Top 50+ Growth Hacking Case Studies you need to read!

An epic list of growth hacking case and growth studies you need to read. There are some valuable lessons to learn from some of the hottest startups in the world.

I hope you get some "golden nugget" strategies and tactics from these case studies like I have. Enjoy :)

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31+ Growth Hacking Examples [You Can Use in 2021]

  • April 3, 2021

At the end of the day, marketing is all about growth.

But very few businesses actually experience significant growth in their lifetimes. At some point, most businesses find themselves stuck.

One of the best ways to get unstuck is to be inspired by others’ success.

So, in this post we’re going to walk you through:

  • 31+ (Successful) Growth Hacking Examples
  • Basics of Growth Hacking
  • How to Get Started With Growth Hacking

So, let’s get started!

31+ Growth Hacking Examples

PayPal successfully penetrated the online payment market, one of the most competitive markets in the world. So, how did they manage to achieve this?

The answer is paid referrals.

In the beginning, PayPal paid out decent sized referral commissions that helped them grow to 1 million users by March of 2000 and 5 million users by July.

Once they became prominent in the market, they reduced the referral bonuses to $5 and eventually phased them out altogether.

PayPal - Growth Hacking Examples

Read more about how PayPal set up a successful referral program.

#2. Dropbox

File management company Dropbox reached $116 million in revenue in 2012, and skyrocketed to $1.1 billion in five years.

One of their biggest drivers of growth was their gamified onboarding program, where you earned more GB of storage for every onboarding task you completed (most of which were related to promoting DropBox).

Dropbox - Growth Hacking Examples

This led to impressive customer retention rates and allowed them to scale quickly in a short period of time.

Learn more about how Dropbox used gamification to hack their growth all the way to $1 billion in annual revenue!

Airbnb flipped the hospitality industry on its head by using what would later become one of the most famous growth hacks of all time.

Before they were a household name, most people stayed in hotels. But if you wanted a hotel alternative, you went to Craigslist.

So the Airbnb developers found a way to allow users to post their rentals directly to Craigslist, giving them exposure to 100 million-plus consumers.

Airbnb - Growth Hacking Examples

Find out more about Airbnb’s brilliant move and massive growth hacking example.

#4. Dollar Shave Club

Dollar Shave Club got popular thanks to monthly razor blades starting at just $1.

But they got their message out through viral video marketing.

Thanks to some pithy humor and smart use of profanity (“Our blades are f***ing great.”), their original video on YouTube garnered almost 20 million views in the first few months, making them a household name and growing from $65 million in revenue to a $615 million valuation just a year later.

Putting profanity in your video titles might not work every time, but pair it with a solid script focused on what makes your product unique, and you may go viral.

Learn more about their viral video marketing strategy.

Foundr is a resource for entrepreneurs that boasts over 250,000 subscribers .

But they were much smaller back in 2016. To achieve faster growth, they decided to publish a book and use Kickstarter to market and fund it.

Foundr - Growth Hacking Examples

The beauty of a crowdfunding campaign isn’t just the funding you receive from fans, but the brand engagement and loyalty built in the process.

Those who are willing to fork up cash to see your product come to life are likely to become raving fans and brand ambassadors, as they literally have a stake in what you’re doing.

So the campaign not only helped them publish a book, it landed them free marketing to thousands and gained them loads of fans who were deeply invested in what they were doing.

The whole thing led to almost $300,000 in book pre-sales and thousands of new email subscribers.

Find out more about how they pulled it off.

Gmail began its beta program in April 2004 and today has well over one billion active users.

Rather than rushing to release it to the world, the Gmail team remained in “beta” for five years. For the first few years, you could only use Gmail if you were invited by a user.

Gmail - Growth Hacking Examples

The invite-only method stirred curiosity and the fear of missing out – so much so that invitations were being sold for $150 on eBay! This gave Gmail very strong momentum, allowing them to grow like crazy when the software came out of Beta.

Read more about their invite-only growth hack.

#7. HotMail

HotMail acquired over 12 million users in just 18 months before being sold to Microsoft for $500 million – all through an email signature.

They added an email signature line to every user’s email inviting the recipient to start a free account. It worked and helped them grab almost 20% of the entire email market.

HotMail - Growth Hacking Examples

Learn more about Hotmail’s email signature growth hack.

#8. LinkedIn

LinkedIn - Growth Hacking Examples

LinkedIn launched in 2003 with around 12k users after the first week. Within a year they hit 500,000 users and reached a whopping 225 million by 2021.

Their growth hack?

Focusing on a hyper-targeted audience.

At first, they only rolled the product out to the tech sector in Silicon Valley. This was an audience they were extremely familiar with, which helped them expertly market the product.

Thanks to rapid adoption by their initial audience, they were able to test and scale rapidly across the nation and then the world.

Read more about LinkedIn’s growth hacking strategy.

Slack is one of the fastest-growing B2B SaaS companies of all time.

Their team attributes their fast growth to identifying a gap in the market, nailing the product experience, and using a freemium model.

Their freemium model is very easy to get started with, and as teams grow, it’s an easy decision to start paying.

This growth hack took them from 15,000 daily users to 500,000 daily users in just one year.

Slack - Growth Hacking Examples

Learn more about Slack’s massive growth, and check out their B2B marketing case study.

#10. Proven

The job board Proven managed to grow its organic traffic by 43% over three months with a unique growth hack.

At the time, the team behind Proven was trying to drive traffic with SEO and content marketing, but it wasn’t working all too well - their SEO growth had stalled. So their founder created Mission Week, a week where the team picks one piece of underperforming content to promote.

Employees got 1 point for sending an outreach email or 5 points for writing a guest post that links to the article. Every employee had to get 20 points before the end of the week.

This resulted in a ton of links, rankings, and traffic for Proven.

Proven - Growth Hacking Examples

Read more about Proven’s mission week growth hack.

#11. Uber Eats

Uber Eats grew from half a billion dollars in revenue in 2017 to nearly $5 billion in annual revenue for 2020.

The beauty of their growth hack lies in their revenue model. They don’t just make money on delivery fees, but also through customer subscription fees, commission fees from restaurants, advertising fees from restaurants, and a small order fee.

Uber Eats - Growth Hacking Examples

Their multiple revenue streams allowed them to stand out from their competition & fund their aggressive growth marketing initiatives.

Find out more about Uber Eats’ growth strategy.

#12. YouTube

In December 2005, YouTube videos got 8 million views each day. By 2009, they were receiving over a billion views each day.

YouTube - Growth Hacking Examples

So - how did YouTube achieve explosive growth?

For starters, a brilliant business model that allowed anyone to upload a video to the internet – no technical skill required. A couple small sites had tried this prior, but none with the same success as YouTube.

But their key growth hack was incentivizing users to create content by allowing them to earn money based on ad revenue. This is very much the norm today, but it was much less common in the early 2000s.

People were quitting their jobs to create content on YouTube, fueling the company’s rise to the video giant they are today.

Learn more about YouTube’s growth here .

#13. Shopify

eCommerce giant Shopify increased its revenue by 90% in just under one year.

They have committed to plenty of growth hacks to fuel their rise, but the most notable is their partner program. Not only do they pay for referrals, but they also pay partners for building themes or selling marketplace apps.

Theme developers can earn up to 70% for each sale made on Shopify (paid themes can go for anywhere from $90 to $250) and 80% for each app sale (apps go for $2,000 on average).

Shopify - Growth Hacking Examples

They literally got their partners to build and grow their product for them.

Read more about Shopify’s brilliant growth hacks.

#14. HubSpot

HubSpot grew its revenue from $15 million to $271 million in just six years.

They invested in many B2B marketing strategies , but one growth hack that significantly contributed to their growth was their website grader.

Website graders are all over the internet now, but back in 2009, the tool was both novel and brilliant. It told you how your site performed, whether it was optimized for search engines, and how well it worked on mobile.

HubSpot - Growth Hacking Examples

What was even more brilliant, though, is that the solution for a poor score from the Website Grader was their tool!

They even offered a 30-day free trial to improve your scores. This lead to increased brand awareness, traffic, and ultimately – users.

Heck, even today, the Website Grader gets tens of thousands of visits from qualified leads every month!

Learn more about HubSpot’s insane growth.

#15. AppSumo

AppSumo is a software deal marketplace that went from making millions a year to millions each month in just two years.

Their rapid growth of email subscribers played a big role in their success – which they achieved largely through quarterly giveaways.

Their first giveaway was for 10 DropBox lifetime subscriptions. People entered their email addresses for a chance to win and referred the giveaway to friends for additional entries.

