14 Best Growth Hacking Strategies For Startups That Are Proven To Work

Growth hacking – another novelty buzzword in the startup world or something you need to know about?

This article answers what growth hacking is and provides simple growth hacking strategies you can implement to grow your startup. 

Let’s dive right into it. 

What Is Growth Hacking

Sean Ellis, the founder and the CEO of GrowthHackers, came up with the phrase “growth hacking” in 2010. 

Growth hacking is a broad term for different strategies startups use to grow their customer base. We mainly use the term with early-stage startups with limited marketing budgets. 

Growth hacking basically refers to all actions related to getting your word out for as little money as possible. It usually involves a lot of innovative work to keep the costs down. This is where the term “hacking” comes from. 

How does growth hacking work?

The basic principle of growth hacking is relatively simple – you figure out why you grow, and you find ways to make that happen on purpose. 

In simple terms – find out what’s bringing in customers and double down on that. 

Tried And Tested Growth Hacking Strategies

Let’s dive deep into actionable strategies you can use to grow your startup. We will share 14 different hacks you can use to get more clients. 

We decided only to share ideas with a proven track record of success in the startup world. Remember, the more innovative you are, the better your growth hacking results will be. 

Don’t be afraid to change the strategies we mention and make them your own. 

Ok, enough talk. Here’s the first growth hacking strategy you can try. 

Repurpose Your Old Content

You probably know how long it takes to create an original content piece. What if you could triple the output for your content without spending more time producing it?

Think of ways you can repurpose the content you already have. Let us give you an example of how a growth hacker repurposes content.

Let’s say you have a 30-minute podcast that you have already published. You can transcribe the podcast, turn the text into an original blog post for your website, create two guest blog posts that you’ll publish on high-authority sites, and you can create short quotes that you turn into social media posts.

As you see, you’ve just taken one piece of content and created a few more that you can use on other channels. Do this for all your original content to reach new audiences. 

Start A Referral Program

Did you know that people are up to four times more likely to make a purchase based on a referral? We tend to believe something is good if it’s recommended to us by someone we trust. 

A referral program means you award people that bring in new leads. It’s very easy to set up a program like this.

We recommend you create a separate landing page for your referral program where you explain all the details and expected pay for each new lead. 

You can analyze existing referral programs in your market to ensure what you have to offer is better. This makes it more likely for people to participate in the program. 

Gamify Your Products

We all like playing games. They are interesting, and they make us very engaged. Why not use them to improve your onboarding experience? 

Instead of using simple step-by-step instructions and guides, try gamifying the process. You can try small quizzes where you give your users awards for correct answers. 

Games will activate your users, which results in better metrics for your startup. Active users will likely finish the onboarding process and start using your product. 

Analyze how your competitors onboard their users. Try to make your process smoother and more fun for the users. 

Build An Online Community

In the digital age that we live in, most users want direct access to the brands they are giving money to. Quickly solving your clients’ problems can elevate your brand beyond your competitors. 

One of the easiest ways to stay connected with your users is to build a community where you keep your loyal users informed about the product. 

You can also use the community to receive feedback and suggestions for new features. 

There are different platforms you can use to build your community. You can create a Discord server, a subReddit, or a Facebook group.

Keep in mind you’re not in control of your users if you decide to use a public platform like Facebook. But you do gain access to more people. 

Create Interactive Content

Marketers want to keep the users as engaged as possible. Users that are having fun are more likely to stay on the website. 

This gives you more time to turn them into paying customers. Better customer engagement also leads to brand loyalty and turns your users into brand advocates. 

The best examples of interactive content are quizzes, webinars, and videos. Try to include these content types on your website and your blog. 

Don’t forget to measure the success of the interactive content, so you know what type works best with your audience. 

Build a Pre-Launch Email List

A pre-launch email list is an email list you create before you launch your product. This ensures that you already have potential users when you take your product to market. 

This elegant solution ensures you get your first paying customers as soon as you launch. 

