7 growth hacking strategies that work in 2023 (w/examples)

Looking to drive explosive growth for your business?

Growth hacking is the way to go.

It’s the secret sauce used by giants like Airbnb, Dropbox, and Facebook to grow as big as they are today.

In this article, we’ll teach you all you need to know about growth hacking, including:

• What is Growth Hacking
• What’s the Difference Between Growth Hacking and Conventional Marketing
• 7 Growth Hacking Strategies that Work in 2023
• 16 Essential Growth Hacking Metrics

Let’s dive right in!

What is Growth Hacking?

Growth hacking is an innovative marketing strategy that prioritizes rapid growth. It focuses on using data analytics to understand market trends and customer behaviors and shape marketing strategies based on these insights.

This approach involves continuous testing and tactics adjustment in response to market feedback, ensuring agility and flexibility in marketing efforts. It also includes leveraging technology and digital platforms to efficiently reach and engage a wide audience.

The ultimate aim is to find scalable and repeatable methods that drive business growth, focusing on increasing users, sales, or market presence.

Growth Hacking vs Conventional Marketing – What’s the Difference?

Growth hacking differs from conventional marketing in several ways:

Now that we’ve got the theory out of the way, let’s get into practice.

Below, we’re going to cover 7 growth hacking strategies that you can use to scale your business, starting with:

1. Use a Chatbot to Grow Your Sales

Integrating a chatbot is an effective growth hacking strategy to increase sales and customer engagement.

This approach taps into the power of AI to offer instant, personalized responses to customer inquiries, a crucial aspect in today’s competitive market. By ensuring immediate and accurate responses, chatbots help retain customer interest and drive sales.

Integrating a chatbot across various social media platforms, including Facebook & WhatsApp, is an effective growth hacking strategy to increase sales and customer engagement. This approach taps into the power of AI to offer instant, personalized responses to customer inquiries —a crucial factor in today’s competitive market. By ensuring immediate and accurate responses, chatbots help retain customer interest and drive sales.

The real growth hacking potential of chatbots lies in their ability to learn from interactions and improve over time. This continuous learning process enables them to offer tailored recommendations based on customer preferences and browsing history, leading to higher conversion rates. Furthermore, chatbots can handle multiple queries simultaneously, significantly reducing the response time and operational costs of running a large support team. Several industries have recently highlighted the benefits of utilizing a WhatsApp chatbot & how it helps enhance sales, support, and customer engagement.

Chatbots can also be programmed to upsell or cross-sell products, subtly nudging customers towards higher-value purchases. Last but not least, chatbots gather valuable data from interactions, providing insights into customer behavior and preferences. This data can be analyzed to refine marketing strategies, product offerings, and overall customer experience, aligning them more closely with market demands.

Growth Hack Example – Uberroom

Uberoom, a Texas-based decoration service for hotels and vacation rentals, offers a compelling example of how a chatbot can significantly enhance customer service and, in turn, increase sales.

With their expanding popularity across Canada and the United States, Uberoom faced a challenge: managing the growing volume of customer inquiries efficiently. To address this issue, they used a chatbot for website, a strategic move that greatly improved their customer interaction process.

Here’s how the chatbot made a difference:

1. Immediate Response: The chatbot provided instant answers to common queries, significantly reducing customer wait times. This immediate response system was key to maintaining high customer satisfaction and engagement.
2. 24/7 Availability: Unlike human customer support, the chatbot was available around the clock. This meant that customers could get their questions answered or book services at any time, catering to customers in different time zones and schedules.
3. Efficient Query Handling: The chatbot was programmed to handle a wide range of inquiries, from basic questions about the service to assisting with the booking process. This freed up human customer support to deal with more complex issues.

The end result of implementing the chatbot was very profound: Uberoom successfully saved up to 67,936 hours of customer wait time.

This improvement not only boosted their efficiency but also contributed to an increase in sales, as customers were more likely to book with a service that offered quick, reliable, and accessible support.

2. Partner With Influencers

Partnering with influencers is another powerful growth hacking strategy for businesses looking to expand their reach. Influencer partnerships offer a unique blend of authenticity and audience engagement, crucial for building brand awareness and customer trust.

