Category Archives: Growth

A huge epic list of growth hacking tools for non-coders

This article shows you:

what growth hacking is
a list of the most recommended growth hacking tools, with prices and deals attached

Growth hacking is the art of creatively Acquiring users, Activating them, Retaining them on your website, getting them to Refer you to their friends and colleagues whilst paying for your service (Revenue). It’s also an extremely analytical and test based approach that necessitates tools. You should also check out this community of growth hackers powered by the man who coined the term, Sean Ellis.

Ideally you should have growth in mind before you even choose your website name - check out this basic list of what your website needs before moving on to the rest of the list!

Finding the best growth hacking tools takes time, patience, reading, testing and recommendations. Based on all these we’ve attempted to come up with an extensive list of all of the tools we thought were important to analyze, measure, build, test and help grow your business. This post was largely influenced by Joseph Bou Younes’ awesome slide. We’re striving to make a more detailed and clickable version on top of his slide. Bear in mind that growth hacking requires the mobilization of these tools in the correct combination, rather than a step-by-step order. The order is close to the implementation order that would adapt to your sales funnel. For example, I tried using AAARR Pirate metrics as a framework but didn’t succeed.

Disclaimer: choose the right combination of tools for your company, not all of them! Please feel free to recommend more tools and categories in the comments section.

1. Landing page optimization and A/B testing.

Landing page optimization and AB testing - SO important as it is at the top of your sales funnel. Increase conversion sign-ups and reduce your bounce rate by optimizing the landing page

Unbounce

The marketer’s tool for building a landing pages. “Unbounce is designed to give non-developers full control, while not affecting the core site or application when making changes.” (full review here)

30 day free trial
Basic plan: $49 p/m
F6S deal, YES!!! 80% off for 4 months/50% off for 6 months

Google content experiments

A great tool to create A/B tests from within Google Analytics (full review here)

Free

Optimizely

Instantly generate and deploy changes, and track engagement. “Provides a dead simple way to get up and running with AB and MVT testing “ (full review here)

30 day free trial
Basic plan: €14 p/m

Visual Wesbite Optimizer

A bit more expensive than Optimizely and Unbounce but has more features. It’s users say it’s worth the extra money. Includes heatmaps and behavioural targeting. (full review here)

30 day free trial up to 1000 visitors
Basic plan $49 p/m
F6S deal, YES!!! 25% off bronze and silver plans

2. Metrics (see our complete guide to SaaS metrics here)

Mixpanel

One of the best tools out there to start tracking your funnel metrics. Offers engagement plans (general users) and people plans (specific individuals). They’re also super friendly and will not hesitate to Skype with you to help you out (full review here)

Free up to 25,000 data points/become a partner
Basic plan: $150 p/m

KISSmetrics

Image credit: TechCrunch

The other “reference” tool for metrics. See the actions of every individual on your site. Also super friendly and ready to help you out (full review here)

14 day free trial
Basic plan: $150 p/m (billed annually)

Heap Analytics

Another great analytics tool similar to KissMetrics of Mixpanel.

Free up to 25000 monthly visits
Pro plan: $149 p/m

Flurry

Big data analytics to allow developers to build better apps. “Makes it easier for companies to follow the metrics that matter most to them, whether that’s user retention after three or seven days or the number of users who complete a transaction” (full review here)

Free

Google analytics

Image credit

Google’s website analytics. The most commonly used tool for web analytics. (full review here)

Free

Trak.io

Customer analytics for data-driven and lean startups. “It is optimized for easy “pirate metrics,” which refers to their “AARRR” acronym: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, and Referrals.” (review here)

Free up to 250 people
Basic plan: $19 p/m

Moz

Image credit: Marketingland

Analytics for SEO-heads (full review here)

30 day free trial
Basic plan: $99
F6S deal, YES!!! 90/120 days free use

Localytics

Marketing and analytics platform for mobile and web apps, including relationship management. “help not just with customer acquisition, but also with monitoring and maintaining customer relationships over the lifetime of an app.” (full review here)

Free up to 10,000 monthly visitors
Basic plan: $200

Keen IO

An API for custom analytics (review here).

