The telecommunications industry is becoming more and more important every day, which means that there are more and more business opportunities to take advantage of. However, the fact that there are opportunities does not mean that companies have it easy, it is necessary to apply effective methodologies, such as growth hacking, to benefit from them.

The effectiveness of growth hacking lies in its use of the scientific method and its simplicity. The methodology consists of several elements:

• "North Star Metric": key metrics for the company that most clearly show its growth.
• SMART Objectives: (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time bound)
• Growth drivers: Strategy aimed at achieving the objectives. (Hypotheses)
• Experiments: Small actions aimed at validating or rejecting drivers.
• Learnings: conclusions from the rest of the process.

To achieve the growth of a company, the growth hacker will discover which are the key metrics, especially the "North Star Metric", set SMART objectives, and then validate or reject growth drivers through the use of experiments.

Examples in the case of the telecommunications industry:

• Key metrics: Average revenue per user, churn rate, subscriber growth...
• SMART objectives: Increase the number of customers per month by 10%, reduce the churn rate by 10% in four months, install 5% more antennas per year or increase the number of fibre optic installations by 15% in one quarter. 
• Growth drivers: SEO, social media growth, user experience optimisation, big data, remarketing or user sentiment.

A growth hacker should therefore experiment to see whether the above drivers actually serve to achieve the proposed objectives. For example, to check if the feeling of belonging reduces the churn rate, one should try to create this feeling in the users.

How can we increase the users sense of belonging to the company? What do they need to build trust? We need to understand what the customer wants. Understanding customer needs is very important, 

• How do we deliver services according to customer needs?
• What does our target audience need?
• How can we give it to them?

In case we want to test SEO growth driver we should experiment guided by questions such as the following.

• How can we position our website so that the customer can find us?
• What are the best positioning strategies?
• In which ones should we invest our capital?

To see if taking advantage of social networks is an effective driver, we will have to generate interactions between the company and the users. To do this, we will use publications on the networks that give a sense of closeness.

• Which are the most appropriate networks for our type of audience?
• How can we find out?
• What kind of publications are we going to make to generate this interaction?

All these questions will give rise to experiments, the results of which will show us which drivers work and which do not. In this way we will be able to optimise those that are useful and discard those that are not.

Finally, it will be essential to document the lessons learned from the whole process in order to know what has worked in the past and what should not be repeated. There should be a regular feedback loop and learning should be monitored on an ongoing basis.

Want to learn more about how to apply growth hacking to your telecoms business? Sign up to Hypertry and ask for a one-to-one session.