Competition among brands has never been fiercer, and one of the best ways to survive as a company is to grow and grow fast. Faster than the others to grab a market share large enough to make their dominance. Businesses do not grow sustainably through isolated tricks; they grow by testing ideas. Growth hacking strategies are low-cost experiments used to improve customer acquisition and revenues to produce measurable results.

In this article, we will provide you with our Ziken Labs guide to growth hacking strategies, which includes the definition of growth hacking, the main differences from traditional marketing, and a series of practical strategies to implement, along with some famous examples.

Well, what are we waiting for?

What do we mean by “growth hacking strategy”?

It’s really simple. With this concept, we mean strategies that will hack your brand’s growth. Okay, but what exactly is growth hacking? Here’s a definition that explains what it is. Growth hacking is a data-driven, innovative approach to achieving rapid business growth by focusing on low-cost, high-impact marketing and product strategies. In other words, it’s a way of presenting and designing your product in order to accelerate your company growth by adapting your marketing and products to what the data says about its reception among your prospects.

There are some great differences between this approach to marketing and the traditional way to market a product. Let’s see it in detail!

Growth hacking marketing vs traditional marketing

First of all, it is important to clarify that there is no better or worse option. Choosing the best approach for your brand can depend on a number of factors, including the following:

Management’s preference;
development stage of the company;
budget;
market position.

That said, growth hacking strategies may be better suited to a young brand or a startup that needs to grow faster than an established brand due to a lack of initial resources.

When a company is first founded, initial revenues are likely to be barely enough to cover costs, sometimes not even at all. At this stage, growth hacking is ideal due to its focus on low-cost strategies and speed of growth.

Conversely, once the company’s market share has been consolidated, management may decide to invest more in traditional marketing, which tends to be more expensive and slower, but obviously offers advantages in terms of brand awareness, authority, etc. So, the first two differences are, as we’ve said, speed and costs: traditional marketing is slower but usually more expensive. But there are also other differences in focus.

Product growth or sales growth?

A growth hacking strategy will focus on…growth. This implies that significant resources are focused on developing the company’s product or service.

Instead, traditional marketing focuses more on sales strategies, because it assumes the product has already been sufficiently tested and requires little or no improvement in terms of design or other aspects.

Customer data vs. Sales data

Both approaches use data but focus on different data sets. Since a growth hacking strategy is usually implemented at an early stage of brand development, the required data set will be that of potential users. The brand will seek to communicate with the buyer personas it has identified as its ideal customer and have them express their needs and desires in the niche or industry of its product or service.

Traditional marketers continue to do this, as product improvement is a very important part of marketing, but they focus more on sales data, seeking to expand their customer base and increase numbers.

Balancing experimentation and proven strategies in marketing

When aiming for growth, valuable data on the best ways to connect with audiences is often lacking. As we’ve seen, we’ve already engaged with potential customers to design the desired product, yet sales remain low.

When it comes to communication, therefore, experimentation is key. A growth-hacking brand will try different (and low-cost) strategies to build brand awareness, reach customers, and sell. Everything can be tested, analyzed, and reused or discarded.

In contrast, a traditional marketing strategy, while open (or at least should be) to experimentation, tends to focus on channels the company knows are effective. For example, with an established customer base, email marketing is an option that traditional marketing can employ with a certain level of confidence and success… if executed correctly, of course. And it’s also very cost-effective, which is a good thing.

These are some of the key differences between the two approaches, but it is worth saying that, as with many aspects of marketing, things are not black and white, but rather nuanced.

This means that a traditional marketing strategy will continue to experiment and improve the product, albeit to a lesser extent than a growth hacking strategy. The latter, on the other hand, cannot avoid analyzing sales data, even if incomplete or less relevant than that of a more established company.

Finally, both must constantly focus on growth. With different percentage targets, growth is a constant for long-term market survival.

Now, before we go into the nitty-gritty details of the guide, here are some tips on the preliminary work you need to do before any strategy.

Preliminary chores before you start

Mistakes are inevitable, and that’s a good thing, because they teach us. However, this is no reason to begin the growth hacking process without proper preparation.

So, before you start implementing any of the strategies we will discuss, here are some tips to get your things in order.

Check and eliminate any kind of obstacle in the purchasing process. This could mean, for example, unnecessary steps on the website before payment or when choosing the item(s) if you’ve got an e-commerce store. There will still be friction, so try purchasing one of your products and see what makes the process slower or less intuitive. And get rid of that.

Set up a customer care service with a phone number, chat, or email support. It must be very clear and easy to find. You will be contacted for trifles, and there will be people who will waste your time, but you can’t afford negative reviews about how you handle problems and criticism.

In general, make your product or service easy to purchase and easy to contact when needed.

Growth hacking strategies into practice

Here we go. Below you will find a list of the most common strategies that many brands have successfully implemented to boost their growth.

Just because they have been used in the past doesn’t guarantee they will work for you and your business as well.

Success in a business depends on many factors, some of which are beyond your control. Therefore, you will need to carefully evaluate your specific situation and then the market.

No strategy will work, for example, if your market research is incomplete and you have developed a product that does not meet the needs of your potential customers.

Let’s get started!

N.1 – Referral marketing: the power of incentivised word of mouth

What is referral marketing? It’s just that if you recommend my product to a friend, praise it, or convince your friend to buy something, I will offer you a reward.

In better and more formal words, you are incentivizing your customers to actively promote your brand in exchange for rewards or benefits.

Word of mouth is a great way to spread the good news about a product or service, because we trust recommendations from people we know more than advertisements.

Cautionary note: this strategy works if you have satisfied customers and if your incentives are appealing.