Free up to 50,000 events p/m
Basic plan: $40 p/m
F6S deal, YES!!! $125/$1000 credit

Adobe analytics

all-round business analytics including realtime and mobile (review here)

Pricing: unknown - broken website links
F6S deal? No

Kontagent

Image credit: The Next Web

Advanced mobile analytics. “Give social and mobile developers a dashboard so that they can better engage and monetize users.” (full review here)

Pricing: contact the team

3. SaaS needs. For the many SaaS-based companies; identify user needs

Totango

Helps you engage with customers throughout their life cycle. “Engaging customer, understanding how they interact with your application, and crafting specific products and marketing strategies for customers” (full review here)

30 day free trial
Basic plan: need to contact through a form

GoodData

Integrate and visualize multiple data sources. “is used to integrate multiple data sources and create visualizations and dashboards to drive key business decisions.” (review here)

30 day free trial
Basic plan: prices not stated

4. On-site retention. Retain your customers by encouraging them to return and use your service

Bounce exchange

Image Credit: Creative Rooster

Stop people from exiting your website. “Uses a combination of invisible javascript receptors, mouse gestures and acceleration to determine when a visitor is going to bounce off a website,” (full review here)

Free demo
Prices calculated by monthly pageview volume

5. Email optimisation: get your emails read more often and grow your community of followers

Intercom.io

An awesome all-in-one solution to replace your helpdesk, email marketing app and customer engagement tool. Easy to use and full of cool features and reports.

Free up to 250 active users
Basic plan: $49/month

Vero

Track customers on your website and send emails based on what they do.

14 day free trial
Basic plan: $99/month (up to 20000 emails a month)

Mandrill

Image Credit: Heroku

From the makers of Mailchimp, the fastest way to deal with transactional emails. (full review here)

Free up to 12000 emails per month
Basic plan: $0.2 per additional 1000 emails

Send with us

Image credit: Coroflot

Simple A/B testing for email campaigns (integrated with MailChimp) “make transactional email better” (review not found)

Basic plan: $19 p/m

User fox

Image credit: Crunchbase

A/B email testing without the need for developers. “making split testing easy for anyone to explore.” (full review here)

Free trial (unknown length)
Basic plan: $49 p/m

Customer.io

Email sending service based on what customers are [not] doing on your app (full review here)

Free up to 100 customers/500 emails a month
Basic plan: $75 p/m

Klaviyo

Email target groups of customers and measure the impact; integrated with MailChimp (review here)

14 day free trial
Basic plan: $299 p/m

6. User analytics. See what each customer does, how much they cost, what causes them to drop off

Fox metrics

Image credit: AdPushUp

Realtime web/mobile app customer analytics with metrics. “It is a real-time platform that not just collects and stores, but also analyzes the data to let you have more sales through a higher conversion rate.” (review here)

Free 2 week trial
Basic plan: $20 p/m

Woopra

Analyse customer behaviour in real-time (review here)

Free up to 30,000 actions p/m
Basic plan: $79,95 p/m

7. Integration. Multiple types of analytics tools customisable into your preferred order

Segment.io

Image credit: Nathaniel Talbott

An analytics API for developers (review here)

Free for 100,000 API calls (1 week data)
Basic plan: $29 p/m

8. Customer experience. Visualizing what your users/customers do on the webpage (e.g. heatmaps)

TestFlight

Image credit: Building iPhone Apps

Free testing for mobile developers (review here - it’s a little old, but everyone loves TestFlight anyway, so just use it!)

Free

Clicktale:

Image credit: Media is Power

Visualize page behaviour (review here)

Free up to 5,000 page views p/m
Basic plan: customized pricing plans
F6S deal, YES!!! 30% off all annual plans

Crazy Egg:

Image credit: Datejs

Heatmaps, scrollmaps, overlays and confetti views (review here)

30 day free trial
Basic plan $9
F6S deal? YES!!! 45/60/90 free day trial

9. Survey. Collect soft data to build your company and tool on.

Qualaroo:

Understand and harness visitor intent with cool little surveys that pop up according to a user’s behaviour (review here)

14 day free trial
Basic plan: $199

Survey.io:

Part of Qualaroo. Extremely powerful tool to test whether you have product/market fit.