AppSumo - Growth Hacking Examples

This tactic led to 200,000 new email subscribers in just a week! Because of such stellar results, AppSumo kept doing giveaways every quarter.

Read more about AppSumo’s giveaway growth hack.

#16. Intercom

Intercom is a messaging platform that grew to $50 million in annual recurring revenue in just 3 years – the only SaaS in history to grow faster is Slack.

One growth hack that played a big role in their growth was a “Powered by Intercom” link on their chatbot that led to a landing page with personalized content.

Intercom - Growth Hacking Examples

When you click on their “We run on…” link, you’re taken to a page that looks like this:

Intercom

The landing page uses dynamic keyword insertion to personalize the heading and entice you to try the same tool you were just using on one of their partner’s sites.

This hack led to loads of free trial sign-ups and plenty of customers, which helped fuel Intercom’s growth to $50 million ARR.

Find out more about this genius growth hack here .

#17. Mailchimp

Mailchimp didn’t skyrocket to success overnight, they’ve been steadily rising over the last fifteen years or so. But they did see big time growth in 2016 thanks to a growth hack, which helped them improve revenue from $280 million to $400 million in just a single year.

Early on, Mailchimp was doing great. They had tons of users signing up for their product. But they had a problem:

Very few of their users were paying – the majority were just using the free trial.

To fix this, they came up with a brilliant growth hack.

They ran ads to these inactive users encouraging and helping them set up their first campaign.

Mailchimp

This growth hacking example led to plenty of upsells to the paid version of the product and helped MailChimp achieve its massive 2016 growth.

Learn more about their Facebook Ad campaigns here.

#18. Tinder

Dating app Tinder launched in September 2012. By 2014, the app had been downloaded more than 40 million times and users were swiping right 1 billion times per day.

Tinder

How did they achieve such rapid growth in just two years?

For starters, they used a gamified user experience to make the app addictive. The fact that you can’t see who is coming up next makes it nearly impossible not to swipe.

And to heighten the reward factor even further, there’s the potential some of the people you’ll be presented with have already swiped right on you.

In addition to the addictive design, Tinder:

  • Promoted their app through Greek life at universities
  • Expanded their audience by rolling out features not just for singles looking to date
  • Encouraging referrals and word of mouth to grow the size of users’ dating pools

Learn more about Tinder’s hacks for massive growth.

Social media Q&A site Quora grew from 50,000 monthly users to over 160,000 in just under one month back in 2011. This rapid growth was largely due to how addicting the platform can be.

Quora achieved this through gamification, a growth hack that can move the needle big time.

The goal of using Quora is to get your questions answered by experts. When they first started, you had to have credits in order to ask questions.

But in order to get credits, you had to answer questions from others.

Quora’s gamification technique forced members to engage their product in order to use their product. In addition to the engagement, their members began to crave the stimulus of reward credits.

Quora

Learn more about Quora’s gamification growth hack.

Personal finance app Mint acquired over 1.5 million users in their first two years by going all-in on SaaS SEO and content creation.

Before their beta product was even ready, they set out to build an audience through SEO and content marketing. They did in-depth keyword research and created quality, tailored content for every finance query they could, seeking to speak directly to the needs of young professionals.

Months later, when the application was ready, it grew rapidly thanks to an audience who was already engaged with and seeking advice from the brand.

Even today, Mint’s content marketing & SEO strategy is brining in qualified traffic on a daily basis:

Mint

Read more about Mint’s SEO growth hacking example.

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Lyft went from 100,000 rides in 2012 to completing 162 million rides in 2016. How did they grow so fast?

The Lyft team invested a ton into marketing campaigns during those four years, but one unique hack helped contribute to their growth.

They noticed many Uber riders struggling to find their rides, so Lyft put a big pink mustache on the hood of all their cars – giving them some personality and helping riders locate drivers.

Lyft

So, the takeaway here is that growth hacks don’t always have to be digital!

Read more about Lyft’s offline growth tactics.

#22. Buffer

Social media scheduling tool Buffer went from $0 to $5 million per year in just five years. One of the biggest contributors to their growth has been their quality content.

The thing with content, though, is that no matter how good it is, you still need to promote it to drive results .

Here’s what Buffer did to make sure their content gets a ton of views:

Since Buffer’s product is a social media scheduling tool, they also offer post suggestions in their app to their users. If a user is in the business or marketing industry, Buffer makes sure that their own content pops up on top for Suggested Content.

Buffer

This leads to thousands of social engagements to Buffer’s posts and gets their brand in front of tons of potential customers every day.

Read more about their growth hack.

#23. Instagram

Instagram had 10,000 users within the first hour of its launch. This number grew to 90 million in a couple of years, and then to 800 million just four years later.

Many attribute their early success to the fact they let people try it out prior to launching, creating a bunch of fans and brand advocates that helped the product grow rapidly when it did launch.

Instagram

Find out more about Instagram’s growth hacks.

#24. TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor is well known as a giant in the travel industry, and they’re also well known for filling your inbox with loads of emails. How can they get away with sending so many daily emails without becoming labeled a spammer?

The answer lies in a genius email growth hack. TripAdvisor’s email sequences get slightly more personalized with each and every email to the point that no two TripAdvisor users see the same emails. They’re that personalized to the individual.

This hyper personalization leads to high open rates and link CTRs. Users are still engaging their emails even when they have 2-3 in their inbox everyday.

TripAdvisor

Read more about TripAdvisor’s email growth hacking example.

#25. WhatsApp

WhatsApp grew to 419 million users in just four years without spending any money on user acquisition.

Their founders were committed to focusing solely on the product, not marketing, knowing a great product would market itself. Not to mention the fact that a messaging app has a built-in referral program.

Let us explain:

If you love the app (like so many did early on) and want to use it, you need your friends to have the app as well. WhatsApp tapped into this and made it very easy to invite friends to download the app.

An incredible product, easy onboarding, and the ease of getting your friends onboard helped WhatsApp grow rapidly.

WhatsApp

Learn more about WhatsApp’s growth hacks.

#26. Spotify

In just six years, Spotify earned a more than $10 billion market valuation with over 50 million users.

Spotify implemented a handful of awesome hacks to achieve this growth:

  • They worked a deal with Facebook to become its “default music service” through an integration in September 2011.
  • They utilized a freemium model that was cheaper than iTunes, and more ethical than stealing music online.
  • They rolled out an invite-only system early on to build hype and curiosity.
  • They make sharing playlists and songs with non-users incredibly easy in order to get them onboard.

Spotify

Read more about Spotify’s incredible growth.

#27. OkCupid

OkCupid is a dating site that has managed to hold its market share despite being in one of the most competitive industries on the planet. Their success provides us a great growth hacking example.

They grew and have held that market share largely due to their genius content marketing strategy which focuses heavily on original data from their users.

Because they encourage users to share personal information, OkCupid has access to loads of interesting data.

They pull this data together, analyze it, and share original content on all kinds of interesting topics using scientifically backed data.

For example, in 2014, OkCupid figured out what’s the likelihood of people from certain ethnic backgrounds to go out with each other.

OkCupid

Since this type of content is based on brand-new research, it got OkCupid over 100K shares on specific posts, as well as mentions in different media websites.

Read more about OKCupid’s content marketing growth hack.

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#28. Grow and Convert

Content marketing company Grow and Convert grew from 0 to 32,000 users in 5 months with zero paid traffic through a few smart growth hacks.

Most notably, they targeted and joined groups and communities who they felt would engage their content.

They joined tons of groups focused on learning digital marketing on Facebook , LinkedIn, and (at the time) Google+.

They took their time interacting and engaging in conversation organically before promoting their own blog posts and white papers – which their founder says was key to better understanding what kinds of content their audience wanted.

Grow and Convert

The trust they built led to tons of referral traffic, subscribers, and backlinks.

Check out more on their hack.

Monzo is a mobile-only bank that grew from zero to 250,000 users within two years using the queue jumper growth hack.

They only let so many users in each day, so once you signed up, you were given a spot in line.

Monzo

But the catch was that you could jump the line by referring your friends to the app.

Read more about Monzo’s genius growth hack.

#30. Shazam

Song identifier app Shazam has been downloaded more than one billion times.

Their growth hack wasn’t a social media or content marketing strategy, but a word of mouth strategy.

When using the app to identify the song, you need to hold your phone up closer to the source of the music. This naturally leads people to ask you what you’re doing, which helps Shazam grow their brand awareness.

Shazam

#31. Groupon

Groupon added a twist to the classic refer-a-friend technique in order to grow their revenue by 228% in just one year.

Their twist was that you HAD to refer a deal to ten people in order to access it yourself.

