Top Growth Hackers Respond: 24 Hours to Improve Revenue, What to Do?

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If You Had 24 Hours to Improve Revenue as Much as Possible, What Would You Do?

There are no restrictions from your boss. You have a $1,000 budget.

It’s an interesting question.

It speaks to priorities. It puts growth hackers and digital marketers in an uncomfortable position. It makes A/B testing (every growth hacker’s favorite tool) infeasible, and creating new advertising campaigns impossible.

I posed this question within a couple Slack communities, on Twitter and to the awesome community over on GrowthHackers.com and it seemed to resonate with a lot of them.

Over the course of a single week, over 4,000 people viewed this question on GrowthHackers.com, and many of the top growth-minded marketers and entrepreneurs responded.

This article is an attempt to synthesize their responses to give your business some powerful, actionable takeaways.

Before we get rolling, I had a great response from David Criswell, a marketing consultant and former director of marketing for Rafflecopter.

David reminded me, effectively, how all the growth advice in the world is meaningless unless your business and product are viable for growth.

What stage is your business at?

One point to add, particularly if the company is experiencing stagnant growth or a company in growth mode hasn’t done this, is to first put the $1,000 towards getting the “Must Have” survey question answered that Sean Ellis suggested in Hacking Growth: “How would you feel if you could no longer use xyz?”. Though it’s likely possible to collect this info without spending any money using free tools.

Spending $1,000 or $100,000 on growth efforts is a waste of resources until the growth team is certain the product is at “must have” status.

If the top growth-oriented marketers had 24 hours to improve revenue as much as possible, what would they do?


A few of the top responses recommended you dive into your analytics programs to identify campaigns which had potential or were struggling…

Shanelle Mullin, content marketing at Shopify, broke it down like this…

Focus on improving the most valuable on-site conversion.

So, whichever generates the most revenue over time.

To do that, I’d dive into Google Analytics and search for problem areas. Why? Because a lot of sites just don’t work right and that kills conversions.

They’re too slow (compare page interactive time to the site average), they don’t work in every browser or on every device (compare conversion rate to the site average), site search isn’t helpful (compare time after search to the site average), etc. The list goes on and on.

Start with either…

  1. High value, low volume pages.
  2. Low value, high volume pages.

…and just conduct some basic technical analysis to make sure your site is working properly. I promise you’ll find many, many things that aren’t. It’s the fastest, cheapest, most efficient way I know to increase conversions quickly.

Chris Hornak, CEO of Blog Hands, recommended you identify those advertising campaigns which were successful but could be maximized…

Identify advertising opportunities

I’d analyze my Google Analytics conversion data to determine which sources are providing me the best short-term revenue.

Let’s say it’s a recent Facebook Advertising campaign… I’d then visit my Facebook Advertising data to see what further opportunity may be available. Maybe we haven’t capped out the current audience. In that case, we’d increase the budget over the next 24 hours.

As long as the previous data is consistent with the data over the next 24 hours (day, time, audience, etc.strong) we should have a high chance at success.

The lesson taken here is that only through a long-term multipronged marketing strategy could you make such a decision.

If you aren’t properly tracking your campaigns via analytical data, you’re merely running your campaign on a hunch… which isn’t very reliable.

Artur Kiulian, a Partner at Colab.la had a similar strategy focused on identifying those marketing campaigns or channels which aren’t delivering. Artur, though, took it a step farther…

Identify those marketing campaigns or channels which aren’t delivering

I would spend most of the time figuring out which channels are having the least ROI and cut them off entirely as fast as possible. Instead I would focus on the digital marketing channels with the highest conversion rate and the ones that are bringing in the most revenue for the business. Most of the time business owners are way too distracted by the low revenue opportunities which can be cut off fast and that time along with the budget can be repurposed into more meaningful long term opportunities.

Freddie Streeter, a marketing strategist, focused more on the content side…

Identify top-performing content and build a tripwire

As this is designed to be a revenue booster. I would look at a few of my top performing post (in terms of responses) that month or quarter and build a small tripwire/lead/bonus based on that. Initially, I would send it to that same list referencing the post and how this helps with the problem. Then submitting it out to a new list for onboarding.

Several responses focused around delivering limited-time offers (and this would be my own approach as well).

Jason Quey, a marketing consultant at TheStorytellerMarketer.com, gave a super-actionable strategy…

Create and promote a flash-sale

If I had 24 hours and $1,000 to try to make the most sales possible, here are the three things I would do:

1. Email everyone on my list of a 40%-off flash sale. In the email I would include an explanation why I’m doing the sale, because this will help people rationalize the sudden price change and understand this sale will not happen again.

