Tips and Hacks which StartupTalkers used to Grow their Startups

In order to scale a business, it’s important for entrepreneurs to market their products effectively. There are many challenges down the road. So, scalability is only possible with these best startup growth tips and hacking strategies. If you follow us on Facebook, you must be knowing how great our community is! We'd love to discuss about things related to startup ecosystem and share valuable insights with fellow Startuptalkers. Here is the list of successful startup growth hacks and tactics shared to grow their startups.

In order to reach out to a massive audience, entrepreneurs need to adopt best growth Hacking Strategies for startups. We are sure it will help you to grow your startup as well. We will keep updating it with more and more upcoming hacks. Although some amongst these techniques have only been around for a few years, nonetheless, they prove to play a vital role in the growth of modern-day businesses.

Startup Growth Tips from Professionals

Innovate an existing product or service in your initial days, instead of presenting a super unique product. Ola’s concept was not new, however, they introduced the option of Auto rickshaw because it is what people of India wanted. – Varun Surana

Automate the process of marketing. Although not all the marketing factors, you can hire someone for some aspects of marketing like social media marketing. However, you should still keep a track that what is happening in which field of your business. – Ishu Bansal

Recruit the best people through LinkedIn. It makes sense because most of the professionals know the value of LinkedIn, and so all the decision makers are available there. If you are able to connect to just 2 best employees of a company and you research about 100 companies, you get 200 best employees. Having this many people professionals increase your success rate. Moreover, you can use this trick if you are new into hiring business. –Priyash Nigam

Make a product which a small group of people will love to use. When you focus on the need of a community, you get your permanent clients. It is because people tend to use any product by watching others use it. Once you earned the trust of one particular group, they will tend to use it more as they will see other people in the group using it. – Donvon Urfaison

Co-branding for marketing. However, you should never use this type of marketing with your rival (obviously) but neither should you co-brand with a diverse brand. You can see many products giving free products of their companies like with the bottle of some shampoo, you get hair straighteners. That’s the co-branding. The hair straightener company is not the rival of Shampoo company but still relevant to their industry which is Hair care industry. –Viswam Vemula

Use barter deals in events. Barter deals are deals without the use of money as an exchange. You can provide free promotion on your website or social media. You can use this hack to get a place in professional events. – Raunak Agrahari

Use memes for marketing. Memes are in trends right now and you can still use them for marketing. Moreover, you can use emotional videos for video ad campaigns. If you can someone laugh, you can sell your product to them. By laughing on something belongs to you, they tend to think about you. – Arpan Khosla

Do not to register your startup unless you have your product ready. It's really senseless unless you are getting a very big round of funding. But it is still advisable to make your product ready even before going to investors. Most of the investor like to invest in product and the team instead of just an idea and concept. – Ramamoorthy

Get a serious reason get out of your comfort zone. External motivation is just Moh-Maya. Find your reason to do something. Without reason, you can never plan and never know your next step. – Manoj Kumar Sahoo

Quote more price than your competitors if you are into digital marketing. Some experts advice to do it even if you are giving the same service as your competitor. Clients think that lower prices lead to bad quality of work, which is true most of the time. – Vikas Chauhan

If you want to deep research about anything then connect to the people who work in the particular industry, which you are researching on, through Twitter. You can also go to NGOs or Government organizations for this matter. They are like mine of information.  – Indranil Deb

No matter what people say, but looks matters. Especially the looks of the ad campaign of the business matters. Use bright colors to design your posters. Bright colors attract more people and market your product more efficiently. You can observe the posters of other companies to learn more.  – Abilesh Hope

Get more work done through interns. It gives a lot of perspective on a low budget. Moreover, those interns learn to seriously work on real projects. Although some people think that interns will learn everything from the company and will start something same of their own. It is life and there is nothing like copying. There is only learning and implementing.  – Midhun Noble  

Use high-frequency sound or buzz in the background to stay focused on the work. These sounds stop your sub-conscious mind from distracting you and you can fully focus on your work. – Ronakk B kakkad

Use web.archive.org to get content of old websites which have already closed. Although it is not a great strategy for SEO it can provide you with some content which you can repurpose later. It will be great if you ask for the permission from the owner of the content first. –Shubham Kumar

While writing blogs, research and target on the long tail keywords. The competition on long tail keywords tends to be lower than that of short keywords. Moreover, big popular blogs already cover the rankings of short keywords, so it is better to be at higher ranking with less traffic than lower ranking and still less traffic. – Pranav Parth Tyagi

Ask the people for the opinions about your new product before launching it. Most of the time, the reality is totally different than we think it is. It is better to know their opinion at the starting and stop wasting time on the unprofitable product than losing your motivation by facing the failure. – Jatin Kumar

Know your product in terms of exact outcomes it will give to the customers. It will help you to create advertisement campaigns. Moreover, it will also help you to pitch it better to both, investors and customers. – Varun Surana

Focus on the operations of the company and improve it with the help of technology. You can also outsource any operation. Outsourcing is an economical way for business operation as you don’t have to spend time and money on recruitment and setup. – Varun Surana

