These 'Market Boosters' Can Double Your Growth Rate Define your target customer's influencers and make them an integral part of your content strategy.
By Ehsan Jahandarpour Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
When it comes to growth hacking, most companies try to monitor their competitors' strategies. Unfortunately, this pattern is pretty visible in small- to medium-sized businesses. Hoping to achieve the same results as successful companies, they tend to simply copy strategies that work for someone else.
The truth is your company's success and growth rate relies on many factors. Duplicating a rival's conversion rate optimization or content marketing won't help you. In fact, doing so might even destroy what you've worked to build because your business models aren't the same.
That said, there is plenty to be gained by closely observing successful organizations. You'll see high and low points in any company's history, but you'll also notice a pattern emerge within each business. Those who survived grew stronger than before by following their own pattern for success.
Discovering your success pattern isn't about using the latest technology or applying a growth-hacking strategy you saw promoted on the internet. Instead, it's about leveraging additional resources to boost your business even in difficult times. I call those people "market boosters."
Related: How Growth Hacking is Redefining Marketing
You can find market boosters in any niche. Whether you're running an established online business or preparing to launch your startup, you must make the most of these market boosters. And to capitalize on what they can do for your business, you need to understand who they are.
Here's how to find your strongest market boosters and connect with them to grow your business.
Who are market boosters?
Generally, you can categorize your visitors and customers in three groups. First are your regular customers, who want your product or service to solve their problem. They have zero influence to help you grow your business. You must appreciate them and encourage them to stay with your business for long time. Second are your readers, visitors, regular followers and those who drop by from different sources. They might love to follow your work, but their sphere of influence is very small.
Third are your true market boosters. Others might call them influencers, though that tends to conjure images of next-level celbrities such as Bill Gates and Kim Kardashian. Your small-business market boosters have the tools, resources, networks and power to push your business to the top. They might be small bloggers, journalists, content lovers or social media enthusiasts.
To join the enormous number of companies that have identified their market booster patterns, you must think and act smartly to follow a proven framework. Then, develop your own strategy that's built around your unique needs.
Related: 8 Do's and Don'ts of Influencer Marketing
SEO boosters.
Everyone loves to be on the first page of Google. Ignoring those first three spots allocated for AdWords customers, do you think the results appeared randomly? Of course not.
While on-page SEO and good content counts, getting to Google's first page is all about the number of white hat backlinks that lead to your article from high-quality sources.
You'll acquire natural links, to be sure, but you also can get help from content lovers with the power to increase your traffic: bloggers. Begin by targeting bloggers in your niche and study which types of content they love writing about the most. Then, craft an epic piece of content and include a few of those common points in your article.
Once you've published your content, reach out to them and invite them to read your article. Because they've shown interest in similar works, it's likely they'll take a look. And when they see some of their points reflected in your work, they're even more likely to create a backlink. Your published piece gives them credit for what they know and validates their perspective.
Content marketing boosters.
If you know how to implement a long-term strategy, you also should know that content marketing is a high-efficiency tactic to build your business. But not every piece of content goes viral, and unless you own Buzzfeed, you can't put your article in front of millions of readers.
Here's a smart move you absolutely can make: Leverage known content lovers and social media addicts to exponentially expand your reach. This strategy is very similar to building backlinks, but you rely on the powerful search tools embedded in Twitter and other social media platforms to help spread your message. These advanced features allow you to shortlist people who spend a great deal of time online tagging or hashtagging concepts that correlate to your business or strategic priorities.
Explore these individuals' interests. Learn which topics they share the most and select a few articles, infographics, videos or other content around the core principles they advance. Craft your content based on what you discover, and polish the piece to intrigue them. When you post across social media platforms, tag your market boosters. The secret is not to push for social shares. Instead, ask if they care to give their opinions. The magic unfolds the same way as it does with SEO boosters. These influencers find out your content includes themes they like, and they're typically quite happy to share it with their own followers.
Related: 4 Growth Hacking Strategies That Work Like Magic
All in all, there are plenty of ways to leverage on the market booster concept and skyrocket your business. You'll just have to think outside the box. At its heart, that's growth hacking: implementing unconventional, creative-marketing strategies that speed up your growth process. Professional growth hackers know content marketing is one of those effective strategies. Optimizing your reach with market boosters, though, is like a "secret sauce" that can add significant value to your growth-marketing activities.