The hard part is finding people willing to join your list when you have nothing to offer. We recommend you try guest posting on high-authority websites. You can include a backlink to your landing page, where you collect emails. 

You can even try to build an audience on public platforms like Medium and Quora.  

Launch on Appsumo and PitchGround

Appsumo and PitchGround are platforms where SAAS startups provide lifetime access to the software for early adopters. 

The main appeal of these platforms is they have a large audience. They have people interested in SAAS startups, making it relatively easy for new brands to get their first users. 

This growth hacking strategy makes sense for SAAS startups since it costs the same to run the company regardless of the number of users they have. 

Make sure you prepare an enticing offer to convince hesitant people to give your software a chance. 

Find Strategic Partners

What do you need when you’re starting a company? A hungry audience that wants to buy your product.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could partner with someone that has a hungry audience but no product to sell? You can leverage the power of business partnerships. 

Find a popular blogger or influencer that has a solid following. Offer them part of the profit if they want to promote your software. It’s as easy as that. 

We recommend you start with smaller bloggers and influencers first. They are more likely to partner up with a new company. 

Position Your Brand Against The Industry Leader

Every successful startup story starts with competitive research. You should do the same. Identify the biggest brands in your market. 

Once you know who the biggest players are, start comparing your brand to theirs. You can create comparison tables where you highlight your advantages. 

You can create blog posts where you show what you do differently and what you do better. This will position you as the best alternative to the market leader.

The important thing is to stay respectful. You don’t want to bash your competitors. People don’t like that. Instead, simply show what your advantages are compared to other brands in the market.

Try HARO

For those of you that don’t know, HARO stands for “help a reporter out.” It’s a platform built to help reporters write informative and authoritative articles. 

You will get emails from various reporters asking for help. You can give them a valuable piece of information regarding the topic they are covering. They will cite you in the article, and they might include a backlink to your website as they use your citation.

This is a relatively easy way to get yourself featured in premium publications, even if you’re not yet an authority figure in your market. 

Give Your Customers Gifts

This is a simple and straightforward tactic where you send your new customers a gift. This doesn’t have to be expensive. What matters is you show them how valuable they are to you. 

You can try simple things like t-shirts with your logo. Or, you can think of something people in your industry use daily. 

This strategy is especially great if none of your competitors is doing the same. You can be sure that people will share their gifts on social media. This will help spread the message about your brand. 

Featured Customers

Why not allow your customers to voice their opinion? You can invite your loyal users to contribute a post on your blog. 

You can ask them to write an email to existing customers. You can help them record an informative video about a topic in your industry.

People are more likely to connect with someone who represents their point of view. If you let them know that the person talking/writing is a customer and not your employee, they will trust the person more. 

This is a great way to engage your audience. It might even result in other users wanting to share their opinion. 

Split-Testing

Online advertisers understand that a small change in an ad can result in significant changes in revenue. 

Growth hackers like numbers. That’s the easiest way to determine if something is working or not. Split-testing enables you to test similar versions of the same ad to find the one that performs the best. 

You are constantly improving your ads and optimizing your clickthrough rates with split-testing (also called A/B testing). 

You can double down on the optimized ads to elevate your reach and bring in more leads. 

SEO Hacking

We’re not talking about illegal practices when we talk about SEO hacking. We’re referring to finding keywords that you’re ranking for but not targeting. 

Let’s say you find you’re ranking on the second page of Google for a keyword in your niche that you’re not targeting with any of your content.

There’s a good chance you might get to page number one if you create a post dedicated to that keyword. 

You have to be skilled in Google Analytics to uncover these keywords. Luckily, Google provides free resources for entrepreneurs that want to learn analytics. 

Conclusion

Growth hacking is more than a fad. It’s here to stay. It allows entrepreneurs and startups to reach new audiences and grow their revenue. 

You can try the strategies we shared to grow your business. Remember, the best growth hackers are constantly innovating. You can use the ideas we shared to create your own hacks. 

Don’t be afraid to try new things. You never know when you might find something that works.