Groupon

This motivated users to send the deal to others so that they could get it themselves. This hack introduced thousands of people to Groupon.

Learn more about Groupon’s growth hacks here!

What’s Growth Hacking?

Growth hacking, or growth marketing, isn’t just about randomly implementing quick hacks on your way to success.

Growth hacking is a science-backed marketing strategy that takes time, focus, and lots of testing. It involves:

  • Defining Experiments : At the heart of every successful growth marketing campaign are experiments. You have to define your experiment with an assumption. For example, you may think that adding an email capture to the heading of your blog posts will increase email signups. There’s your experiment.
  • Setting your KPI: Once you have your hypothesis, you set a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) that defines success for your experiment and let’s you know whether it’s worth scaling. For example, you could set a KPI of “25% increase in email signups.”
  • Executing Slowly: Growth marketing campaigns start slowly – you don’t want to waste any money or time implementing a complicated solution before you know whether or not it will work. In our example, you may update 25% of your blog posts to test if your hypothesis is correct.
  • Scaling Up: Experiments that hit their KPIs get scaled. If your test hit the desired KPI, you would finish the work and update all of your blog posts.

This is how growth hacking works. Some experiments work out, and others don’t. But with dedication and attention to detail over time, growth marketing can result in huge wins.

How to Learn Growth Hacking?

Successful growth hacking typically means knowing a little bit about every marketing channel. This will help you form experiments and test theories across a range of channels, rather than the one you may be an expert in.

A marketer that has a good understanding of a wide range of channels is called a T-shaped marketer.

T-Shaped Marketer

It’s tough to gain such a wide range of knowledge, but thankfully there are plenty of resources on the internet to help.

If you want to grow in SEO, check out:

  • Our SEO Process - How to Reach 200,000+ Monthly Traffic
  • How To Write SEO Content (That Ranks #1 In 2021)
  • SEO Case Study (2020) - 7 Steps To 197,514 Monthly Traffic

If you want to grow in content marketing, check out:

  • The Content Marketing Institute
  • HubSpot’s Guide on Content Strategy
  • Content Marketing Case Study - $50,000+ From ONE Article

If you want to grow in PPC, check out:

  • Wordstream’s PPC University
  • Google’s Ad Certification

If you want to grow in social media, check out:

  • Buffer’s Blog
  • Social Media Explorer

And finally, if you want to grow in email marketing, check out:

  • 27+ Best Digital Marketing Courses
  • HubSpot’s Email Marketing Courses
  • Mailchimp’s Blog

Hope you liked our comprehensive list of the most popular growth hacking examples.

Companies world-wide have used these hacks to rocket-boost their growth, and hopefully, you’ve learned a thing or two you can use to apply to your own business.

And remember - growth hacking isn’t just the process of implementing some cheap hacks or tricks. It’s a methodology of testing out new tactics, measuring KPIs, and scaling best performing channels & tactics!

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The Strategy Story

Growth Hacking Strategy: Examples, Case Study, B2B

case study growth hacking

What is growth hacking ?

Growth hacking is a marketing technique or strategy focused on finding creative, unconventional, data-driven ways to grow a business or product rapidly. Growth hacking aims to identify the most effective and efficient ways to acquire and retain customers while minimizing costs and maximizing growth.

Growth hacking typically involves a highly iterative process of testing and experimentation, using various marketing channels and tactics to identify what works and what doesn’t quickly. This can include techniques such as A/B testing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, influencer marketing, viral marketing, and referral programs.

Growth hackers are typically highly skilled in data analysis, marketing, and product development and often work closely with engineers and other technical experts to develop and implement growth strategies.

case study growth hacking

The term “growth hacker” was first popularized by entrepreneur Sean Ellis in 2010. It has since become a popular approach for startups and established businesses looking to quickly and efficiently scale their operations.

Growth hacking strategies

Growth hacking is a process of rapid experimentation to identify the most effective and efficient ways to grow a business. Here are some growth hacking strategies:

  • A/B testing: A/B testing involves testing two websites or landing page versions to see which performs better. This can help businesses optimize their website for higher conversion rates.
  • Referral programs: Referral programs can effectively grow your business by incentivizing existing customers to refer their friends and family to your product or service.
  • Social media marketing: Social media platforms can be used to build brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, and engage with customers.
  • Influencer marketing: Partnering with influencers can be a powerful way to reach a wider audience and build credibility for your brand.
  • Content marketing: Creating high-quality content that provides value to your audience can help attract new customers and keep them engaged with your brand.
  • Search engine optimization (SEO): Optimizing your website for search engines can help improve your visibility in search results and drive organic traffic to your site.
  • Email marketing: Email marketing can be a highly effective way to nurture leads, convert them into customers, and retain existing customers.
  • Viral marketing: Creating a viral campaign or content can generate massive traffic and buzz around your brand.

These are just a few examples of growth hacking strategies. The key is experimenting with different tactics and constantly iterating to find what works best for your business.

Examples of growth hacking

Here are some examples of growth hacking:

  • Dropbox: In its early days, Dropbox used a referral program to drive rapid growth. They offered existing users extra storage space if they referred friends to the service. This helped Dropbox acquire millions of users quickly and establish itself as a leader in the cloud storage market. How does Dropbox work and make money – Business Model
  • Hotmail: In 1996, Hotmail became one of the first web-based email services. To drive growth, they added a simple but effective signature to the bottom of every outgoing email that said, “PS: I love you. Get your free email at Hotmail.” This helped spread awareness of the service and rapidly grew its user base.
  • Dollar Shave Club: Dollar Shave Club used a humorous viral video to drive rapid growth. The video featured the company’s founder explaining the benefits of its subscription razor service in a comedic way. The video quickly went viral, generating millions of views and helping the company acquire tens of thousands of new customers. Dollar Shave Club Business Model: Pioneering the D2C industry
  • Instagram: Instagram used influencer marketing to drive early growth. The company identified popular social media influencers in its target market and worked with them to promote the app to their followers. This helped Instagram quickly establish a large and engaged user base, eventually leading to its acquisition by Facebook for $1 billion.

These are just a few examples of growth hacking. The key to effective growth hacking is to be creative, data-driven and focused on identifying the most effective and efficient ways to drive growth.

Case study of successful growth hacking

One case study of a successful growth hacking campaign is that of Airbnb. In its early days, the company struggled to attract users and get people to trust the idea of staying in a stranger’s home. To drive growth, they developed several innovative growth hacking strategies that helped them rapidly scale their business.

One of Airbnb’s most successful growth hacking campaigns was its use of Craigslist. In 2010, Craigslist was one of the most popular online marketplaces for renting apartments and vacation homes. Airbnb identified this as an opportunity to reach a large audience of potential hosts and guests.

To take advantage of this opportunity, Airbnb developed a tool allowing hosts to post their Airbnb listings to Craigslist automatically. This made it easy for hosts to reach a wider audience and attract more bookings. Airbnb also encouraged hosts to post their listings on Craigslist by offering them a $100 travel voucher if they did so.

The Craigslist campaign was highly successful for Airbnb. By leveraging Craigslist’s existing user base and popular platform, Airbnb was able to rapidly scale its business and attract a large number of new users. Airbnb’s user base had tripled within a few months, and the company established a strong vacation rental market presence.

Another successful growth hacking strategy used by Airbnb was its referral program. Airbnb offered users a $25 travel credit for every friend they referred to the service. This incentivized existing users to refer their friends and family to Airbnb, which helped the company rapidly acquire new users and establish itself as a leader in the vacation rental market.

Through these and other innovative growth hacking strategies, Airbnb was able to rapidly scale its business and establish itself as a major player in the travel industry. As of March’23, Airbnb has over 6+ million listings worldwide and a over $75 billion valuation.

B2B growth hacking

B2B (business-to-business) growth hacking is a marketing strategy that focuses on rapidly growing a B2B business through innovative, data-driven, and cost-effective marketing tactics. B2B growth hacking is particularly important for startups and small businesses that must grow quickly and compete with larger, more established competitors.