Here’s why this approach is effective:

• Targeted Exposure: Influencers often have a dedicated following that trusts their opinions. By partnering with them, your business can tap into these loyal audiences, ensuring your product or service reaches those most likely to be interested.
• Cost-Effective: Compared to traditional advertising, influencer partnerships can be more affordable and yield a higher return on investment (ROI). Many influencers offer various partnership models, including pay-per-post, commission-based collaborations, or product exchange agreements.
• Authenticity and Trust: Consumers today value authenticity. Influencers, who are real people sharing their genuine experiences, can create a more relatable and trustworthy image for your brand. This can lead to higher engagement rates and customer loyalty.
• Content Creation: Influencers are content creators at heart. By partnering with them, your business benefits from their creativity and expertise in creating content that resonates with their audience, which can be repurposed across your marketing channels.
• Feedback and Insights: Influencers can provide valuable feedback and insights about your products from both their perspective and that of their audience. This can be instrumental in product development and refining your marketing strategies. Even Amazon has an Amazon Influencer Program

Growth Hack Example – Daniel Wellington

A notable example of successful growth hacking through influencer partnerships comes from the fashion brand Daniel Wellington. This Swedish watch company leveraged influencer marketing to drive its growth and build a multi-million dollar brand.

Here’s how Daniel Wellington executed its influencer strategy:

1. Diverse Influencer Selection: Rather than partnering exclusively with top-tier influencers, Daniel Wellington worked with a wide range of influencers, including micro-influencers. This approach allowed them to tap into various niches and reach a broad audience at a fraction of the cost.
2. Instagram-Focused Campaigns: The company centered its strategy on Instagram, leveraging the platform’s visual nature to showcase its watches. Influencers would post pictures wearing the watches, often styled in aesthetically pleasing settings that resonated well with Instagram audiences.
3. Unique Discount Codes: Each influencer was given a unique discount code to share with their followers. This not only incentivized purchases but also allowed Daniel Wellington to track the performance of each influencer partnership.
4. Consistent Brand Image: Despite working with numerous influencers, the brand maintained a consistent image and quality in all shared content. This consistency helped establish a strong and recognizable brand identity.
5. User-Generated Content: The campaign encouraged not just influencers but also customers to post their own pictures with the watches, using specific hashtags. This strategy amplified their reach and created a sense of community around the brand.

3. Invest in SEO for Long-Term Growth

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website or content to perform better on search engines.

If you’re looking for a growth hacking strategy that’s more focused on long-term, sustainable growth, then SEO is definitely the right choice.

In contrast to paid advertising, SEO offers long-term benefits without recurrent costs, ensuring that once your site ranks high, it continues to drive traffic to your site without many ongoing costs.

High-ranking websites are often also viewed as more credible and trustworthy, which can substantially elevate your brand’s reputation and authority in your industry.  Additionally, once your traffic starts to surge you’d want to optimize your site speed and performance to keep visitors engaged and happy.

Growth Hack Example – Wayfair

An excellent example of investing in SEO for long-term growth is the strategy employed by the online home goods company, Wayfair. Wayfair’s approach to SEO played a crucial role in its transition from a small e-commerce startup to a major player in the online retail space.

Here’s how Wayfair leveraged SEO:

1. Comprehensive Keyword Strategy: Wayfair developed an extensive keyword strategy that targeted a wide range of search terms. They focused not only on high-competition keywords but also on long-tail keywords, which are more specific and less competitive. This helped them attract a broad audience, including those in the early stages of the buying process.
2. Content-Rich Product Pages: Instead of just listing products, Wayfair ensured that each product page was content-rich, with detailed descriptions, reviews, and Q&As. This strategy improved their pages’ relevance and usefulness, which are key factors in search engine rankings.
3. SEO-Friendly Site Architecture: The company designed its website with a clear, hierarchical structure, making it easy for search engines to crawl and index their pages. This included implementing clean URLs, proper use of tags, and a responsive design that worked well on both desktop and mobile devices.
4. Continuous Optimization: Wayfair consistently monitored and updated its SEO strategies based on analytics and market trends. This ongoing effort helped them adapt to changes in search engine algorithms and consumer search behaviors.
5. Building Authority through Backlinks: They actively sought to acquire backlinks from reputable sources or expired domain names, thereby increasing their site’s authority and search rankings.

The impact of these SEO efforts was significant. Wayfair saw substantial increases in organic traffic, which translated into higher sales and revenue.

Their focused investment in SEO demonstrated how a well-planned and executed SEO strategy can lead to sustained growth and success in the digital marketplace.

4. Create Interactive Content

Creating interactive content is another way to hack your company’s growth.

Interactive content, such as quizzes, polls, interactive videos, and infographics, engages users more deeply than static content, allowing you to get significantly more reach on the internet than with traditional blog posts.