2. Reach out to influencers I have a strong relationship with and offer the same deal to them.

3. Work out a commission deal to promote to any influencers who respond to the above email.

Philippe Vanderhoydonck, Marketing Strategist at Sorted.co, had a few ideas focused on delivering more value than you normally do…

Provide extra value

  • Send an offer to existing clients for “private coaching sessions”
  • Send an offer to your database to attend a special (online) event. For example, if you sell customer success software, you can pre-sell a special workshop to give customers and prospects practical tips and insights on customer success.
  • Send a very email to our database of prospects, that says: “Hey, Are you still looking for {Product}?” For the customer success software example above, this would translate into asking “Hey, are you still looking for a tool to help with your customer success?” This will help identify the leads that are at the end of the funnel and possibly open to buy now.
  • If there is a feature that a lot of customers request, but you don’t have it right now, you could pre-sell it as an add-on to the product. (More relevant for mid-market to enterprise level software)
  • Send a discounted offer to your recently churned customers.

Justin Adelson, Founder at Perfect Pixel Marketing LLC, recommends you focus on a single social media campaign and use the $1,000 for paid advertising…

Create a social media campaign

I would create a paid social media campaign promoting a monetary prize or consumer good that our target audience would normally purchase themselves. People love free stuff – offering an actual monetary prize (i.e. not a free whitepaper) is going to drive a lot of interest and traffic.

I would create a landing page with a form asking for an email address and full name, which requires a double opt-in for prize eligibility, but will also improve lead quality.

Splitting the [$1,000] budget across different paid social channels and audiences will provide a lot of data about how viable each channel performs. I would retarget non-converting users on different devices, which will provide insight on how cross-device promotion affect conversion rates – but it also gives the user another chance to enter when they might have more time. Lastly, the company should generate a lot of leads that would be entered into an automated drip email campaign and the email addresses can be used to create lookalike audience for future campaigns.

Wishpond’s own COO, Jordan Gutierrez, also recommended that businesses create and promote an offer, but his recommendation was driven (not by social media) but by a co-partnership…

Create a co-marketing campaign

I would reach out to one of our partners or companies that are closest to us and do a co-marketing campaign in which we give away $1,000 of Wishpond products, they give $1,000 of their products, etc

Try to get a bundle, so like three companies that complement each other all offer the bundle at a deep discount and promote them to all of their existing email lists.

If you want to create a campaign to drive new leads, social media engagement and seasonal sales, check out Wishpond’s apps as well as a step-by-step walkthrough, “How to Run a Contest: Step-by-Step Guide (Updated 2017),” and “30 Amazing Examples of Branded Facebook Contests Done Right.”

I also had a few responses which utilized the more aggressive digital marketing approach. I don’t necessarily recommend these strategies for continual and reliable growth (as, personally, I think they negatively impact trust). That said, learning about all aspects of digital marketing is important for ideation and business growth.

And I’d love to hear what you think about it. Is growth at all costs justifiable? Where is your line?

Will Robins, a marketing consultant, gave a complete strategy breakdown for (and yes, I sincerely doubt you could complete this strategy in 24 hours, but I wanted to include it nonetheless)…

Try the aggressive approach

  1. Get approval on a week only discount/coupon – something awesome like 20%-off or 20% more value.
  2. Create a follow up series of emails that sell. We are not brand building so don’t send them to social media channels. This is in your face copywriting. I would go to Fiverr and outsource this piece of it.
  3. I would hire call drops to my leads. Call drops are voicemail messages without the phone ringing. I could only do this if I have people to take the call. I would have 2 call drops per person. If I didn’t have list of prospects then I would use scrapebox to scrape a list. If that wasn’t an option due to setup timing then I would buy a list of people to call drop to.
  4. I would make a landing page with my offer. I would mention the URL in the voicemail. Have the page up and fully functional. This is where we are driving traffic to. I may have to hire a copywriter in order to get this done. Again, I would go to fiverr.com for that.
  5. Email drops. I would use the free trial or the paid version (cheap software) on outreach ninja). I would find every blogger, website, and pay them to send to their list. This is a negotiation game. I would also find every solo ad I could and pay to have those sent. Think targeted hot prospects. That’s it.
  6. With any left over budget (probably next to nothing at this point if you did the last step right) I would buy one of the following:
    • Buy leads from a lead seller. I would have call drops and emails sent to them as well as a outbound call.
    • Drive traffic from a hot source. If I could find a Facebook audience of a competitor to emulate then that would work great.
  7. I would find four huge whales and do a complete analysis on what my service would do for their business. I would have a detailed proposal where I completely overwhelm them with data. I would have every in and out of their business broken down with a True and Steady game plan to showing an increase in revenue. I would then take every measure needed to contact them and pitch that plan. I would also have people calling every lead that came into the funnel and doing the same thing. Proposals win you business. Even when the customer doesn’t think they have budget.

