What is growth hacking? The answer is simple, a methodology based on constant experimentation. Instead of assuming that certain strategies will work, a growth hacker will perform quick and inexpensive tests to find out what works and what should be discarded.

Now that you have entered this page you are probably wondering 

• Can growth hacking be applied to market research? 
• Can Market Research experiment in this way?
• How can I apply this methodology in my company?

Before discovering which strategies bring growth to the company we must decide what we consider growth and with which metrics we should measure it. Examples of key metrics in the market research sector could be new customers per month or churn rate.

Once we know what the key metrics are, we will try to make them increase or decrease. It is not enough to aim to decrease the churn rate or increase the number of new customers, the objectives must be SMART. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely). Increasing the number of new customers by 32% in four months would be a SMART objective since we have a deadline and a concrete objective to achieve.

The next step would be to devise growth drivers. These drivers are actions that we hope will help us achieve our objectives. If they make our metrics grow or shrink as desired we will continue to use them, otherwise we will discard them. We will discover this through experiments 

Possible growth drivers for the market research sector could be chatbots, user experience optimization, big data, remarketing or user trust. 

Which one suits us best, and which one should we focus on? This is what we are going to test through the growth hacking methodology.

Market research analyzes the commercial and economic viability of ideas, business projects, products or services. Thanks to the Internet today it is possible to conduct market research for freelancers and small businesses. This is a niche where we could start. 

To attack this sector correctly, we should ask ourselves questions such as the following 

• Why should they hire us?
• How do we offer value to the company?
• How can we differentiate ourselves?
• How do we get clients to put their projects in our hands?

Mentoring could be a way to get noticed, conducting real-time webinars or group video chats and answering questions could attract potential clients. We could also ask them to send us questions or collect them in advance and then record a video containing the answers.

Finally, we could present a competitive positioning strategy using the advantages and competitive attributes of our brand to position ourselves as the leading brand. Positioning our brand in a superior position to other brands can increase sales.

This strategy has the disadvantage that we cannot always position ourselves as the best or the leading brand. In this case we should study other positioning options, we can be the best in quality/price ratio or be the best in solving the problems of a specific niche. 

• How do we find out what our position is and what segment we have to attack if we do not know what our situation is in the market?
• How do we find out what strategy to implement?
• What is the most efficient way to make our company visible?

All these and more questions we will have to answer to find the right marketing strategy. We will get the answer from small tests that will allow us to have a broader vision of the most important thing: What can make us GROW.

Lastly, we will write down the lessons learned to know what has worked in the past so that we can continue to do so. It is vitally important to do this consistently so that past learning helps us to obtain future learning, creating a virtuous circle of knowledge.

Want to learn more about how to apply growth hacking to your market research business? Sign up for Hypertry and request a one-on-one session.