5 Record-Breaking Growth Hacking Strategies Of All Time
Who says marketing involves hefty investments?
Major corporations have broken the marketing records with little to no investment.
Yes, that’s right! Companies like Gmail, Instagram, Netflix, Reliance Jio, excelled in implementing one marketing technique to tip the scales in their favour.
How?
They used the one and only — growth hacking strategies to expand their market and customer base.
Let’s take a look at each one of them.
But before that, what is growth hacking? How does it help businesses to grow?
What is growth hacking?
The term growth hacking was first coined in 2010 by Sean Ellis, the CEO and founder of hackersgrowth.com.
Now, approximately a decade later, this term has gained popularity due to its fruitful approach.
Growth hacking is a clutter-free way of marketing your product and services to customers. The strategies under growth hacking serve as the first step to climbing up the ladder of success.
According to Sean Ellis, growth is just as essential for companies as product engineering, product design and product placement.
Numerous techniques like A/B testing, cross-channel marketing, customer lifecycle, referral programs, are used to figure out what works best for brands.
How do growth hacking strategies help businesses?
The foundation of growth hacking is experimentation. A lot of new strategies thrive after experimenting, testing and then implementing.
Since every brand has individual goals and unique brand identity, every strategy needs to be one-of-a-kind. The growth hackers experiment with every technique in the book to know what works for a particular brand.
Benefits of growth hacking strategies
· Discovering new and innovative strategies around us
· Building a large customer base at a low cost
· Discovering loops in previous marketing techniques
· Gaining insights from customer lifecycle
· Building a better product range
· Discovering new markets and product ideas
Brands that understood the importance of growth hacking used low-cost promotion techniques, that resulted in millions of customers in a matter of days.
5 iconic growth hacking strategies of all time
Thanks to the most remarkable growth hacking strategies, brands that no one knew of, are now on every person’s tip of the tongue.
Over the years, many businesses have gained inspiration from these techniques and paved their way to success.
1. The “FOMO” technique by GMAIL
After being launched, Gmail used e-vites to gain users. They created a private invite-only system, where a person with an invite was qualified for making an account.
This tactic created a fear of missing out (FOMO) in the users and more and more people became eager to use it. This is how Gmail used the growth strategy before the term was coined.
Gmail now has 1 billion users worldwide. The reason this strategy worked because:
· They offered enhanced features that no one did
· They had a product that everyone wanted
The FOMO technique by Gmail is indeed a great inspiration. It proves that studying customer needs is an essential tool in marketing.
Fun fact: Gmail’s invite-only strategy worked so well that its invites were sold on eBay.
2. The “Divide and Conquer” technique by NETFLIX
Netflix specialized as a DVD rental company in the 90s. The company was divided into two businesses to drive growth, one for renting DVDs and the other for streaming videos online. They used the funds accumulated from one to expand the other.
They divided the companies, used the funds and conquered the market.
Some of the other growth hacking techniques they used were:
· Hiring talent to produce engaging content
· Letting the users watch what they wanted, whenever they wanted
· Developing a compelling social media presence
· Acquiring web series and movies from that people would pay to watch
Fun fact: Netflix has over 208 million subscribers worldwide.
3. The “Refer and Earn” technique by PAYPAL
As simple as it sounds, it is the refer and earn technique that promised success for Paypal. This technique has been used and reused by several brands.
Paypal promised its customers a commission of 10$ for every referral. They invested about 60$ million in the strategy. But considering the customer lifetime value, which was calculated to be 20$ (per customer), it was an extraordinary way of hacking growth.
This inspirational (and now popular) referral technique pinpointed the importance of knowing your customer value.
Fun fact: After employing this technique, Paypal witnessed a 10% daily growth in users (which is now close to 400 million.)
4. The “Customer-Advertiser” technique by HOTMAIL
Another great example of inspiring growth hacking strategies is the one used by Hotmail. An investor suggested they put, “PS I love you. Get your free e-mail on Hotmail” at the end of each e-mail.
This simple technique helped Hotmail to grow to 12 million users in just 18 months (400 million users currently).
Instead of spending loads on advertising, they converted their customers into advertisers, boosting their customer base.
This example proves that sometimes you need a simple but innovative idea more than funds.
Fun fact: A year and a half later, Hotmail was sold to Microsoft with 12 million users. (There were only 70 million internet users at that time!)
5. The “Market Penetration Pricing” technique by RELIANCE JIO
The record-breaking growth hacking strategy to Reliance Jio startled the mobile industry. They used a reformed market penetration technique that boosted their subscription to 100 million in just 100 days.
The market penetration pricing technique is a popular pricing method where companies enter the market with a competitively low cost and then gradually increase the prices.
The growth hackers at Reliance Jio came up with a ground-breaking way of using this technique. Instead of entering the market with low pricing, they offered their services for FREE.
The customers, mostly youngsters, loved this strategy. Reliance Jio offered free connection with several attractive services like video streaming, music apps and so on.
Other growth hacking strategies of reliance Jio include:
· Customer retention
· Referral marketing
· Hassle-free activation
· Premium technology
Fun fact: The Indian Telecom Industry has recorded Reliance Jio’s growth hacking technique as the ultimate strategy of all time.
Summing up
Growth hacking is all a business needs to become a brand. These techniques serve as an inspiration for present-day businesses and start-ups.
They explain why a growth hacking strategy is so important for businesses.
However, the list doesn’t end here. As the industries have evolved, so have their strategies.
There are numerous brands out there that are going to be the next big sensation.
All with the help of growth hacking.