Invest in knowledge. You can get free knowledge from blogs and videos, but they can never compete with the books. Read just 5 pages every day. It is better to go slow than to never start. – Varun Surana

Track the psychographic data of all your customers. It will help you to know the need of your customers and shape your product or service better. - Pranav Shandilya

Craft a solution around solving a problem keeping the end user in the center. In simple words, research well before starting your business. - Pranav Shandilya

Interact with your customers on a regular basis. It increases trust and improves the relationship. And trust is the only way to make anyone your permanent customers. – Pranav Shandilya

Never get your work done for free, neither do it for free. Getting free service is ok when you are a consumer, but it is not healthy for business. Moreover, when you take free official service from anyone, their expectations towards you increases which is the only reason most of the relationships end up. – Mudassir SkSm

Find the backlink sources while doing competitive research. Moreover, mirror their strategy. There many paid and free websites available on the web to do this. – Aditya Raja

The only person who knows the best about your company is you. Write the articles for your company on your own. Do not outsource it. You don’t have to spend hours on it, just 2 to 3 articles per week. – Rakesh Sidana

Chose your first few customers very carefully. These will be your best customers and your best marketers. – Arun Babu

8 Tips to Stay Productive while Working Remotely

Due to the drastic spread of novel coronavirus or COVID-19, companies are makingseveral efforts to keep their employees safe and maintain the productivity atthe same time. Most of companies have asked their employees to work from home[https://startuptalky.com/coronavirus-work-from-home/]. As majo…

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Try to genuinely help your audience. We published an explainer video for GST just to help people. In just somedays, we got 150k views and thousands of subscribers, even when we never planned anything like that. – Shubham Khandelwal

Focus on the system of your company. Improve the system where your own interaction as a boss, gets minimized. Once you automate the whole process of the company, your company will start growing faster. – Sampathraj Mathurperumal

Focus on your business rather than your investors. Clients are the biggest investors you can get. Work hard to improve their experience. – Nirav Shah

Promise discounts on the next service instead of direct discount or freebies on the current service. It will bound your customers as they will think that they will miss the opportunity if they chose anything but you. – Prithpal Rawat

Collaborate with other brands more often. It helps in growth and marketing. When you collaborate, their audience will get to know about you and your audience will get to know about them. This mutual interaction will be great for the business of both the collaborating companies. – Saqlain Shaikh

Register an expired domain with good backlinks. They will benefit your SEO. However, research about that domain first as many time these are blacklisted domains and you can never rank them again. – Sahil Sharma

Do not procrastinate the marketing. Start it from the first day using the existing network of the founders. Most of the time, entrepreneurs think to do marketing after launching the product. Marketing takes time. - Venkatrangan Gokul

Always have a long and short-term marketing strategy. Having everything planned helps you to stay on track of your goal. You always know what you have to do next even if one plan is failed. – Venkatrangan Gokul

Create one goal every month and dedicate time to focus on it. It is because most of the time when we see back at the activities of last month, we realize we did nothing productive. –Ramanathan Srinivasan

Don’t shy to ask for help from anyone. Many failed entrepreneurs regret not asking for help from people. Even many of them didn’t even ask for it from their own investors. People love to help when they can. Even psychology says that asking for help makes other people start liking you. However, if they can’t help, don’t break your relationship with them. – Gaurav Gat

Don’t build something if it is not on the top of the priority list of your customers. Otherwise, it will take a long time to sell them. – Gaurav Gat

Even though Facebook is working hard to provide more relevant posts on people’s feed but you will still appear as noisy to many. So, create a go-to-market strategy and don’t rely just on social media marketing.  – Ajay Ghai

You can track the success of your competitors if they are using bit.ly links. Just add “+” at the end of the link. However, many users hide their confidential data these days but you still can give it a chance.  – Shubham Kumar

Plan things out but don’t overthink your idea. You never know what will work for you and what will not. Overthinking leads to dilution of motivation and dropping off the idea. –Gaurav Chopra

Focus on earning a relationship with your customers instead of just earning money. Money is just a byproduct of your service, the main aim should always be the experience of your customers. – Gaurav Chopra

If you can add value to your customer’s life, they will add revenue to your pocket. – Varun Surana

Tell stories while pitching your product to your customers, investors or just hiring the best person. Let them know what they can get from your product or company through the story. –Harry Ven

Don’t hesitate while sharing your ideas. Share your ideas in communities, people will give you suggestions and help to start and grow your business. Even if someone steals your idea, they will not get enough support of all those people as much you will get. – Aayush Kaira

Even if you have enough funds to hire someone to do anything particular, try doing it yourself for some time. It will help you to guide other people better. – Harshit Baveja

Be like Chinese Bamboo. Not just tall and strong but patient too. Chinese bamboo grows 80 feet tall in just 3 weeks. But, it waits 3 long years under the ground. What does it do there for that long? Well, it develops itself to really stand that long. Just like Chinese Bamboo, you should be patient to really see your startup grow. You have to develop yourself and your startup and its system to achieve your dreams and goals.  – Yug Jain

