset for small business, decision making isn´t any more a ¨hunch¨ or the result of many years of experiencia holding in one manager mind who made the same things over and over. Now we can drive decisión using data, and the real challenge is be the most creative to plant different scenarios to test, and be the most analitical to measuere and collect data to drive the decision process. Ok, but how to make this happend? How we can start collecting data? How to convert data in a valuable asset? Step 1: Built a Growth Model, (most be yours) Whats the first thing you see when you open a new or existing Google Analytics account? Yes! the default view, created by someone who doesnt understand anything of your business. This view wont take you anywhere, definitble you can not take decision using that data, so you MUST to create your own Growth Model, and be stick to it for sometime (until data drives to another model). You need to understand how your business growth (or doesn´t growth), but without thinking on tracking tools or events yet. You need to create first a mental draft of your model. Here is a little help to start thinking on yours: To get more specific, this is an example of how Amazon built his growth model: Ok, you have your first mental model, at least drafted on a piece of paper. This will be your framework to move forward on your growth process. Now it´s important to communicate about this model to the hold team you´re working with, or you need to start working. You will need help from all team of the company (IT, Marketing, Product Managers…), so they must know what they are doing and why they are doing it. Step 2: Built a Tracking Plan Now you have your own growth model, but its empty, you need to start fill in with the data that matters to you. Building and activating a tracking plan is your priority right now. This kind of plan involves the key events to track and the tracking tools you´re going to use to track them. If you are a little bit dizzy, segment.com created a list and tracking plan, maybe this will help you out: Click me Where do I start? We can track evertithing we want, and thats a cool thing, but it also can drive a lot of useless data and numbers, so I strongly recomend you start tracking your key costumer flows, the ones that drives you the first quick results, maybe small but quick. This will strat driving and proving the Growth Process with the hold team, making fast but effective iteractions. When I say effective, I don´t mean succesfull or winners, I mean measured correctly providing the data we were looking for. Step 3: Go! Find your Data, Make your Business Growth (final call, stop thinking about the default view) You are now starting to collect the data you think you need, and the first thing it comes to your mind is start hacking your ACQUISITION process with data. Thats great, you´re an ambitious guy and you need to getnew costumers, but this could be a tricky metric and not the best growth hacking process kick off, if your top of the funnel has leaks (and Im sure it does). I strongly recommend you start hacking your bussiness with the ACTIVATION process of your users. It will drive you bigger and faster user volume to make all the test you want. And if you activate more users, your data base will be more granular to continue hacking the activation process with volume and data. To make your business growth, hacking every part of it, you need to follow a PROCESS, a simple, dinamic with the main steps to sustain your data, ideas, testing process and analysis. If you don´t have a process you wont be available to scale your business growth, so think about it! This is an example of the one I use, and it used but others Growth Hackers: (in the next Medium Post I will get deeper on this process) To be effective with this process you need to go through it fast, and many times as you can. There are a few tools to help go through the process and share with other team members the hacks you´re working on and the step of the process they are, I use Pipefy with great results, they have a Growth Hacking pipe model that you can start using, no need to create one from the scratch, if you follow the main steps of the process in the image below. I know I said that I will run a new article to get deeper in the Growth Process, but I know that you´re not going to wait for it and you will start running your growth model and process, so let me tell you somethign about the TEST step in the process: When you run a test, make sure to built a MVT (Minimum Valuable Test), dont get crazy making the things perfect, remember you need to go through the procees the fastest and many times you can. If the TEST step hold you back, think again. Always make sure that the main journey and metric of your test is in order, you need to learn to deal without design and making the things perfect, and prioritize getting the data. And finally, when you find something that works for you business, don´t leave it and go with something else, try to get the most of that, remember: A 5% of growth in a month, represent 80% of growth in one year (Peep Laja, ConversionXL) What to do Next (until we read each other again) Get you data in order. Set your notrh star Identify the key succesfull behaviurs. Learn and keep moving Thanks! Jota / Growth Cruncher (If you like what you´ve read, check my Growth Hacking online Certifcate in Capabilia.org)