Key benefits of creating interactive content include:

• Enhanced Engagement: Interactive content captures the user’s attention more effectively than traditional formats. It encourages active participation, which can increase the time spent on your site and the likelihood of users sharing your content.
• Data Collection: These interactive elements can be excellent tools for collecting valuable user data in an engaging and non-intrusive way. Insights gathered from user interactions can inform your marketing strategies and product development.
• Increased Conversion Rates: Interactive content can guide users along the customer journey more effectively. For example, a well-crafted quiz can lead to personalized product recommendations, increasing the likelihood of a sale.
• Improved User Experience: Providing a unique and engaging experience sets your brand apart. Users are more likely to remember and return to a website that offers them an enjoyable and interactive experience.
• Social Shareability: Interactive content is more likely to be shared on social media, expanding your reach organically. This shareability is invaluable for increasing brand awareness and attracting new customers.

Growth Hack Example – BuzzFeed

A great example of using interactive content as a growth hack is the approach taken by BuzzFeed, particularly with their quizzes. BuzzFeed, known for its engaging and shareable content, mastered the art of interactive quizzes, which played a significant role in its growth and user engagement.

Here’s how BuzzFeed’s interactive content strategy worked:

• Engaging Quizzes: BuzzFeed created a wide array of fun and relatable quizzes. These quizzes ranged from personality assessments to trivia and were often tied to popular culture themes. The interactive nature of these quizzes encouraged users to actively participate, rather than just passively consume content.
• Viral Potential: The quizzes were designed with shareability in mind. Users were often prompted to share their results on social media, leading to a viral spread of the content.
• Personalization: The quizzes offered a personalized experience, as the results were unique to each user. This personal touch made the content more engaging and increased the likelihood of users taking additional quizzes.
• Data Collection for Customization: Each interaction provided BuzzFeed with valuable data on user preferences and behavior. This data was then used to tailor content recommendations and create more targeted quizzes, enhancing user engagement.
• Driving Traffic and Ad Revenue: The popularity of these quizzes drove significant traffic to BuzzFeed’s website, which in turn increased ad revenue. The quizzes also kept users on the site longer, boosting engagement metrics.

BuzzFeed’s success with interactive quizzes highlights how such content can be a powerful tool for growth hacking. It not only engages users in a unique way but also drives traffic, encourages sharing, and provides valuable data for further content optimization.

5. Start a Community

Community-building is a powerful tool in 2023.

The gist of it is this: you create a space where customers, enthusiasts, and followers can engage with each other and with your brand.

A thriving community not only strengthens customer loyalty but also promotes natural growth through personal recommendations and word-of-mouth.

Key advantages of starting a community include:

• Boosted Customer Loyalty: When customers feel they are part of a community, their connection to your brand deepens. This emotional bond can transform occasional buyers into dedicated brand ambassadors.
• Direct Access to Customer Insights: Your community is a rich source of direct feedback, offering unfiltered insights into customer preferences and ideas for innovation.
• Community-Driven Support: A community where members assist each other can lighten the load on your customer service team while simultaneously enhancing overall customer satisfaction through shared knowledge and solutions.
• Enhanced Brand Exposure: Active community members often create and share content about your brand. This organic engagement increases your brand’s exposure and strengthens its credibility.
• Deeper Customer Relationships: Regular interaction within your community shows that you value their opinions and care about their experiences, fostering stronger and more personal connections with your customers.

In essence, building a community is not just about expanding your customer base; it’s about cultivating a vibrant environment where meaningful interactions lead to loyal customer relationships, enhancing your brand’s growth and standing in the market.

Growth Hack Example – Peloton

A notable example of growth hacking through launching a community is the approach taken by Peloton, the exercise equipment and media company.

Peloton’s strategy centered around building a vibrant, engaged community around its products, particularly its indoor exercise bikes and online classes.

Here’s how Peloton successfully launched and leveraged its community:

• Exclusive Member Groups: Peloton created exclusive social media groups for customers who purchased their bikes or treadmills. These groups served as platforms for users to share experiences, workout achievements, and personal stories.
• Live and Interactive Classes: Peloton offered live, interactive classes where users could participate from home. The leaderboard feature in these classes created a sense of competition and camaraderie among members, fostering a community feeling.
• User-Generated Content: They encouraged users to share their workout routines, progress, and testimonials on social media. This not only created a vast amount of user-generated content but also helped in spreading the word about Peloton organically.
• Events and Challenges: Peloton organized virtual events and fitness challenges, which brought the community together. Participating in these events gave users a sense of belonging and being part of a larger movement.
• Brand Ambassadors: Some dedicated users became informal brand ambassadors. Their enthusiasm and positive word-of-mouth recommendations attracted new customers and helped grow the community further.
• Personal Connection with Instructors: Peloton instructors played a key role in building the community. They engaged with users on social media, creating a personal connection that extended beyond the workouts.