10. Realtime. What is happening right now on your website

Clicky:

Image credit: Yoast

Analyse every visitor in realtime (review here)

Free for 1 website/3,000 daily page views
Basic plan: $9.99 p/m or $79,99 p/a

GoSquared:

Realtime analytics with more knowledge than Google Analytics (review here)

14 day free trial
Basic plan: $24 p/m

Chartbeat:

Realtime data updates with no page refresh needed (review here)

30 day free trial
Request pricing (only large corporate team prices available)

The list is never complete, it will be maintained…

Growth hacking tools are always evolving. Times are always changing. If we’ve missed anything out, if anything becomes obsolete over time or if you think one of the sections here is badly named, please tell us as we’ll try to maintain this list as much as possible.

Happy growth hacking!

Smart and free techniques startups can use to find beta testers

19 Replies

This article shows you:

an overview of common tools used to find beta testers
a list of methods and “how-to” steps to avoid paying to acquire beta testers

Liam Gooding from Trak.io has a fantastic list of resources to find beta testers here.

But how do you find beta testers for free? Paying for as little as possible (i.e. bootstrapping) is significant at the startup stage. Whilst I agree with most of his suggestions, there are some issues with the current “free” beta testing resources.

Why services to find beta testers are not so budget-friendly

Betalist, Startuplist and Erlibird are all extremely useful services - some SaaS startups might even say imperative to success - but:

some Erlibird beta testing services cost over $200 a day for the premium times.
Betalist and Startuplist are so full of startups that yours will easily be drowned out as there are few alternative websites (and pretty much the same startups are on both)
we estimate that from Betalist you can expect to get about 150 beta testers on average. Nice, but is it enough?
Killerstartups is great if you have the cash to pay for the quick review ($167) - otherwise they claim to take three to six months to review you, and even then you may not be featured very prominently on the website. Chances are that by then your startup has surpassed needing to find beta testers or, heavens forbid, imploded.

What else can I do?

The next resource that Gooding recommends is Quora. Quora has positive and negative attributes as a beta tester resource as well. Your best chances of getting people to click on your website is if you have a community built up based on showing your past expertise in a certain niche. The problem here is if you have not spent time on Quora, nor have you contributed the article-style responses that gain so much respect in the community. Unless you dedicate enough time per day building up a reputation, you are unlikely to gain many testers from this source. The same applies to Hacker News.

The best resources Gooding gives for the newbie on the scene with no cash to spare are tips 6, 7 and 8. These are:

a listing on The Next Web marketplace (it’s free if you offer a promo of some kind)
Slideshare presentations
AppStorm submission for review

And now for my 2 cents…

Whilst Gooding’s list is a great start, there are a few other free resources out there that you can tap into.

At the startup stage, you are looking for the right beta testers (aka: your early adopters, your audience, your future evangelists) - especially if you are also focussing on feedback-driven iterations (FYI: you should always be). Here’s an article that shows a cost-free way of finding the “right” people. The same principles can be applied to finding beta testers.

1) Use Google+ communities/Facebook groups/LinkedIn groups

I’ll expand on G+ as an example, but the same principles apply to all the platforms mentioned.

Step 1:

Go through the list of communities using keywords related to your product (for us it was “productivity” and “collaboration”) and join those that have more than 50 members (this was a number we set for ourselves - you may want to opt for a higher/lower number depending on what your company offers)

Step 2:

After an introduce-yourself post in these communities, and some commenting around on what was there,

Step 3:

Post a carefully-worded non-advertisement sounding request for the members to help you by giving feedback. We appealed in a genuine fashion to their interests in productivity tools and our need simply for their opinion. The first attempt went well. The second time we tried it we got booted out of a few groups because we got all “advertise-y” in the tone. Lesson learned!