Here are some B2B growth hacking strategies that have proven to be effective:

  • Referral Marketing: Referral marketing is a powerful B2B growth hacking strategy. You can quickly acquire new customers and grow your business by incentivizing your existing customers to refer their friends and colleagues to your business. To implement a successful referral marketing campaign, you must offer a compelling incentive to your existing customers and make it easy for them to refer others.
  • Content Marketing: Content marketing is a cost-effective way to drive traffic and leads to your B2B business. By creating high-quality, informative content that addresses your target audience’s pain points, you can attract new leads to your website and establish your business as an industry thought leader. To succeed in your content marketing strategy, you need to identify the right topics, use the right keywords, and distribute your content on the right channels.
  • LinkedIn Marketing: LinkedIn is a powerful B2B marketing channel that can help you reach your target audience and generate leads. By optimizing your LinkedIn profile, publishing content on the platform, and engaging with your target audience, you can establish your business as an industry leader and attract new leads to your business.
  • Email Marketing: Email marketing is a highly effective B2B growth hacking strategy. You can nurture leads and convert them into paying customers by building a high-quality email list and sending targeted, personalized emails to your subscribers. To succeed in your email marketing strategy, you need to segment your list, use targeted messaging, and track your results.
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO is a crucial B2B growth hacking strategy that can help you attract more organic traffic to your website. Optimizing your website for relevant keywords, building high-quality backlinks, and creating informative content can improve your search engine rankings and attract more leads to your business.

5 B2B Marketing Strategies that are Guaranteed to Work

These are just a few examples of B2B growth hacking strategies. The key to successful B2B growth hacking is to be innovative, data-driven and focused on finding the most effective and efficient ways to grow your business.

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12 Best Growth Hacking Strategies and Examples of All Time

Abhik Shome

Abhik Shome is the Founder of The Starting Idea , a solopreneur-focused business growth magazine. With The Starting Idea, he aims to share clever (and unconventional) content marketing strategies and untapped tools for solopreneur startups to seize profitable blue ocean opportunities rapidly before the competition. He has previously contributed to major publications like Inc Magazine , Business Insider , Thrive Global , Influencive , and YourStory . Connect with him on LinkedIn .

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  • Nov 15, 2022

Growth Hacking Case Study: Behind The Massive Growth Of These 7 FinTech Companies

Don’t have a super big marketing budget to do Super Bowl ads for your new Fintech startup? (Trivia: Those things cost $233K per second! )

Wish there was a cheaper, smarter way to grow super fast?

If yes, then you’ll love growth hacking.

With growth hacking, you can get 2+ leads week after week without spending 5+ figures on expensive marketing campaigns.

See the screenshot below:

case study growth hacking

This is the kind of result The Scalelab brought in for FinTech companies who want a low-cost but effective approach to growing their companies:

✔ 80% - 92% open rate (Up to 3X the average open rate)

✔ 50% - 63% reply rate (Up to 12X the average reply rate)

✔ 2+ clients week after week

✔ Around $100,000 in pipeline value

The growth-hacking strategy we used? Cold-emailing.

But the point is, you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on costly marketing campaigns to grow dramatically.

With growth hacking, you can leverage inexpensive and innovative ways to grow your customer base exponentially.

In this guide, we’ll review growth hacking case studies that you can use to scale your FinTech company fast.

You’ll learn:

How to grow your user base to over a million without spending thousands on marketing.

How to encourage users to refer your software to friends.

How to get over 700,000 sign ups for a FinTech product that doesn’t exist (yet).

Low-cost marketing approaches that get the highest ROI.

So if you’re ready to growth hack your business, read on!

Growth Hacking Case Study #1 : How Paypal Grew Their User Base to Over 100 Million

As of 2022, PayPal has dominated the online payment market. PayPal’s active accounts stood at 429 million users . Today, PayPal processes over $2.5 billion in payments daily.

What was the secret to their success? The answer seems to be paid referrals.

Growth Hacking Strategy: Implement Paid Referrals

Back in 2000, PayPal decided to offer referral commissions. They gave away $10 for each referring user and $10 to the new user.

The beauty of sending money to a potential new user is this:

Initially, they don’t have an account.

Thus, they’re forced to open an account to claim their free $10.

The results? PayPal grew 7-10% daily. Eventually, their referral program grew their user base to a whopping 100 million members at $20 per member.

In 2022, they still implement the same strategy with a few modifications. Both the user and referral still get $10 each, but only after a purchase of $5 or more. As a user, you can keep referring to earn up to $100.

What a way to strengthen up your FinTech company’s referral game, right?

case study growth hacking

Source: PayPal

How to Implement

To growth-hack your way to 100 million users like PayPal, try out their referral strategy.

✔ Give your users an incentive to refer your company to friends.

✔ Test various ways to reward referring users: free credit, and free shipping

✔ Test various ways to incentivize potential new users to open an account, eg. free trial, sign-up bonus

Growth Hacking Case Study #2 : How Square Grew Into a $50 Billion+ Financial Giant

Square is a financial services platform by Jack Dorsey, Buzz Andersen, and Jim McKelvey. With the platform, SMBs can accept credit card payments and obtain financing. After 13 years of operation, Square has evolved into a $50 billion+ financial giant.

case study growth hacking

Source: Square

Want to know one of the growth hacks they used to become the financial giant they are today?

Growth Hacking Strategy: Leverage Word-of-Mouth

Square's former director of marketing, Khobi Brooklyn , reported that showing how their customers use their product was extremely effective. Here’s how they did it.

The results? The stories posted by customers and publications fueled word-of-mouth. As reported by Growth Hackers , positive word-of-mouth and delightful experiences helped Square build barriers that are hard to overcome by competitors.

The momentum they built in the first few years resulted in a large user base. As a result of their quality product, these existing users remained loyal. By 2018, Square further leveraged loyal users by acquiring nine complementary businesses - providing them with more solutions to their needs.

To growth-hack your way to a large loyal user base like Square, try out their word-of-mouth strategy.

✔ Target social-media-savvy users so they could spread positive word of mouth on social media.

✔ Target specific niches and engage highly targeted publications when spreading content about your software.

✔ Always optimize your product and customer engagements to retain existing users.

Growth Hacking Case Study #3 : Why 700,000+ Signed Up for Robinhood’s App Even Before Launch

Robinhood is a financial services company by Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt. Investing and trading on their platform is 100% commission-free. Furthermore, the company aims to make investing easy and understandable for new and expert investors alike.

In 2021, they generated a whopping $1.81 billion in revenue which means a 90% year-on-year increase. And this year, they have around 15.9 million active users.

However, it’s important to note that Robinhood was popular even before its launch. Here’s why.

Growth Hacking Strategy: Gamify Your Waiting List

Before the founders launched Robinhood, the trading app was already extremely popular. This was because they gamified the landing page promotion (see screenshot below).

They bumped up people on the list based on how many they referred.

Their referrals referred more people, which created a snowball effect.

To gamify the waitlist, Robinhood showed each person who signed up a thank you message and the number of people on the list (which proved that the app was in-demand). If you wanted to jump the queue, all you needed to do was to refer to friends.

case study growth hacking

Source: Incisive Edge

The results? Over 50% of signups came from referrals. Even more amazing, more than 700,000 signed up for their app even before it was launched.

To growth hack your way to 700,000+ sign-ups even before launching like Robinhood, try out their waitlist gamification strategy.

✔ Give incentives to people who refer your company e.g. bumping them up the waiting list

✔ Create social proof by demonstrating how many people are already on the list.

✔ Make it extremely easy for users to refer your app through effective CTA buttons.

Growth Hacking Case Study #4 : How Blueleaf Got 10,000 Sign-Ups Before Launch

John Prendergast founded Blueleaf in 2010. This wealth management platform lets you do traditional reporting, trading, rebalancing, billing, and invoicing.

case study growth hacking

Source: Blueleaf

Their growth-hacking strategy is a combination of intrigue and exclusivity.

Growth Hacking Strategy: Intrigue and Exclusivity

To get 10,000 sign-ups before launching, here are two of the approaches Blueleaf implemented:

The company lets in a limited number of users per week based on how much they want in. Only those who request an invite or tell everyone about Blueleaf can get in.

They’ve limited the time frames to invite a friend for just an hour or two. So anyone who wants in must request publicly on Twitter or Facebook or anywhere they can reach current users.

To growth hack your way to 10,000 sign-ups even before launching like Blueleaf, try out their intrigue and exclusivity approach.

✔ Make potential users request sign-up publicly to serve as social proof to their network.

✔ To have exclusivity, limit the number of users you let in and prioritize those who requested to sign up publicly and followed your company’s social media platforms.

✔ To create urgency, limit the timeframe to refer to new people.

Growth Hacking Case Study #5 : The Secret Behind Mint’s 1.5 Million Users in 2 Years

Aaron Patzer founded Mint in 2007. Two years later, this personal finance software service acquired over 1.5 million users. In the same year, Intuit bought Mint for a whopping $170 million. Today, Mint has over 20 million users.

case study growth hacking

Seems like an overnight success, doesn’t it? But here’s how they did it.

Growth Hacking Strategy: Know the Customer and Hype Your Non-Existent Product

Noah Kagan joined Mint as the Director of Marketing, even without any marketing experience. (This only proves that you don’t need to know traditional marketing to growth hack. You only need to be super obsessed with growth.)

