Growth hacking is a discipline whose ultimate goal and objective is business growth.

Being different from all standardized practices of doing business and classic marketing techniques, the practice of growth hacking is defined as a combination of analytics, creativity and curiosity to grow the number of users of a business through a methodology based on experimentation. As its reputation grows more and more businesses are starting to implement these techniques, E-learning being one of them.

Growth Hacking should not be confused as a combination of existing tools and techniques, but rather a different way of seeing and attacking a market. Born among startups with the need to identify forms of growth that do not involve large investments, growth hacking tries to achieve exponential growth through actions that require the least possible effort in both time and money.

The E-learning industry has taken such a leading role that right now everyone is trying to get the most potential out of their business and the biggest difficulty they face is attracting customers. Why? Well, if we have a good proposal and a valuable education, the most probable basic frictions which the user may find are 4: The price, the assurance that this training is really what him / her is looking for, the assurance that it is the most ideal for him / her, the dichotomy between doing it online or offline and, finally, the desire to study daily.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, the first thing we should do is set a SMART goal; that is, it is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and temporary. If we decide to choose to work on attracting new customers and not on the loyalty of current ones, we could establish an objective such as the following: "We want to increase the average acquisition by 20% in the next 3 months". We should not forget as long as it is measurable, to establish the KPIs and metrics that we are going to use to measure the results of said objective once we decide how we are going to achieve it.

Once the objective is established, we must choose the driver that we are going to use. Drivers are nothing more than those strategies that will allow us to achieve more with less.

In this case, the friction corresponds to the drivers since, if we eliminate the difficulties that the user encounters in decision-making, we will radically increase the possibilities that they will buy from us. 

• So, how are we going to increase the average uptake? 
• Could we solve the user´s doubts about whether or not this training is for him or her? 
• Could we show the unique value of doing it online?
•  Could we make it easier for him or her to study on his/her own? 
• Could we do something to eliminate friction regarding the price?

Once the drivers that we could activate have been raised, we will have to choose one and then move on to the time of experimentation. The experiments are the force that activates the driver or, in other words, they are those tactics that make up the strategy. These tactics must be efficient actions, that is, we must be able to execute them quickly and agilely.

• What experiments could we do to eliminate price friction? 
• Could we make the installment payment possible? 
• Could we offer discounts? 
• How can we support the user so that the individual study does not become difficult for him? 
• Could we give her extra resources? 
• Could we give the training interactively? 
• Could we put classes online? 
• Personalized online tutorials? 
• Exercises whose results are posted on campus and compared with the rest of the students?

Every time we carry out an experiment we must monitor it and analyze the changes we detect.

Finally, the final step corresponds to the learning record. In this phase, the experiment carried out, the data obtained, the results and the lessons learned must be recorded. It has worked? How efficiently? Through this simple action we will be creating a journal of growth experiments that, once we have a tour, will be a powerful database to analyze what worked and what did not.

If you are interested in learning more about the technique that we have explained to grow or want to know more abou most effective drivers and experiments in the e-learning sector, you just have to register in Hypertry. There we keep the growth trends of each industry up to date.