The OILS Framework for Growth Hacking

Growth Hacking is a now a commonly used term which basically involves generating growth in the most efficient and cost effective way. The idea is to come up with hacks which are focused and targeted to end users so as to get the best ROI on any resources spent.

The OILS Framework is a good way to come up with hacks which may aid growth of the business.

O – OLVP Definition: This involves defining the One Line Value Proposition of the company.

I – Identify Target Customer: Here based on the OLVP defined, the target customer is identified precisely.

L – Locate Customer: The above identified customer is analyzed and frequented locations and behavior is located.

S – Select Channels to Target: Based on the above locations identified, some channels are selected and targeted to reach out to these customers.

Hacks generated from the framework have to be tested and analyzed over time to judge the effectiveness and outcome of the same.

Growth Hack – Trend Watching

A good business hack to maintain high growth rates is to keep watching latest trends in the Industry. These trends can include latest developments in product design, marketing strategies, customer expectations and so on. A good startup will keep abreast of the latest trends, identify the ones which are getting good customer adoption and will be flexible in adapting them into the business.

Zara is a leading fashion brand which has scaled tremendously in the past few years. The Spanish retailer is famous for it’s agility in identifying new fashion trends and flexibility in integrating them into it’s own business.

Growth Hack – Comprehensive Customer Research

As mentioned earlier as well, building a good product for a focused group of customers is a great way to get traction. A good tool to build such a product is customer research. Identify people in your target market, try to get as much information from them and incorporate the results in your product.

Tempo, an AI enhanced calendar app, was able to do this very well. It was launching at a time when the competition was extremely high. They did interviews, surveys and a whole lot of product testing before the launch. When they did launch, they were flooded by a large number of new users.

Growth Hack – Limited Initial Target Market

Having a very limited and clearly defined initial target market leads to a more focused product, which in turn results in higher adoption. Also this mostly tends to result in a community cum networking effect, which further enhances traction for the startup.

Quora started off in Silicon Valley and was targeting startups and VCs. Soon it was able to build substantial traction through this network of it’s early savvy users.

Growth Hack – Social Sharing

Sharing has strong inbuilt networking and growth features attached to it. Incentivizing users to share a product, a offer or a just good experience can work very well for a startup. Since a user only shares if he/she is very delighted or significantly benefitted, this is a difficult task and requires avery carefully planned out strategy.

Groupon was successful in using this hack in their early days. Deals on Groupon had a ‘tipping point’ initially. You could avail the deal only after a certain number of users bought the deal. This motivated many users to share the deal with friends in order to avail it themselves.

Another example of a startup using this hack would be Candy Crush Saga. In Candy Crush, if you die, you can either wait for 30 minutes to play again, pay to play again or invite friends to play and get extra lives. Almost all users use the 3^rd option and the app has seen amazing growth because of it.

Growth Hack – Right Message at the Right Time

Sending a relevant message at the right time leads to great results. This is particularly important in push marketing techniques like email marketing, sms marketing etc. So what do I mean by the right message and the right time? The right time is about finding a reason/occasion to send a message and a right message is one which is structured around it.

OkCupid is a dating app which has used this hack time and again as part of it’s email campaign. For example, when it rains, they send the following message to their email list in that particular area – “We noticed it’s raining tonight in San Jose. Our statistics show that more people sign in when there is bad weather. It’s the perfect time to message that special someone!” (source: freshsupercool.com)

Growth Hack – Act on User Feedback

The best feedback a startup can get is from it’s early users. A startup should keep a close watch on any comments, suggestions and feedback users leave and should analyse each of them well. The early users should be looked at as consultants and growth partners. Analysing and implementing user feedback has helped many startups improve different parts of their business.

TractionVC provides information and assistance to entrepreneurs in growing their business. In their early days, they were troubled with a low user conversion rate. They kept a close eye on the user feedback and recommendations they were getting and managed to implement many of them. Within a period of 1 month, their conversion rates multiplied by more than 5 times.

Growth Hack – Integrate

A good way a startup can get growth is by integrating the same with other businesses. The integration should result in some value addition for the users. The startup can benefit from the existing trust and visibility that these other businesses have created within their user base.

Slack has been able to integrate with major services like Dropbox, Asana and so on. This enabled it to get good user traction, especially in it’s early days. 

Growth Hack – Communicate Well

The sales process has changed and evolved significantly in the last couple of decades or so. A sale today is not just about a customer liking a product and buying it. A business tries to communicate exactly what it wants to a potential customer, builds a relationship and this eventually leads to a sale. Startups need to identify who their target market comprises of, what they want, why they want it and then try to build and present a solution to it.

A good example of this hack would be using the local language when setting up in a country. This helps putting the message across in a more personalized way.

Growth Hack – Invent the Wheel

Inventing the wheel means creating something useful well. Try to create something which is copyable and which other startups/businesses would need and may not want to invest in. Since you already have that with you, you can share it with others and get a mention/branding in return.

Startups do not want to spend money on creating a new privacy policy if they can copy it from some website for free. Iubenda was able to create a comprehensive privacy policy with their branding embedded in it and shared it with other startups. This helped them in their SEO and in getting referral traffic from these other startups.