Through these initiatives, Peloton not only created a product but a lifestyle that people wanted to be a part of.

The sense of belonging and shared purpose in the Peloton community led to increased customer loyalty, referrals, and ultimately, substantial business growth.

6. Boost Your Growth with a Referral Program

Another powerful growth hack you can implement is starting a referral program.

This approach incentivizes your existing customers to recommend your products or services to their network. By doing so, it turns your satisfied clientele into brand advocates, leveraging their trust and satisfaction to attract new customers.

Here’s why a referral program can be a game-changer:

1. Capitalizing on Word-of-mouth: People trust recommendations from friends and family more than any form of advertising. A referral program harnesses this trust by motivating customers to spread the word about your products or services.
2. Cost-Effective Customer Acquisition: Gaining new customers through referrals is often more cost-efficient compared to traditional marketing methods like running ads using an AdTech
3. Enhanced Customer Loyalty: Providing incentives for referrals not only helps in acquiring new customers but also strengthens the loyalty of those who are already with you. It’s a way of thanking them for their endorsement.
4. Expansive Growth Potential: As more customers engage with the referral program, your brand’s exposure multiplies. This can be particularly beneficial for businesses aiming to broaden their customer base rapidly.
5. Trackable Success: The effectiveness and ROI of referral programs are readily measurable. This allows for ongoing optimization based on real data, ensuring the program remains effective and aligned with your business goals.

Growth Hack Example – DropBox

Dropbox, a cloud storage service, is a classic example of how a referral program can drive remarkable business growth. Their referral program was instrumental in their rapid expansion in the early years.

Here’s how Dropbox’s referral program worked:

1. Incentive Structure: Dropbox rewarded both the referrer and the referee with additional storage space. For every friend that someone referred who signed up and installed Dropbox, both the referrer and the new user received bonus space.
2. Ease of Use: The process of referring friends was made very simple. Users could send invites directly through the Dropbox interface, making the act of referring as effortless as possible.
3. Viral Growth: This approach turned each of their users into potential advocates for the service. As users gained more storage by referring friends, they had a direct, tangible benefit from promoting Dropbox, leading to a viral spread.

The results were extraordinary. Dropbox’s user base saw a massive increase, reportedly growing from 100,000 to 4 million users in just 15 months, largely attributed to this referral program.

7. Experiment With Pricing Strategies

Experimenting with pricing strategies is an effective growth hack that can significantly impact a business’s market positioning and sales.

By testing different pricing models, businesses can find the most appealing approach for their target audience, maximize revenue, and stay competitive.

Here’s how experimenting with pricing strategies can be beneficial:

• Understanding Customer Value Perception: Different pricing strategies help gauge how customers value your product or service. For instance, a premium pricing strategy can position your product as high-quality, while a competitive pricing strategy can attract cost-conscious consumers.
• Revenue Optimization: By experimenting with various pricing structures, such as tiered pricing, subscription models, or volume discounts, businesses can identify the most profitable approach. This can lead to an increase in average transaction size and overall revenue.
• Market Differentiation: Unique pricing strategies can set a business apart from competitors. For example, a pay-what-you-want model can attract attention and foster goodwill, while a subscription model can ensure a steady revenue stream.
• Customer Acquisition and Retention: Attractive pricing models can be used to draw in new customers or retain existing ones. For example, introductory discounts can entice new customers, and loyalty discounts can help retain current ones.
• Flexibility and Adaptability: The ability to adapt pricing strategies in response to market changes, customer feedback, or competitor actions can be crucial for maintaining market relevance and profitability.
• Data-Driven Decisions: By analyzing the results of different pricing experiments, businesses can make informed decisions. Data on customer preferences, sales volume, and revenue changes can guide future pricing strategies.

In summary, experimenting with different pricing strategies allows businesses to find the optimal balance between attractiveness to customers and profitability.

This approach requires careful planning and analysis but can lead to significant advantages in customer acquisition, revenue growth, and market positioning.

Growth Hack Example – Slack

A notable example of a growth hack through experimenting with pricing strategies is the approach taken by Slack, a team communication platform.

Slack’s freemium model and its subsequent pricing tiers played a key role in its rapid user base expansion and revenue growth.

