You’ve likely heard the term “growth hacking” thrown around a lot lately. But what exactly is it? In short, growth hacking is a marketing technique that is designed to help businesses grow quickly and efficiently. By utilizing creative and often unorthodox methods, growth hackers are able to achieve their goals in a fraction of the time and with a fraction of the budget of traditional marketers.
Growth hacking gained notoriety in the early days of Silicon Valley startups when companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Dropbox used innovative growth hacking techniques to achieve explosive user growth. Since then, growth hacking has evolved and is now being used by businesses of all sizes in a variety of industries.
So, how does one go about growth hacking? Let’s take a look at some of the most common Growth Hacking strategies:
Viral Loops
One of the most common—and effective—growth hacking strategies is to utilize viral loops. A viral loop is simply a process that encourages users to invite their friends and contacts to join a service or platform. The more people that join, the more valuable the service becomes, which in turn encourages even more people to join. This creates a self-perpetuating cycle of growth that can take a business from 0 to millions of users seemingly overnight.
A great example of a viral loop can be seen in the early days of Dropbox. When a new user signed up for the service, they were given the option to share a unique referral link with their friends. For each person that signed up for Dropbox using that referral link, both the referring user and the referred user would receive an additional 500 MB of storage space. As more and more people signed up for Dropbox, existing users became increasingly incentivized to share their referral links as they continued to rack up free storage space. This helped Dropbox achieve incredible growth in its early days, going from 100,000 users in October 2009 to 4 million users just 18 months later.
Social Media Marketing
Another common growth hacking strategy is social media marketing. By utilizing popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, businesses can reach millions of potential customers with very little cost or effort. Additionally, social media platforms provide businesses with powerful tools for targeting specific demographics with laser precision.
A great example of social media marketing comes from Dollar Shave Club’s now infamous Youtube launch video which went viral shortly after being uploaded in 2012. The video helped Dollar Shave Club acquire over 12,000 customers in just two days and played a major role in propelling the company to massive success. Today, Dollar Shave Club has over 3 million subscribers and generates over $200 million in annual revenue. Not bad for a company that started with little more than a clever video and a dream.
Conclusion:
There you have it! These are just some of the most common Growth Hacking strategies being used by businesses today. As you can see, Growth Hacking is all about thinking outside the box and utilizing creative techniques to achieve explosive user growth. So if you’re looking for ways to take your business to the next level, consider giving Growth Hacking a try!