But he crafted out a plan and launch strategy spanning 6 months. He was hired on the spot. The problem at the time is, they have no product and 0 users.

Here’s how they solved this.

This helped them:

They were able to leverage undervalued marketing channels such as niche influencers.

So they collected emails from people that fit their target demographic. Here’s how:

In just 6 months, they crushed their 100K goal with 1 million+ users.

Source: Mint

To growth hack your way to a million users in just 2 years like Mint, here’s what you need to do:

✔ Set clear and measurable goals and reverse-engineer your strategy based on that.

✔ Know your customer through surveys and asking relevant questions.

✔ Collect emails from your target users and hype your product through relevant content.

✔ Leverage underutilized marketing channels such as niche influencers.

Growth Hacking Case Study #6 : How Monzo Grew From 0 to 250,000 In Just 2 Years

Monzo is a UK-based online bank that offers distinct hot coral bank cards, an easy-to-use banking app, and amazing customer listening. Monzo scored 5 stars for customer service and 83% for overall satisfaction in 2021. In the same year, it was valued at £3.7 billion which is around 4. 38 billion in U.S. dollars.

case study growth hacking

Source: Monzo

What was the secret to their success?

Before they got their “unicorn” status in 2019, they grew their users from 0 to 250,000. Here’s how.

Growth Hacking Strategy: Queue Jumper Growth Hack

Just like Robinhood, Monzo also implemented their “queue jumper” growth hack where they only let so many users in each day.

Upon signing up, users are given a spot in line. But the catch was, if they referred friends to the app, they could jump the line.

case study growth hacking

Source: Apollo Digital

The results? Monzo was able to grow users from 0 to 250K in just 2 years.

To growth hack your way to 200,000+ sign-ups like Monzo, try out their “jump the queue” growth hack.

✔ Embrace your users’ competitive spirit.

✔ Show the user how many are people is ahead of them and how many are behind (as shown in the picture above.)

✔ Make it extremely easy for users to refer your app through an effective CTA button.

Growth Hacking Case Study #7 : How to Get 10+ Sales- Qualified Leads per Month With The Scalelab

The Scalelab is a B2B lead generation company that generates quality leads for sales teams week after week. In total, we’ve generated 5000+ leads and over $50 million in pipeline value for clients in FinTech and other fields.

And here’s how we generate 10+ sales-qualified leads every month for our FinTech Clients (Hint: This is the same framework we used to generate $100K in pipeline value for one of our clients.):

Growth Hacking Strategy: Multi-Channel Outbound Campaign and Hyper-Personalized Cold Emails

At The Scalelab, we use LinkedIn and cold email to deliver 10+ sales qualified leads to our FinTech clients. Our campaigns look like this.

Hyper-Personalized Outbound Campaigns

Target a Specific Demographic

First, we define the client’s target prospect through qualifiers like industry, ideal headcount per company and job title. We do this by letting FinTech clients fill up a type form that specifies their prospect qualifiers.

case study growth hacking

Create a Specific Icebreaker Per Prospect

After conducting a prospect search based on the target qualifiers, we clean up our data through an email verification tool like Bouncer. Once we’ve got a clean lead list, we research each lead and create a custom icebreaker.

Most emails start with “Hi (name), I hope you’re doing well, we are (company)” which is quite generic. But at The Scalelab, we show prospects that the email they received is specific to them through ice-breakers.

The role-based icebreaker is a great example. Here’s the standard structure:

If a lead changed roles in different companies: “From Role 2 at Company 2 to Role 1 at Company 1 , I’m impressed by your evolution.”

If a lead changed roles in the same company : “From Role 2 to Role 1 at Company 1 , I’m impressed by your evolution.”

Integrating icebreakers like this to your cold emails make prospects feel like you’ve visited their profile. The results? Higher reply rates and more leads that we generate for our FinTech clients.

2. Be “Human” When Approaching Your Prospects

Send a Warm and Friendly Email

At the start of our cold email campaigns , we request a meeting with the prospect. Pro Tip: Aside from the personalized email, what makes us warm and friendly is the personalized picture we’ve added.

In the email, we offer them an actual coffee with a picture of the sender holding two cups. The right cup contains the sender’s name, while the left cup will automatically show the prospect's name.

Here’s the cold email template :

case study growth hacking

Look at the responses we got just by doing this:

case study growth hacking

3. Implement a Multi-Channel Approach

With our cold email campaigns, we don’t just follow up via email. We also engage with them via LinkedIn. Doing this gives prospects the impression that you’re keen to connect.

For example, on the same day we’ve sent the email to the prospect, we also automatically visit their LinkedIn profile via Lemlist .

This process serves as an “outreach warm-up,” allowing the prospect to recognize you once you land in their inbox.

Here’s another example. Two days after following up via email, we send them a simple message. If we’re not connected, then we send a connection request with a note.

Here’s the template:

case study growth hacking

The results?

92% Open rate - (3X the average open rate of 25%)

63% Reply rate - (12X the average reply rate of 1% - 5%

68% Connection acceptance rate - (2X the average LinkedIn acceptance rate of 30%)

10+ sales-qualified leads every month for our FinTech clients , most of which, turn into sales (see screenshot below).

case study growth hacking

To growth hack your way to a consistent 10+ leads every month like The Scalelab would for its clients, here’s what you need to do.

✔ Target a specific demographic.

✔ Validate your lead list with tools like Bouncer.

✔ Research each prospect and personalize your emails with icebreakers.

✔ Add personalized pictures to your emails to make it feel warm and “human.”

✔ Show your prospects you’re keen to connect through by connecting via multiple channels.

Learn the step-by-step process of how we scale FinTech companies .

Exponentially Grow Your FinTech Company With The Scalelab

The limited resources of FinTech startups make it difficult for them to use traditional marketing tactics effectively. As a result, they are forced to growth hack, which can lead to exponential growth at a low cost.

Growth hacking can, however, also apply to large corporations. Think about this. If growth hacking can grow your company without resources, imagine what it can do with resources.

Thus, you can leverage it at any stage of your business's development.

Want to growth-hack your FinTech company to a consistent 10+ leads every month? We at The Scalelab have decades of combined experience in cold outreach and sales.

After generating 5,000+ leads and over $50 million in pipeline value for clients, we know what it takes to consistently get you sales-qualified leads that’ll turn into sales.

Our team has helped companies land appointments with top-tier businesses such as Google, Nike, Citibank, and Samsung.

Our lead generation campaigns consistently deliver warmed-up and highly qualified sales leads that directly increase your company’s pipeline value.

Come and say hello or drop us a line at [email protected]

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Growth Hacking for Startups: 10 Hacks with Case Studies

Growth Hacking for Startups: 10 Hacks with Case Studies

Faisal Sarker

Rarely does a startup have enough money to fund its primary marketing efforts. Most of them earn just enough money to survive and pay their employees, while some have a hard time making ends meet. So competing with the big organizations through traditional marketing is a far-off dream for most of them.

That's where comes the usefulness of Growth Hacking for startups. A type of marketing that can help you attain growth, despite lacking in funds. The term “ Growth Hacking ” has become a buzzword, and that happened for a reason.

So if you have a startup struggling to gain traction or planning to build one, this article is for you. We will let you know how to use growth hacking for startups and be a ninja marketer.

So, What is Growth Hacking?

This is the feature image for the blog - Growth Hacking for Startups

Growth Hacking is a marketing technique that relies on continuous idea generation and experimentation. According to Sean Ellis , who invented the term growth hacking, “The definition of growth hacking was actually based more on the definition of what growth hacking is not”.

“Growth hacking is about running smart experiments to drive growth within your business. Marketing is about experimentation to move growth as well”, he adds.

In simpler terms, growth hacking is an experiment-driven marketing technique that helps you market a product with impactful but cost-effective ideas.

Growth hacking relies on rapid idea generation and A/B testing. When you find one true idea that helps you skyrocket your growth like a supersonic jet, only then you'll realize the value of testing a hundred other ideas.

Growth hacking strategies proved to be effective for companies like Tinder and many others, and there's no reason that growth hacking will not work for startups like yours.

Importance of Growth Hacking for Startups

We can't stress enough the importance of growth hacking for startups. And there are good reasons behind that.

For instance, as we have talked about above, startups tend to have a lack of financial capabilities to match their bigger competitors . So they can never pull off extravagant traditional marketing, that their larger counterparts can. But unlike traditional marketing, growth hacking usually needs little to no money to implement.

When Airbnb started its journey, it did not have enough money to gain traction using traditional marketing efforts. They understood that they needed a standout idea that would set the foundation of their growth.