Here’s how Slack’s pricing strategy worked as a growth hack:

• Freemium Model: Slack offered a free version of its platform with basic features, which allowed teams to use the service without any upfront cost. This low barrier to entry encouraged widespread adoption and trials by various businesses.
• Limited free version: The free version had limitations, such as a cap on searchable message history and integrations. While it was fully functional for small teams or for testing purposes, larger teams or those needing advanced features were encouraged to upgrade.
• Tiered Pricing Structure: Slack introduced multiple paid tiers with additional features, such as increased storage, added security, and more integration options. This tiered approach catered to different sizes and types of businesses, making it scalable and adaptable to various needs.
• Transparent Pricing: Slack’s pricing was transparent and simple to understand, helping businesses predict their costs as they scaled. This clarity in pricing removed uncertainty and built trust.
• Encouraging Conversion: By providing a high-quality free experience, users could see the value of Slack firsthand. As their teams grew or their needs evolved, the transition to a paid plan felt like a natural progression rather than a forced upsell.
• Feedback-Driven Improvements: Slack continually improved and added features based on user feedback, making the higher-tier plans more attractive and valuable.

Through this pricing strategy, Slack effectively turned its free users into paid customers, dramatically increasing its revenue and solidifying its position in the market.

This approach exemplifies how a well-thought-out pricing model can serve as a powerful tool for growth, catering to a wide user base while encouraging upgrades and expansions.

16 Essential Growth Hacking Metrics to Keep Track Of

For these growth hacking strategies, you need to be constantly tracking and evaluating the right metrics.

The essential ones are:

• Acquisition Metrics:
  • Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): The cost of acquiring a new customer.
  • Traffic Sources: Origins of web traffic (organic, paid, referral, social, etc.).
  • User Sign-ups: The number of new users or accounts created.
• Activation Metrics:
  • Activation Rate: Percentage of users taking a desired action after sign-up.
  • Time to Conversion: Time taken from initial contact to taking the desired action.
• Retention Metrics:
  • Customer Retention Rate: The rate at which existing customers continue using your product/service.
  • Churn Rate: The rate at which customers stop doing business with you.
• Revenue Metrics:
  • Lifetime Value (LTV): The total revenue expected from a customer over their lifetime.
  • Average Revenue Per User (ARPU): The average revenue generated per user or customer.
• Referral Metrics:
  • Viral Coefficient: The number of new users generated by each existing user.
  • Referral Rate: The rate at which your users refer new users.
• Engagement Metrics:
  • Daily/Monthly Active Users (DAU/MAU): Number of unique users who engage with your product daily or monthly.
  • Session Duration: Average time spent by a user per session.
  • Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors who navigate away after viewing only one page.
• Conversion Metrics:
  • Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors who complete a desired action.
  • Click-Through Rate (CTR): The ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view a page, email campaign, or advertisement.

Getting Started with Growth Hacking

And there you have it — seven growth hacking strategies that work in 2023.

Before you go, here’s one last tip:

Growth hacking requires constant experimentation.

Define specific experiments, track results, and iterate until you find the growth hack that drives explosive growth for your business!

FAQ on Growth Hacking Strategies

Have a question about something we didn’t cover in this article? Here’s a quick FAQ:

1. Are these growth hacking strategies suitable for all types of businesses?

While the strategies discussed are broadly applicable, their effectiveness can vary depending on the business type, industry, market conditions, and target audience. It’s essential to tailor these strategies to your specific business context.

A growth hack that worked for one business might turn out to be completely ineffective for another, and vice versa.

2. How can I measure the success of my growth hacking efforts?

You can measure your success using various metrics such as website traffic, conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, retention rates, and overall sales.

Using analytics tools to track these metrics is key to understanding the effectiveness of your strategies.

3. What are the four stages of growth hacking?

The four stages of growth hacking typically involve:

1. Product Market Fit: Ensuring that your product or service meets the demands and needs of your target market. This stage is about understanding your audience and refining your product to suit their needs.
2. Acquisition: Attracting users or customers to your product or service. This involves strategies to increase visibility and awareness, such as SEO, content marketing, social media campaigns, or paid advertising.
3. Activation: Encouraging users to take a specific action, like signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or using a product feature. This stage is focused on converting visitors into active users or customers.
4. Retention: Keeping customers engaged and ensuring they return. This can be achieved through excellent customer service, regular updates, loyalty programs, or by continuously adding value to the product or service.

4. What is an example of a growth hacker tactic?

An example of a growth hacker tactic is the use of a viral referral program. Dropbox, for instance, used this tactic effectively by offering free additional storage space to both the referrer and the referred user. This simple yet effective strategy significantly increased their user base, as it incentivized current users to promote Dropbox to their network, leading to rapid and cost-effective growth.