It’s very important not to sound like a promotion. It helps if you have built a following already, but there are tactics a new person can also use as long as you don’t piss everyone in the community off. Be humble, open and honest - stress that you are asking for help, nothing more - and that they seem like the right folks to help you.

Here are some examples of beta groups on Facebook and Google+

2) Get infographics published

Step 1: content

Make the most out of your knowledge. If you have made slideshare presentations, there should be enough info to create some killer infographics. Here’s a guide on how to map out the content you need for a killer infographic.

Step 2: call to action

Make sure your call to action (BETA TESTERS WANTED!) and links are visibly included at the end of the infographic.

Step 3: design

Also, prettiness helps a lot if you’re gonna beat a similar infographic. If you are no designer, this might be a job for, 99designs, Odesk, Elance or Fiverr. Alternatively, pay $14 a year for Piktochart, and create your own infographics easily.

Step 4: publish

If you don’t want to publish it on your home blog, SocialMediaToday (or a similar site) is a good option. It has a big following plus an internal community that can promote your content (don’t worry - it’s also about biz dev, strategy, marketing etc. as well - not just social media). Sign up for an account, and submit content and infographics. You have to pass their standards (if they haven’t picked up your post in 48 hours consider it rejected). Once you do, however, you know that a) hey, it must be decent and b) you have a base of people who will promote it. I recommend Social Media Today because of past experiences with contacting blog owners or popular online publications. It can take a very long time. On this website at least you know in two days whether your content is acceptable or not, plus there is a community of avid marketers and bloggers ready to spread your great content.

Neil Patel of Quicksprout wrote a fantastic guide to making your infographic go viral, and also a list of directories where you can submit them to increase their visibility (beware - some now charge money for submission).

Twitter, Flickr and Pinterest are your best buddies if you post the infographic on your home blog. They require researching the right hashtags and a cracking one-liner to get clicks and RTs/RPs. Choose trending hashtags for a wide and active audience, but accurate hashtags (max. 2-3) are the best. Always check that there is substantial activity on a hashtag before adding it, because otherwise you are just wasting your time.

3) Hunt for the unhappy ones, and get them on board

What better testers than those unhappy with your competitors? Offer them a chance to influence and build your product. How? Take out your list of competitors and start with Twitter. Try combining “sucks” with the company name, eg. #AT&T:

Read through the posts and curate a list of people unhappy with your competitors. Reach out to them. The next step is to use search engines to find bloggers, journalists and forums where your competitors are getting bashed. Reach out to these people as well.

*hint - Yammer is one of our competitors

Careful now! This blogger ALSO has a competing company, which we only found out after we looked him up.

4) Blog comments

Step 1:

Set up a Disqus account, a gravatar account and a standardised bio with links to your company. In the bio, you can specify that you are looking for beta testers. Your avatar should be consistent across the web so readers easily recognise you. Also make sure that your bios on Facebook, Google + and Twitter have calls to beta test your product.

Step 2:

Draw a list of the top 20 blogs that come up on Google blog search/Technorati results for a specific expression that your personas would be looking for, eg. “online collaboration tool”.

Step 3:

Spend an hour a day on blog comments on these blogs you have identified. It’s a great chance to a) read up on relevant industry content and b) get seen. Don’t lie about what you’re there for. Here’s an example from us on The Next Web.

The message structure should be:

1. Say something nice about the article

2. State a story or user case of the problem you are solving. This can be your own story.

3. Problem with existing solutions

4. How your solution solves this pain

5. Kindly ask people to come check you out

You can also use this time to build up a Quora reputation if you think that’s more relevant to your industry, but I personally like to cast a broader net.

Remember…

There are precious few short-cuts to free stuff, even including how to find beta testers for free. This list is as cost-effective as I could make it, but it will ultimately rely on your knowledge and industry savvy to make the maximum impact. Plus a whole bunch of researching and writing time!

If you need a guide on how to get started with beta testing, apply for a free beta testing plan from Centrecode here, and either use the results as a guide or employ them to execute it.