What I am about to tell you will feel like one of those growth hacks I said were evil.
It is not.
It is simply a way of thinking that will 10X your growth.
...or maybe not. It's just a way of thinking that I found works. Every single customer I talk to about it get this "AHA!" moment and go on to do really well.
Think in loops
How can you get the people that use your product or visit your website to bring in even more customers?
The answer can be simple or complex, based on your business.
The idea is that instead of a customer being valued as the amount they spend with you, you want to increase that value because they decreased the cost of your marketing.
This can be hard to explain in the abstract, so I am going to use some examples:
Glassdoor
Let's over simplify things a bit: Glassdoor wants more users to come to their website.
Users want to know if their salary is within a reasonable range for what they do.
Glassdoor has built a system where you have to both create an account and then WRITE A REVIEW to see that information.
I bolded that bit because that is where the loop comes in. The value that Glassdoor has for the user is information, that is, from other users.
The loop is that a user writes a review with salary information, Glassdoor publishes that information, which increases their value (and SEO) thus helping them grow.
Referral programs
Let's say you have a customer. You want them to help you get another one. A classic way to do this is to have a "refer a friend" tool that makes it easy to refer a friend.
The issue is that this isn't enough. You need this referral to be a core part of what you offer so that it becomes essential for a customer to do.
An example here is Dropbox - they will give you significantly more storage if you refer a friend and that friend signs up.
That friend will likely then also refer another friend so they get that storage as well.
A trick here is to make sure the incentive (such as more storage) is not something the user can get by just spending money. It needs to be unique to the referral program.
An LLM example
Let's say you made an LLM agent for a specific group of people, such as business owners in a specific industry, who need legal information parsed for them.
The LLM works in such a way that a customer enters a question, and then it spits out an answer for them.
I built a system where if a question was asked by more than 3 unique users, that question gets published publicly on the web, including the answer in as much detail as possible.
This is an SEO loop, since the top questions on people's minds are the ones that will bubble up and by giving the answer, new people in the niche will automatically find your content and product.
The more people that ask questions, the more free SEO content you get, the more people you will get.