That is when they experimented with one of the most famous growth ideas . And just like most other growth hack ideas, it took no money, just an excellent idea, and a good engineering approach.

Another reason that growth hacking for startups is so highly suggested, is because they need fewer human resources. This is also a common problem for startups.

Last but not least, most growth hacking success stories show that, if you have a killer idea, growth hacking can accelerate growth faster than any other marketing technique. And there is no startup that doesn't need fast growth, is there?

The Growth Hacking Funnel and How You Should Approach It

“Growth hacking funnel” is a term that most people do not know about. But it is the fundamental formula behind the growth hacking strategy. Sean Ellis, the person who coined the term “Growth Hacking”, said that growth hacking relies on a five-step funnel.

This is called the “ AARRR ” model.

This shows the growth hack funnel

These represent five steps of the funnel, which are –

  • The acquisition is the entry to the funnel, which deals with user acquisition.
  • Activation means influencing the visitor to do a meaningful action, such as signing up or completing the setup wizard, and such.
  • Retention part is about getting the customers to repeat their purchases. When a customer does that, it shows you the essentiality and quality of your product.
  • Revenue , however, is the main goal of the growth hack funnel, which focuses on the primary goal of a company. The growth hack funnel revolves around generating revenue.

You know your product has achieved must-have status when people are referring it to their friends and family. The referral part is all about getting referred by your existing customers. It is a good indicator of knowing whether your product has made an impact or not.

10 Sure Success Strategies for Growth Hacking for Startups

Growth hack strategies have the potential to uplift your growth rate very quickly. For a startup, this can prove to be very crucial. Below, we will talk about 10 growth hack strategies for startups that have the potential to kickstart your little venture.

  • Build a Core Growth Team
  • Make Sure Your Product Has Achieved Product-Market Fit
  • Build an Email List
  • Generate Ideas: There's No Such Thing As Bad Ideas
  • Getting back to Growth Hack Funnels – Start with Retention
  • Excel at Activation
  • Revenue is The Primary Goal
  • Make People Refer Your Products
  • Growth Hack Funnel Ends with Acquisition
  • Follow the Successful Growth Hack Case Studies

Now let's get into the details!

01. Build a Core Growth Team

Growth team is the one that is responsible for generating ideas. Growth team should not necessarily be an independent team. It's better to have growth team members from all department of the organization. This team should be handpicked or hired to generate ideas on top of their regular tasks.

Another thing that is important, is having a growth lead. Your growth lead will be responsible for setting the metrics and the tempo of the growth hacking experiments, while also evaluating the performances.

Overall a growth team should be formed with the 5:1 ratio in mind. That means for a startup of 5 employees, at least one will be a member of the growth team. This is a formation that is suggested by startup advisor and investor Andrew Chen.

One of the prime examples of how a growth hacking team can help your startup is the famous case of Dropbox.

By September 2008, they had 100K registered users, and they were spending big dimes on marketing.

By December 2009, they had more than 4 million registered users and spending almost no money on marketing.

The difference?

A newly-formed growth hack team and their idea.

02. Make Sure Your Product has Achieved Product-Market Fit

As effective as growth hacking might be, you can not actually start it for a product that is not desired by the customer. In marketing terms, we call it the product-market fit.

So what is actually product-market fit?

Product-market fit means having a product in the market where that is desired.

If nobody needs the product, they will not bother using it. No matter how much growth hacking you do, or how many bucks you spend on marketing it will all be in vain.

So how do you know if you know if your product has achieved a product-fit market or not?

Well, according to Sean Ellis, the person who coined the term “Growth Hacking”, the best way to know that is by asking people if they feel that product is essential for them or not. A quick way to do so is by survey.

And in modern technology, there are loads of social media to run your survey and ask people, if you don't want to go door to door.

Swipes, a company that developed productivity tools because of not having the product-market fit. After 6 years of trying to market it and getting $1m in investment, the CEO admitted at last that the products they were developing were not something that their customers wanted. 6 years and $1m for nothing!

03. Build an Email List

A girl is building an email list for her startup

One of the first and foremost strategies for a growth hack is building an email list. So many growth hacking ideas depend on having a good email list. With $38 ROI for every dollar spent , it is by far the most rewarding way of marketing online.

There are many ways for email list building that you can follow.

Dell, the famous computer technology company ran a gif-based email marketing campaign and saw a whopping 109% increase in revenue! Still haven't started building an email list? Well, you should!

04. Generate Ideas: There's No Such Thing as Bad Ideas

Groom your team in such a way that they generate ideas. The more ideas the better. You never know which is your moonshot idea, you just have to experiment more and more, and for that, you need newer ideas.

Twitter is a prime example of getting success by generating and experimenting with more and more ideas. This strategy is called the “High Tempo Testing”.

What they did was upping their tests from 0.5 to 10 tests per week. In doing so they generated more ideas and experimented with them pretty quickly.

The result?

They grew from 90,000 to 152,000 monthly active users in about eleven weeks without spending a dollar on advertising or increasing the size of their growth team. So what are you waiting for?

05. Getting back to Growth Hack Funnels – Start with Retention

We have talked about the growth hack funnels, and what each element of that funnel mean for your business. And here we are, suggesting you to form your growth hack strategy around them.

But wait, there's a catch!

Didn't we tell you that the first step of the growth hack funnel is the acquisition? Well, yes, we did tell you that. But what we didn't tell you is that according to Aladdin Happy,

Acquisition is the easiest part of the growth hack funnel.

And unless you can build a product that people want to keep buying or even after the first interaction, no matter how many users you acquire, that will only be “carrying water in a leaky bucket”, as quoted by Aladdin Happy, the Author of amazon best-seller “ TOP 101 growth hacks ” and the founder of GrowthHackingIdea .

Retention is the second hardest part of the growth hacking process after the product-market fit. Once you achieve product-market fit, you know that customers want your product. Now it's time to work on how you can retain these customers.

According to Aladdin Happy,

“ The maximum good retention is when all of your customers stay with you forever. The maximum bad retention is when your customers fall off the next day—altogether and forever. “

Here's how Slidebean increased their retention rate,

Slidebean made an A/B test on their pricing and found out that there is a correlation between increasing the prices and increasing retention. So, they experimented by increasing their prices over 4 times. The result? Their retention rate increased by 282%. And their Life Time Value increased by 20 times!”

06. Excel at Activation

Activation gets us back to email list building again. The more email you have, the more chance you have to reach customers to pass the activation phase of your product.

Ausmed, an education startup significantly improve its customer onboarding experience and increase its activation rate from 15% to 75% over two years.

When it comes to activation, it is the smallest things that matter. Tweak, tweak, and tweak, and you'll stumble upon a great idea now or later.

07. Revenue is The Primary Goal

This image shows the importance of revenue in growth hacking

“Every sale has 4 basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no trust.” Once you can overcome these 4 obstacles, your revenue will follow.

First build a financial model for your business , so that you can use the customer flow to generate revenue for your business. Because, let's be honest, in the end, if you don't have enough revenue, your business won't sustain the long run.

After creating a financial model, focus on how to improve your revenue generation through innovative growth hack ideas.

In one test, the guarantee for the product was changed from “a 30-day money-back guarantee” to “a 100%-money-back guarantee within six months, and a double-your-money-back within the first 30 days.” The result was an increase in sales by 133%.

08. Make People Refer Your Products

When people like your product, they refer it to others. And that is one of the primary objectives for any business. But reaching that point takes time. Before you reach that point, you'll still need referrals, right?

So how do we get it?

If organic referrals don't happen, then growth hack with new ideas to get them. Remember that the holy grail of virality is to reach such a point when each of your users invites at least one new user.

case study growth hacking

Above is one such trick to get people to refer or share you in their private space. Another way is to incentivize your user to refer their friends.

Dropbox’s referral program was one of the greatest examples of that. Their business was to offer storage space in the cloud, so they decided to reward people with free space for referring to their friends. However, they also rewarded the same for someone who accepts an invitation.

And guess what? Business flourished!

09. Growth Hack Funnel Ends with Acquisition

Finally, the stage that was supposed to be the gateway to the growth hack funnel, is the last one that we'll look into.

Because, once you have all other strategies in place, only then you can keep your acquired customer happy. Also acquiring customers is quite easy these days. Y

ou have loads of opportunities to acquire them. Content Marketing , SEO, Amazon Book, Email Marketing, Free Tools, Community Marketing, and many more. There are just so many places to find users, so don't worry about them.

Just use the channels mentioned above and wait for the users to find you. That's all it takes!

