5 Growth Hacking Examples

You’ve may have heard the term growth hacking being thrown around by marketers. However, it’s not just a new buzzword, it is becoming more and more a core part of growing and building your business. In this article, we will explain on how marketers use this technique to grow their business and we’ll provide 5 growth hacking examples.

What is Growth Hacking?

Although growth hacking is not really a new practice, it is a fairly new term. Especially in marketing.  For example, during the earlier days of Google, (pre-penguin) marketers who learned how to take advantage Google’s algorithm (see SEO professionals), were basically growth hacking to achieve better search engine rankings. However, we didn’t call this growth hacking at the time.

The primary goal of a marketer who is trying to grow their brand is to move metrics up and to the right. Startups use growth hacking when their primary goal is to rapidly increase their user base. Startups may focus on lower costs for custom question, but long term sustainability should be the main focus.

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How you can apply growth hacks to your business__

• Set realistic goals: Just saying that you want 1 million new customers is not a goal, but a 10% increase in website traffic is.
• Measure your analytics: You need to see where you started and measure how much your business has grown. Measure, adjust, repeat.
• Setup a sales funnel: As a marketer, you need to make sure your users are going down the right path to make conversions.
• Be Patient: Growing a business takes time. Growth hacking is a long term approach and should become a part of your business. You’re not going to see overnight results.

Growth Hacking Examples

Now that you know the basics of growth hacking, and how you can apply it to your business, here are 5 growth hacking examples from major brands. These companies have seen amazing results by applying these tactics. Maybe they’ll spark a few ideas for your business.

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Facebook__

Social media giant, Facebook, sent email notifications to alert people who were tagged in their friend’s photos. By sparking one’s curiosity, they saw an increased click through rate from users receiving the notifications. This growth hack is a prime example of how to leverage notifications and alerts to keep people active on your website.

Dropbox

The popular file sharing service, Dropbox, replaced traditional ad-spending with a referral based growth hacking technique. Users would receive an increased amount of storage by referring a friend. In 2010, Dropbox users sent over 2.5 referrals, which doubled their user base every three months. The company went from 100,000 users to 4,000,000 in just 15 months.

Mailbox

Mailbox was an iOS email app that received an immense amount of attention a few years back. Prior to launching, users would download the iOS app to be added to a queue. Waiting to see where you were in line only intrigued users even more. Within a few weeks over 1 million people signed up for the wait list! They even prompted people to share their place in line on social media. The company did such a great job with this growth hack that they were acquired by Dropbox soon after it launched. Personally, I was a big fan of the Mailbox app and was sad to see Dropbox shut it down.

YouTube

Google’s video publishing service allows users to not only share videos, but also embed the branded video player on other websites. By clicking the “embed” link, a user can copy a bit of HTML and paste it on other websites. Not only did this drive traffic to the YouTube website, it also became the industry standard video player across the web.

Bonus tip: If you have a YouTube channel and you’re looking to grow your subscriber base, theres actually a lot of YouTube growth hacks that you can apply as well.

Spotify

Similar to YouTube, Spotify also allows users to embed their music players on websites and social media. Users can share their playlists and gain followers. This growth hack allowed Spotify to promote their streaming music service while gaining new customers, driving traffic to their website and product.

__Bonus – Seamless: __

On New Year’s Day 2017, Seamless, the food delivery service, sent out an email blast prompting customers to order meals first thing in the morning. The company knows their customers and was well aware that many people order food on New Year’s Day. Especially for those who might have partied too hard. Scrambled eggs and home fries sounded good to me. Similar to Dropbox, Seamless also provides discounts to customers who send referrals to their friends.

Do you have any growth hacking examples that you would like to share? We’d love to hear about them. Let us know in the comments below.