Hamed Farhadian, another marketing consultant, focused on creating a “splitter product” which making buying easy…

Create a splitter product

So the point is to invest as minimum time as possible and get the best outcome. So let’s get started 🙂

1) In the first 3 hours, I would contact the latest buyers of my product/service and talk to them. Like, become friends with them. If you have a personality no one likes to talk to, you can lure them with giving Amazon Vouchers or full refunds. The point here is that you find out WHY they bought your product, and what they paid most attention to.

2) With that information, create a SPLITTER PRODUCT. That is basically the ONE THING that the customer loves about the product. If you have an app or service, this is quite easy. If you are selling physical products, you can still think about ways to fake limitation on your product’s capabilities.

3) Product Development: Set up a Landing Page to create this new product. Basically, you want a single landing page that explains the benefits of the new product and target group, as well as the special price. ONLY OFFER PAYPAL OR STRIPE PAYMENT. Make this as easy as possible to order. No Checkout Page, No FAQ. Just focus on the Splitter Product and a 1-Click way to order. Once they customer made a payment, you can email them and still upsell, downsell etc.

4) The first working day is over now, it’s 7 pm, but you have a new landing page with a new product. NOW it’s time to get crazy. Email every blogger, influencer that is getting traffic for your product keyword. Email them and offer them a partnership. For every sale that they generate, they will receive a commission. Send out about 50 emails, contact 20 people on LinkedIn and Tweet to 20 influencers.

5) If you have budget left over, invest that into Facebook Ads. Send as much traffic to the high-converting sales funnel.

This process has shown itself very helpful to me and if you follow it, I am sure you will notice the increase in productivity and sales 🙂

I would love to get your thoughts on these strategies. Are there pros and cons to an aggressive approach like the two above? What do you think?

Kat Lisciani, a marketing consultant at Millennovation, recommended you approach influencers from a different angle…

Get Creative

If I had 24 hours to improve revenue as much as possible I would do whatever it took to get the attention of the key individuals who I wanted to buy my product/service.

For me, that’s a B2B play. It’s time to get creative. For example, I might whip up a Snapchat geofilter to target Angela Fung at Ogilvy & Mather or Jill Simmons at The New York Times.

A devil’s advocate of this idea might argue a person of Angela or Jill’s level doesn’t have time to spend their day on Snapchat; and, actually, they’re right! But what this criticism fails to take note of is my goal. You see, my goal isn’t to get Snapchat more revenue (aka = more users). My goal is to increase revenue for myself. I don’t actually need Angela or Jill to use the Snapchat filter! I only have to make enough of a ruckus to garner their attention… or that of their trusted employees / advisors.

So, how would I succeed in doing that? I’d leverage the people sitting in the lower floors of their high-rise office buildings. The people who DO have time to Snapchat their day away. I’d also leverage relevant media outlets and a few highly targeted ads on Facebook or Twitter to multiply buzz about the filter.

I can neither confirm nor deny that I have ever done such a thing. If anything, let’s jock it up to a case of millennial innovation.

Here’s the truth that everyone forgets about success — when push comes to shove, results are about doing. Point blank, no buts about it. The internet is a powerful tool and with it you can accomplish great feats in a relatively short amount of time. The key is to leverage it to your strengths and timeline, as opposed to everyone else’s.

My own Thoughts and Recommendations

I liked this question because it prompted a lot of growth marketers to think outside the box, and many of them came up with similar strategies.

Many respondents recommended the “offer” or “flash sale” strategy, and this is where I stand. Incorporating monthly promotions (creatively executed) into your digital marketing strategy is my big takeaway for this article.

It also gave me an insight into a world I’ve never really paid much attention to – that of “aggressive” (for lack of a better word) marketing strategies. I’d never considered call drops (never even heard of them) as a viable marketing possibility, but learning from a couple of the respondents here opened my eyes to what many consultants recommend.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not judging any marketing strategy which drives revenue. Every marketer and business has their own comfort levels, and learning about them helps us understand where we stand.

Have you had any super-influential strategies that only took you 24 hours or so? What were they, and have you been able to repeat them? Get the conversation flowing in the comment section!

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