10. Follow the Successful Growth Hack Case Studies

The last one of the strategies is to follow the tried and tested. When you don't have enough resources to brainstorm enough ideas for high-tempo testing, make a small team, and try the proven growth hack experiments that were successful.

If you search online, you will find many growth hack case studies, and successful examples from many startups, which will surely help you generate ideas of your own.

Bonus: Growth Hack Case Studies You Must Read

This image shows a team is working on growth hack for their startup

So now we will share some case studies of growth hacking that might inspire you to generate growth hack ideas for your startup.

1. Airbnb’s Growth Hack Story

Airbnb is a company that helps users to find homes and rental spaces when they are traveling to someplace. Unlike traditional hotels, you can stay at someone's home, paying a much lower price than hotels. If someone is a homeowner, they can earn some bucks without much effort.

The company now has over 12 million rental locations available online and 2.9 million hosts.

So what's the secret of Airbnb that made them so big?

Yes, the company ran one of the most famous experiments of growth hacking for startups. Well, the founder's trio of Airbnb found out that Craigslist was one of the platforms where most of their target audience are. So they wanted to build on that.

However, there was no way to get the API from Craiglist to do what they intended to do.

So they built a system, that if anyone posts their home listing on Airbnb, it will automatically be posted on Craigslist as well. The result? You tell me!

2. Dropbox’s Referral Genius

Dropbox, a cloud storage company used a growth hack that remains one of the best examples of growth hacking for startups.

So what did Dropbox do?

When Dropbox started, there was multiple cloud storage company, competing for the top spot. Like all of them, Dropbox also spent a lot of bucks on digital ads. However, it was not giving them the result they wanted.

As a matter of fact, for each acquisition of $99, they spent over $250. Which was never going to be feasible.

So they come up with an idea. They launched a referral program where a user could invite their friends and both of them would be rewarded with free storage. Within 1 year, their userbase grew from 100K to 4M!

3. Storytelling Hack from Dos Equis

Dos Equis , a Mexican beer company started a promotional campaign in 2006, which went on to become one of the most influencing campaign ever.

The campaign was named –  The Most Interesting Man in the World .

The ad depicted the American actor Jonathan Goldsmith performing some eyecatching tasks. His already macho appearance was well-complimented with the finishing line, which was, “ I don't always drink beer. But when I do, I prefer Dos Equis. ”

This ad saw its sale increases by 26%  in the USA that year. Apart from the punchline, the actor was termed as the most interesting man as well. This resulted in both brand awareness and an increase in sales for the company.

4. Facebook's Activation Campaign

Many of our social lives now revolve around Facebook. A company that has more than 2 billion active users. Their history of growth hacking is well-applauded all over the tech industry.

They noticed people who add their phone contacts as friends on Facebook were more likely to come back on their platform. So they made it easy for people to add friends after you register a profile on Facebook.

They saw huge success with this small activation hack.

The story of Hotmail's growth was a fun one.

What Hotmail did, was adding a signature to every user’s outgoing email, inviting the recipient to get a free account with a fun little message. They reached 12 million users which were around 20% of the share of the email market at the time. The time it took? Just 18 months!

Start Growth Hacking Today and Accelerate Your Startup Growth

Are you convinced enough? Then start growth hacking today and get a better chance of seeing your business grow at the earliest. The more ideas that you generate, the more chance you will have of getting the moon shot idea , the one that turns the game around for you.

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Faisal Sarker

Faisal is a tech blogger who excels at WordPress Content Writing. Apart from sharing useful info pieces that helps people around the world, he also likes to travel and read books of all genres in his leisure time.

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Table of Contents

  • Methodology

10 amazing growth hacking case studies

Dec 04, 2019, what is growth hacking all about.

Growth hacking is essentially a mechanism for startups that need a super impressive way to enter the market and rocket their product into positive statistics with minimal financial investment - but you already know that.

What you probably didn’t think of is that growth hacking can actually be embraced as a long-term strategy to cope with day-to-day problems that every business is inevitably facing. A startup or a well-known brand - everyone could use a pinch of creative “out-of-the-box” sorcery to intelligently boost their ROI and witness rapid business expansion in no time.

If picked and executed wisely enough, different growth hacking tactics can help your company live long and prosper. Simply enough, coming up with a thoughtful, long-term growth hacking strategy will result in:

  • Achieving rapid increase of traffic and conversions
  • Gaining recognition and turning your company into  brand
  • Taking UX to the next level
  • Boosting ROI and stabilizing the financial flow
  • Reducing churn rates
  • Improving growth statistics
  • Ensuring resources for further business improvement

Intrigued yet? 

On the verge of 2020 (well, almost), we’re going to show you some pretty inspiring growth hacking examples that took place in recent years. Hopefully, our set of growth hacking case studies will provide concepts, provoke thoughts, and initiate processes for those who need that little push right now.

Casual is an online project management tool that provides an intuitive way to plan and execute different projects online. Its growth hacking case study begins with a single crucial startup technique - including the company in various startup directories and free listing websites . 

The founder of Casual provided Hacker Noon with a straightforward insight - that their startup received around 500 emails and 300 registrations in just a couple of days after it has been submitted to Betalist. 

Casual

Some of the other best startup directories you can include your website into are:

  • Google My Business
  • Killer Startups
  • Startups Subreddit
  • Alltopstartups
  • Product Hunt
  • GeekWire, etc.

2. FindThatLead

FindThatLead is a lead generation tool, providing growth hacking advice and outbound marketing services. What they did to gain audience and popularity with zero to none financial investment was to rely on a very considerate and proven growth method - organizing an online society of potential users . 

The founders of the company created a private Facebook group, named Growth Marketing & Outbound , which currently has about 11,000 members - all of which are obviously their potential users, actively engaging with the brand on a regular basis. 

What the company does is providing resources, case studies, relevant news, and information, thus gaining the trust and respect of thousands of social media users every day. And guess what? When joining the group, you are offered a free cold e-mail guide… You just need to provide your e-mail. :)

FindThatLead

3. Author Stash

Author Stash is a platform that provides valuable resources and tools for fiction and non-fiction writers - education courses, guides, editing tools, marketing channels, and more. 

The founder of the platform recently shared valuable insight into one of his most crucial growth hack endeavors - providing a meaningful pre-launch list of subscribers . He managed to earn more than 2,000 subscribers in under two weeks and basically grew his mail reach by 24,900%. The good news is that this is obviously possible, and the bad news - that it doesn’t come effortlessly.

Author Stash

How did he do it? In five ways, he says. And those five ways include:

  • Forum and group activity - Reddit, Facebook, KBoards, and all over the place. He provided valuable information, asked and answered questions, provoked discussion and built a natural online reputation, which later drew people into his personal “resource page”;
  • Social media activity among peers and people with common interests;
  • Influencer team-up by providing a professional “win-win” proposal;
  • Connection with the owners or providers of products featured in the website - database builders, software providers, educational institutions, etc;
  • Organizing contests and giveaways with email sign up.

As you can see, this growth hack strategy is all about giving out before expecting to win back. Give out time, knowledge, advice, valuable resources, feedback, and social connections - because it will eventually pay off.

4. Popcorn Metrics

Popcorn Metrics is a tool that helps online marketers to track, analyze and improve their campaigns in order to increase conversion rates. What the growth hackers of Popcorn Metrics managed to do in 2019 was to increase the company’s revenue by the impressive 367% in just 12 weeks.

How did they do that? By investing time and huge amounts of personalized effort in the free trial users of their product . They provided extended Skype consultations and tons of valuable information to make those hundreds of people achieve visible success by using their tool. That effort soon outgrew 1-on-1s and materialized into the “Popcorn Metrics Academy” - a selection of free text and video tutorials, extended FAQ section and onboarding e-mail campaigns that boosted their conversions even further. 

Popcorn Metrics

What can we learn from Popcorn Metrics? That sometimes investing time and personal care in the customer can do miracles that no amount of money spent on advertising can; that the market sometimes needs proof .

5. Gymshark

Gymshark is a fitness appeal online retailer that managed to build a hundred-million business in a few years, by relying almost entirely on active influencer collaboration . Just two years after its initial establishment, Gymshark managed to achieve annual revenues of around £250,000 thanks to its supreme influencer marketing, providing an amazing growth hacking example. 

Gymshark

What the founder of the brand actually did was digging the most popular fitness influencers in different social media… and offer them a box of Gymshark clothing for free, in exchange for a Facebook post, an Instagram photo or a YouTube video, advertising the brand. As you already know, the word happened to spread pretty quickly. 

An analysis of Google Trends and Google Keywords shows that influencer marketing has risen more than 90 times in the last five years, promising to go even further as a major growth hacking tactic. 

