Growth hacking is all about taking chances. Don’t think of failure as a step back, rather a step forward to figuring out what will help grow your business.
When committing to the growth of your company first and foremost it’s crucial to define and set your goals. Do you want to increase the number of users? Improve brand awareness? Create buzz?
Whatever the goal may be it’s important that they are clear and achievable.
Next, create as many hypotheses as you need to test out in order to determine which one is the most statistically significant. Keep in mind, substantial results take some time so don’t expect a clear answer in just a couple days rather it should be measured over the course at least a couple months.
By trying out multiple hypotheses it will be easier to scale each idea in order to determine which one is the most successful.
Here are 5 fantastic growth hacking examples…
1. Airbnb: Leverage One Community For Another
Airbnb used Craigslist’s customer base to propel themselves to being the top house listing site out there.
Their growth hack provided the foundation to drive their success and get them off the ground.
Why was Airbnb the first to come up with this ingenious idea?
Craigslist has immense preventative measures in place to protect their customer base that makes it borderline impossible for companies to get their hands on. Airbnb was able to finagle around this without actually cracking Craigslist’s code base.
Although growth hacking was their shining star, for them it was still a trial and error process. The house listings site tried distributing flyers and even literally going door to door before they were able to crack the code and uncover the golden ticket.
2. The Waiting List
Long lines are enough to drive people nuts… But, they also show that something is worth waiting for. For the right kind of service, adding an exclusive invite and waiting list system can be a great way to hack your growth, especially as a startup.
Clinkle
Clinkle was a mobile payments company who built their following with some interesting techniques.
Their growth hack was to show users a waiting list of a long list of people that are ahead of them to encourage them to take matters into your own hands. The action was to share the Clinkle name on social media.
This innovation transformed users into first line Clinkle marketers.
It’s a great way to exploit users in order to generate buzz and grow your business.
Clubhouse
Another social media platform? Well, Clubhouse managed to build anticipation and interest in their product by using exclusivity and a long waiting list.
The product itself is built around interactive podcasts, or audio presentations, where people can get involved in all sorts of discussions. So, naturally, the platform is the type of product where people like to talk and to learn new information.
And this got so many people talking too.
As any good marketer knows, once you get people talking about you, your job is halfway done.
3. Real Life Hacks
In the new age email, mobile and social are dominating our lives. So it’s easy to overlook the simple notion of promoting one’s product in real life in real time.
Uber Uber Uber
Although the transportation network company is getting some serious flack these days it’s hard to look past some of their amazing growth hacks.
At the time, the idea of Uber was truly revolutionary so it was necessary for them to think outside the box to get their idea off the ground.
The transportation network company convinced investors and business owners to let Uber drive them around the Bay Area.
Simple yet brilliant.
This not only created the necessary buzz needed to hit the ground running but also allowed them to immediately penetrate the market itself.
By offering rides to the right people, they were able to pave their road to success.
Lyft
The main American competitor to Uber.
What was Lyft’s growth hack?
Their problem was users had a hard time finding their rides.
So they came up with a creative solution to put pink mustaches on the front of all their cars.
Not only did it solve their problem at hand but created buzz with these pink mustached cars cruising around town.
Tinder FRAT Parties
The infamous dating app is a great example of a company that uses growth hacking. Tinder uses the KISS (keep it simple stupid) campaign which created buzz with the college kids.
The dating app organized university FRAT parties.
Cost of admission? Download the free app.
This growth hack resulted in insane growth that drove Tinder to be the leading dating application.
4. Quora’s Behavior Testing
Their approach of growth hacking consisted of testing user behavior to understand their user’s attitudes and preferences.
This allowed them to cater the site to their user’s behavior. By making the platform as user-friendly as possible it drastically increased the number of users.
Customizing your platform to create the most user-friendly product possible is a recipe for success.
Understanding user behavior can open a lot of doors to growth.
5. Last But Not Least – Content Marketing
It’s important not to overlook this simple concept of delivering quality and relevant information to readers. Sometimes all it takes is quality content to be the driving force of growth.
Mint, a personal finance management service used content marketing to both stimulate growth and brand awareness by producing extremely well-written articles. These articles honed in on relevant features and intriguing aspects of finance making then the go to blog for everything finance related.
Good quality content is not overrated and can surely make you the authority in your given field.
Final Thoughts
Today it’s becoming more and more important to set your business apart. Thinking both inside AND outside the box could be the growth hack your business needs.
When creating your growth hacking plan, remember fighting fraud should be a part of your toolset.
So try, try again when testing out what growth hack will work best for your business.