So, spend some time designing a referral program that your customers will enjoy and try it out. The reward can be money, a discount, a front-end product, or a gift. You know what’s best. After all, if a customer is satisfied with your product, it means you know what they want.

Two companies that applied and continue to implement referral marketing are PayPal and Dropbox.

N2. – Content marketing: be the go-to-source for your prospects

Content marketing is actually a strategy that works even outside the growth hacking phase. It’s essential if you want to grow and continue to do so. The concept of content marketing ranges from social media posts to blog entries to long-form videos. Anything you publish that is informative and provides information about your niche product or service is content marketing. A strong personal brand is essential for marketing because consumers trust people over faceless logos. It helps to humanize your business, building emotional connections that could lead to loyal consumers.

There is a caveat, however: content marketing only works if the content you produce is truly useful for your audience. You do not sell just because you leverage the power of copywriting and your call to action (CTA) is effective, but because, thanks to your generosity in providing useful information, your customers trust you in your industry. They perceive you as authoritative and generous and expect that by paying, they will receive even more value. And here is where you need to be careful.

Neil Patel, a master of SEO and content marketing, says you should publish your best content for free. This is valuable advice, but your product or service must also be exceptional.

Besides Ubersuggest, founded by the aforementioned Neil Patel, another company that has done a great job in content marketing is SEMrush. This is no coincidence, as both operate in the same industry and know firsthand how powerful content can be.

N.3 – Front-end products for free: give something to get something

Depending on your niche, free-of-charge front-end products are a great way to gain visibility and grow quickly.

A front-end product can be a cheaper version of your main product or service, a freebie relevant to your niche, a guide, or a trial period. It works best if you allow your potential customers to use and experience the quality of your product or service, so they want more. This strategy exploits a cognitive bias known as the endowment effect, which makes it difficult for us to part with something we’ve had in our hands (literally or figuratively) for a while.

Examples, once again, are Ubersuggest and SEMrush, which let you use a basic and very limited version of their software for free.

As mentioned by Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, a negative example is ChatGPT. Not because it’s not worth paying for, but because OpenAI isn’t generating profits and is operating at a loss (currently). This should put you on guard: debt is good if it is limited in time, but in general it is best to do your math and not lend more than you can afford.

N.4 – Influencers and testimonials: third-party authority meets referral marketing

Influencers and VIPs are a popular way for brands to try to expand their customer base. The endorsement of a popular person tends to work exceptionally well.

Again, we see a cognitive bias called “social proof.” Seeing someone we admire, trust, or follow use a product or service has the effect of transferring that person’s value to the product or service in question.

However, influencer marketing is a double-edged sword, and you need to be careful.

First off, if you do not choose your influencer carefully and do something that puts them in a negative position, your brand will suffer.

Second, there must be consistency between your brand and the influencer, meaning that there must be an overlap between the person’s niche and what your company produces.

In general, here’s a list of things you need to consider when deciding to use this strategy:

Number of social media followers;
Frequency of posting;
Appealing brand personality (a tennis player wouldn’t be a good fit for promoting makeup or food products);
Originality of the influencer/VIP.

Countless brands have used influencers or VIPs as endorsers. Just think of how many athletes have collaborated with Nike or Adidas over the years.

N.5 – Use the users: reviews, user-generated content and community

Good old-fashioned reviews and user-generated content (UGC) are incredibly powerful. This is partially a version of point N.1: referral marketing. Although customer reviews have lost some of their power since the advent of fake reviews and bots, people still seek them out. After their friends and family, other customers are the most reliable source for evaluating your product, so always ask your users to provide detailed feedback on their experience. This will help you sell and improve your weaknesses.

To simplify things and ensure you get standardized feedback, you can offer small prizes to customers who complete a survey. The prize will increase the likelihood of receiving a positive response (we don’t always feel like responding or have the time to provide answers). The standardized questionnaire will ensure consistent feedback.

User-generated content is an advanced form of review. Essentially, it means allowing customers who have the skills and willingness to use their creativity and describe their experience with your brand in their own way, whether it is a blog post, a YouTube video, or a social media post.

Last but not least, you can focus on building a community, using your own social media channels or a proprietary platform, whichever best suits your needs. The community can do for you part of the promotion work, becoming a sort of independent entity that promotes and sells your brand without receiving any specific compensation other than the community itself.

It’s difficult, we can’t deny it, but if you create a community big enough, over time it will become almost self-sustaining and will require less and less effort on your part.

Another advantage is that a community is essentially a great group of loyal customers, which will provide a potential source of steady revenue for your brand, depending on your industry, of course. Airbnb makes excellent use of reviews, while user-generated content is ubiquitous on social media.

N.6 – Cognitive biases: leverage emotions, not the brain

Finally, we strongly recommend leveraging the “mistakes” inherent in our brains and using these mechanisms to achieve better results. We are referring to mechanisms such as FOMO (fear of missing out) and social proof (which we mentioned when discussing referral marketing and influencers), but also other cognitive distortions such as the herd effect, scarcity, the IKEA effect, etc.

Using the power of our irrational mind to tap into people’s emotions and push them to choose you to satisfy their needs, rather than a competitor, will help you grow faster. In this regard, we encourage you to use the above wisely. If you push people to buy things they don’t need, you’ll achieve the opposite effect. And your company’s image will suffer.

So, behavioral science must not become a tool for fraud.

Are you ready to use growth hacking in your company?

Growth hacking is the right choice for your brand if you are just starting out, have limited resources, and need to grow quickly.

It can be quite stressful, because it’s a constant process of trial and error, but the results, if done properly, are enormous. You might see your brand grow relatively quickly, which is a great sign.

If you need help on this, Ziken Labs is here to help with the tools and expertise that can give you the boost you need.