Growth Hack – Social Sharing by Users

Social sharing by users has a great growth effect attached to it. If you can get a user to share actions on his/her social networks and blogs, it serves as a strong referral tool and good traction can be generated by it. Users tend to share because of 2 primary reasons – self-fulfillment and to establish new relationships and a personal brand.

A famous example of a startup using this hack is Quora. A user asking or answering a question on Quora can share the same on social media, which brings traffic to the website.

Growth Hack – The Content Hack

Great content is one of the best hacks today, be it for attracting new users, getting listings on search engines or creating a buzz on social networks. You can either produce content or get some external help to help you with it.

Udemy has seen amazing growth with this hack, which in inbuilt in the business model. It has domain experts like authors, professors etc adding content to the site. This ensures user acquisition and retention and also helps develop the reputation of the website on different media.

Growth Hack – A Good Landing Page

A landing page is a great way to convert a visitor into a customer. A landing page is a page which is accessed when a user performs an action. For example if I am running Google ads and have created a landing page for the same, every time a user clicks on my ad, he/she will get directed to the landing page. The aim of a landing page is give relevant information to a visitor, based on the source of his entry into it.

A good landing page should be structured to ensure all information which you want to give is presented in a structured and complete manner. Details can include something about the startup, benefits to users, customer testimonials etc. (Read more on Creating a Landing Page that Coverts)

Landing pages have been frequently used by many startups. Zapier creates landing pages for every integration it does. This helps in SEO and, as mentioned above, in giving users a clear message about what Zapier has to offer to them.

Growth Hack – Incentivizing Referrals

Getting referrals for your startup is a great way to attract new users. Referrals result in a higher conversion rate, because of the connection between the referrer and the referred. Using incentives, usually monetary, to encourage referrals can produce good results.

Paypal used this in it’s early days. They gave $10 cash as a signing up bonus to new users and also gave $10 to users who referred them. This hack was used by Paypal for a very long time.

Growth Hack – Break A Stereotype

This is a hack which I learnt from the Bollywood movie Ki& Ka. The story is about a husband, Arjun Kapoor, who wishes to be a housewife while the wife, Kareena Kapoor, works and earns bread for the family.  This is against the typical stereotype which exists in our country.

So Kareena is working as a marketer in a FMCG company and is growing well in her job. Arjun starts taking care of all the household chores. Friends and family start getting to know about this ‘bizarre relationship’ and the word starts spreading slowly initially. Once a media company covers this, the story becomes viral. Arjun starts getting known as the perfect husband a woman can get. He starts getting invited to major magazine launches, cooking shows, lifestyle events and so on. In a short span of time, he becomes a known brand in this space, with absolutely no marketing spend.

Growth Hack Story – Buzzfeed

Buzzfeed is a social news and media company and aims to provide users with the original and entertaining breaking news about anything and everything. Buzzfeed was founded in 2006 and has grown into a leader in this space.

The problem Buzzfeed faced was that most of the content it was generating was in English and they had already captured a good share of this market. They were wanting to expand into different countries and knew that mass translation of content into local languages would be required to do so. Hiring a professional translator would be expensive and time consuming.

What Buzzfeed did was sheer ingenuity. They approached Duolingo, a language learning app, and got it’s users to translate for them. Translating Buzzfeed articles became part of the coursework for Duolingo users. This got Buzzfeed translated content in various languages at a tremendous pace and at a fraction of the cost.

The Buzzfeed team had a task in hand. Instead of going the regular way, they identified an alternate route and found a way which was cheaper and faster!

Growth Hack – Piggybacking on a Big Player

If your startup can forge an alliance, tie up or any other kind of relationship with a big business, it can really accelerate the startup’s growth. Getting visibility amongst the business’s customer base and capitalizing on the brand of the business are two big benefits which the startup can derive from the association.

Spotify pulled a landmark deal by partnering with Facebook to become the latter’s default music service in 2011. Today, the app has more than 50 million users and is valued at more than $10 billion.

Growth Hack – Giving Freebies

Rather than spending dollars on marketing, this is a great hack to spend those dollars on conversion. Giving freebies is a great way to get people to try out your service, which in turn helps you establish a first connect with the user and get his/her information.

Appsumo is one company which tried a number of marketing tactics. One which really worked was this. They tried with a lifetime giveaway of Dropbox to attract users and within a few days had 250,000 new subscribers.

Growth Hack – Target the Right People

If you can identify and target the right user base, quick growth will follow. So what is the right user base? That is something you need to identify. Find those users who you think may be willing to join in, will be active and will attract other users to join.

Tinder this is perfectly in it’s early days. Dating apps did well if there were enough girls on it. Tinder realized this and decided to target sorority girls as it’s early adopters. As more girls joined, more guys were willing to download the app and find girls nearby for dates. Also since these girls were young and tech savvy, word of mouth began spreading for the app at a rapid pace.

Growth Hack – Build a Strong Community

Some brands are able to build strong communities of passionate and obsessive customers. These people become so devoted to the brand that they stick to it and also promote it as much as they can. The brand becomes part of their lifestyle.

HarleyDavidson is the leading example for building a community. The Harley community has a clear story to tell and has very clear qualities and messages it is able to convey. Read more about the Harley Owners Group.