What is Growth Hacking and 4 Examples of Digital Marketing Campaigns who’ve Used It!
Growth hacking isn’t cheating. It’s taking opportunity and flipping it on its head, getting you everything you deserve and elevating a brand, product or service to superstardom.
Growth hacking was originally coined as a term in 2010, advocating for throwing out of the traditional marketing playbook and replacing it with creative, scalable solutions to achieving growth. Growth hacking comes in the form of email marketing, PPC, blogs, and using time and effort rather than money or advertising to get you the results you want. You don’t need all the resources in the world to growth hack. It’s all about being smart, lean, and agile with your marketing – nothing more, nothing less.
Let’s be clear in communicating that this isn’t a cure-all for any and all digital marketing woes. Some fail with growth hacking, just like others succeed. Here are a few examples of campaigns that have done it right however, to learn from.
Beyonce
The music industry is built all around smoke and mirrors, a lot of hype and excitement, and arguably anything but the music product itself. In 2013, Beyonce released an album recorded completely in secret with no notice, no hype, and nothing more than the product. The growth hacking takeaway here is to be bold and make your own headlines at whatever the cost. Already an established brand, Beyonce’s album blew up, shifted more than 828,000 copies in 3 days, brought with it more than 8 million copies sold overall, and was a viral hit.
Tinder
Tinder has millions of users all over the world speaking in more than 30 languages, a long ways away from being the college campus app it once was. Tinder’s biggest growth hack strategy was to succeed where other dating apps failed. Getting women to join is a sure marker of whether any dating app succeeds or fails. Tinder encouraged women to join by offering free gifts, going so far as to visit sorority houses to offer cookies, balloons, and underwear. To this point, some growth hacking strategies may take you offline and force you to put in the work on-the-ground.
Slack
Slack is a team messaging app that’s grown from a user base of 15,000 to over 6 million. Central to their success was growth hacking and nothing particularly revolutionary or creative. Their marketing identified Slack as something familiar, a necessity to their audience, and most importantly, they provided a free version that showed off features in a new way. This increased premium version purchases by 30%. The takeaway here was to offer it free and to give it away, eliminating any and all barriers to trying it. Once they’re hooked, they were hooked for good!
Hubspot
Hubspot wanted to build content and spread it so that they could receive inbound leads they could turn into sales. Their growth hacking strategy involved investing a lot into blog writing, eBooks, and education-based tools. They also invested in webinars, social media, and teaching manuals, all in an effort to engage. The focus in engagement paid off as Hubspot’s become a company generating more than $250 million/year. The strategy here was to educate and be useful – a strong growth hack still used today.
Successful growth hacking strategies are an art. No one-size-fits-all. Know your product, understand the scale to which you want to take it, set your goals, and analyze and optimize as you go. In digital marketing, where the rules are always changing, growth hacking stokes creativity, effort, and resources to give any brand an opportunity at exploding! Contact us today!