Deal your customers with heart. Many times when people go to ask about products to make a better decision, they treat you like they are some celebrity. If you are not treating your customer like your boss, you will gradually lose your Boss’s position. For instance, when I called somebody to inquire about some program and asked “Can I have more information about this?”, they replied rudely saying that they didn’t have time send a write-up. Although they agreed to explain me in brief. They mentioned 2 points while they had 5 or 6 in their post. That was the moment they lost a potential customer and a lead.  - Aman Kapoor

Add a  Live chat option on your website. It will help you interact with your visitor. Moreover, if possible try providing anonymous chat option where don’t have to give any information about themselves and still can chat with you. It makes them comfortable to chat with you because most of the people fear that if they give you their email address, you will start sending emails every now and then. Furthermore, there are many services available for this purpose.  – Jafar Muhammed

Next time someone asks you, where do you see yourself in the next 5 years, just say that it is totally irrelevant. In the 5 years, Apple would have launched iPhone XYZ, Mi would be selling explosives directly instead of hiding them in their devices and so on. The main point is, the technology after five years will be totally changed and it will unlock much more opportunities for everyone. No one can say what they will become after 5 years. This question is totally illogical keeping in mind that 5 years ago, we were saving internet data by sharing files through Bluetooth and today almost everyone has a Prime membership and watch HD movies online.  – Deb Rishi

Your startup might shut or perform terribly, but the main purpose of any startup is innovation. The innovation of the startup, your  “never give up” attitude and out of the box thinking will help you sail through the storm of failure. Keep learning and keep sailing.  –Sidharth Dugar

You can fail but you cannot stop. You cannot just give it all up. Life is enough reason for waking up every day.  – Arhaan Arham

SEO is totally different than you think it is. Reading about SEO on some blogs don’t make you an expert. SEO doesn’t socialize your content, sell your product or manipulate Google’s results instead they communicate your value, help you attract more buyers and make Google’s results relevant. Use it wisely, don’t try to blackhat everything. Be wise and Google will rank you.  – Shanu Singh

If you really want your dream job or just any job, you have to work on your resume. Maybe, you are not applying for your dream job but the employers are searching for their dream employee, for sure. Consider these points while creating your resume:

• Your career objective should be aligned with the job description of the company.
• Add a segment and describe how you and the company can be a winning combination.
• Be creative and display how you can add values to the company.

Moreover, spend some time editing your resume and finalizing it. Make it unique which make an impression in the employer’s mind.  – Neeldeep Das

Try to keep your LinkedIn profile up-to-date. Many people find partners, clients, or service providers on LinkedIn. When they will approach you and see your latest achievements, it will greatly impact them and the chances of generating leads increases.  – V SHiva Kumar

If you are using LinkedIn just to randomly find people and cold messaging them to generate some leads, then you might be wrong here. There are very low chances that people will actually buy your product based on your pitching through a text message on LinkedIn. Try posting good content on LinkedIn. Make them helpful and enjoyable. People will start following you based on your content. This way, they will connect with you and you have more chances to generate leads.  – Shubham Kumar

Do not boost your post to get more likes on your facebook page. The likes on your facebook page are nothing more than a fancy number. Most of your post never reach to those people who liked your page. The organic reach of the best of the pages has become negligible now. Even less than 10% people will receive your post in their feeds. It is senseless to spend money boosting your post to get more likes on your Facebook page.   – Ankit Shukla

To all the content writers there:

• Text consistency is important; you should not type the same word in different ways.
• If using one-liner bullet points, you can skip using the full stop until the last line; the full stop can grab unnecessary attention and it provides breaks not needed.
• Apostrophe marks should be preferred over quotation marks when pointing out to a subject that is a single word. Right below, see how the comma comes before the apostrophe mark is closed, but in the second sentence, the question mark comes in after. This is due to completing emphasis while keeping in touch with the flavor of the conversation.
• If you copy and paste text from a website and paste it in Word, most often, you will find the font to be different; after you are done, paste everything into Notepad and paste it back into Word; consistent font, every time.
• The replace feature is underrated; if you have a ton of editing to do, you can use it to replace a recurring mistake with the right word, rather than just manually correcting it over and over.
• Your client sent everything in bloody CAPS LOCKS? Use Notepad ++ and paste everything there; once done, select everything (Ctrl-A) and press Ctrl-U. Every letter ends up as a lowercase.  - Anthony Stephen Mendes

I think new entrepreneurs should spend 3-4 hours weekly on product hunt. You get to see new innovative and upcoming ideas, changing UI and UX patterns.  More Importantly, If you will read comments you will get to know people's views and need. These Learnings you can apply your startup to make better products / provide better services.  PS: You also get discounts and offers from some startups! - Shubham Kumar

62 Business Ideas with Low Investment and High Profit

One of the most desired things an entrepreneur wants in business is a smallinvestment business idea and high profits. To achieve this, they sought everyway to make their business run smoothly and increase revenue thus profitability.If you land on this article chances are you are looking for Busin…

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These hacks were implemented and adviced by our amazing community members. Thank you to you all for joining our community and sharing your thought. The basically unique idea was given by our members however some editings were made by our writers.