Influencer marketing

Serpact is a fast-developing SEO agency, awarded at the European Search Awards for 2019. What they did in 2018 and 2019 was launching a webinar section with knowledgeable guest speakers, discussing the latest global SEO trends, as well as a powerful blogging section, providing tons of relevant information from the field. 

Serpact

Guest blogging and content marketing are typical growth hacking and SEO features for both startups and developed brands. They have the potential to attract visitors of various profiles, thus improve the ranking, the organic website traffic and link building, online reputation, and brand authority. 

Except for providing the valuable content itself, Serpact followed another important trend - providing users with video instead of a bare text . According to HubSpot, around 54% of the users wish to receive more video content from a brand or business they support.

Video marketing demand

Monzo is a new generation mobile-only banking solution, which went from zero to 250,000 users in less than two years. Except for the valuable service which undoubtedly followed the needs of the market, the Monzo team also did something else - something simple, yet genius - to hack their growth like a pro. 

Monzo

They relied on applied social psychology and came up with the idea of a queue jumper . It was a really simple counter, showing how many people are waiting to register ahead of you, and how many are there behind you. Also, customers were given the option to jump the queue by referring other people, which encouraged Monzo sign ups even further. The results? Just four years after launching, Monzo has 1351 employees and welcomes around 40,000 new customers every week.

Upon launching their specialized, ad-free social networking service, the team behind Ello chose to embrace the growth hacking strategy Gmail once took advantage of - exclusiveness and invite-only membership .

Put simply, members had to receive an invitation in order to sign up for the network. The fear of being left out and missing out a membership in an exclusive circle of artists triggered an emotional response and created a high demand, as expected.

Ello

The strategy worked well for both of the companies - Gmail invites were once sold for $150 on eBay and Ello had to deal with processing more than 30,000 signup requests an hour at its peak. The crucial part of implementing this strategy is knowing when to loosen up and move on, because exclusiveness doesn’t last forever - at least not in our hyper-connected reality. 

9. Evo Planner

In 2018, Evo Planner managed to make over $1 million in sales in less than a year, before the product was even launched on the market . Their product was undoubtedly very thoughtful in the first place, taking personalization on an entirely new level, even in the bustling productivity market.

Anyway, there is one crucial way to sell something before it even exists, and that is the exceptional copywriting . Many startups (especially tech-oriented) neglect the need of a thoughtful, professional copy that attracts visitors and converts them into clients. 

Evo Planner

An excellent piece of copy captures the attention, engages thoughts and emotions, calls to action naturally, tells a story and creates an honest product demand. All of those rarely come naturally to inexperienced non-professionals, and that’s why hiring a distinct copywriter or copywriting agency should definitely be a part of your pre-designed tech startup business plan . 

10. Venngage

Venngage is an infographic tool that managed to triple the traffic to their website for a year and a half - from 275,000 monthly visitors in November 2017 to more than 900,000 in April 2019. Meanwhile registrations went from 400 to 45,000 a week. How did they do that? No surprises here - they relied on the good old search engine optimization to do the trick.

Venngage

SEO is a complex set of actions that aim to improve organic traffic, polish brand identity and manage online reputation through a combination of on-page SEO, link building, content marketing strategy and even digital marketing.

Building a functional, SEO-friendly website from the very beginning will be your most time and resource-friendly option, though a good SEO expert can bring quite an improvement even in a badly structured website. 

Investing resources and efforts in a considerate SEO strategy always pays off, since statistics show that 93% of online experiences begin in the search engine, while 75% of the users never scroll to the second page of results.

SEO statistics

To sum it up

Our growth hacking case studies show a variety of approaches that resulted in success - from social psychology and emotional impact to flawless copywriting and content marketing. 

Formulating your own set of growth hacking techniques is crucial for your intelligent resource management as a startup. Because no epic amount of money can get you as far as boldness and imagination possibly could.

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Oct 05, 2015

Growth Hacking Explained: What Is It and How Can It Benefit You?

by Digital Marketing Institute

Within a digital landscape that is evolving at a staggering pace, marketers are confronted with an expanding spectrum of terminology. What does “synergy” bring to mind (besides a dystopian sci-fi film where robots take over the world)? And what is “snackable content” exactly (besides being somewhat hunger inducing)? As the digital industry endeavours to define its constant progress, the buzzwords are growing increasingly elusive.

Growth Hacking – Just Another Buzzword?

No! Growth hacking is not just another intangible concept. In fact, it’s an incredibly simple one. Sean Ellis, the Founder and CEO of Qualaroo and ordained Godfather of Growth Hacking, offers this explanation:

As a growth hacker, every strategy you execute, every tool you implement and every technique you develop should be informed by your desire for growth. It might seem self-evident that the singular goal of growth hacking is growth, but the beauty of this, and what makes growth hacking such a valuable practice, is its flexibility. It doesn’t matter if you’re a one man startup or a multinational corporation; growth hacking doesn’t discriminate and anyone can leverage it.

Digital is a battleground on which marketers are fighting to achieve competitive advantage. There can be uncompromising targets, constraining budgets, limited resources and a surplus of competitors against a backdrop of advancing tools and platforms. A conventional approach to marketing is no longer enough. The only way to survive, is to adapt.

Does Growth Hacking Replace Digital Marketing?

Growth hacking is not a substitute for digital marketing.In fact, far from being separate entities, growth hacking and digital marketing are intrinsically linked. The shared mentality behind both is an emphasis on experimentation, creativity and measurement in order to accomplish goals.

In startups, growth hacking is a discipline that can be cultivated within a marketing team. In larger organisations, there can be a separate, cross-function growth contingent. Either way, growth hacking and digital marketing are two very complementary specialisms; it’s no coincidence that a quick LinkedIn search generates a multitude of profiles whose titles include “Head of Growth and SEO”, or “VP of Growth and Analytics”.

Growth hacking and marketing share the same fundamental principles, and can even share the same metrics; increased engagement, increased conversion, increased retention. The key difference between the two is the scope of their goals.

A marketer could use engagement rate to analyse an overall goal of building brand awareness. A growth hacker, by comparison, could set a goal of increasing social sharing by 50%. To put it simply, marketing activities can have a broad focus that encompasses any part of the funnel, whereas growth hacking depends on setting highly defined, achievable goals in order to reach a specific, singular outcome… growth, in case it wasn’t obvious enough!

Growth Study: Nasty Gal

case study growth hacking

From aspiring eBay retailer to eCommerce Empress

In her adolescence, Sophia Amoruso was a self-described college dropout and “crust punk” . Her failed attempt at stealing a George Foreman grill and inability to pay for medical bills to treat a hernia indirectly impelled her to buy a copy of Starting an eBay Business for Dummies and start selling vintage clothes online under the name Nasty Gal Vintage.

Amoruso spent time developing relationships with vintage sellers and painstakingly searched for inventory in the mustiest of warehouses. She used Google to research flourishing fashion trends and decide what stock she would buy and re-sell. She sourced models through Myspace and paid them in hamburgers to model her merchandise. Amoruso recognised that her eBay listings received more clicks when their titles included descriptive keywords about the garments, and the images were well styled and photographed, allowing customers to envisage how to wear the clothes.

Amoruso was kicked off eBay after using it to promote her independent e-commerce site. Four years later, revenues had reached over $100 million. To date, Nasty Gal has customers in over 150 countries and two brick-and-mortar stores in addition to a thriving e-commerce site that has expanded into selling original designs. Sophia has also strived to build her personal brand, with her efforts culminating in the release of the New York Times Bestseller #GIRLBOSS , which is both a personal memoir and candid business guide for aspiring entrepreneurs.

So how did Nasty Gal achieve such phenomenal growth in such a short period of time?

  • A Polished Product Line: Amoruso’s meticulous approach towards picking and presenting her merchandise was accompanied by the recognition that she was selling an aspirational styling service as well as the garments themselves. This emphasis on the product had a direct (and positive!) impact on Nasty Gal’s gross profit margins.
  • Testing and Optimization: Amoruso tracked clicks on her eBay listings and experimented with which models she used and which styles of clothing she would buy.Similarly, if a listing didn’t perform well, “I wouldn’t touch anything like it with a ten-foot pole ever again.” This allowed her to significantly refine her approach to marketing and selling Nasty Gal’s products.
  • Brand Building: Amoruso has leveraged social media to instil in the Nasty Gal line her own sense of style and personality, creating a relevant, relatable brand that has a combined following of 3 million users on Facebook and Instagram alone. This is a valuable and powerful platform for acquiring new customers and engaging existing ones.

Can I Implement Growth Hacking In My Team?

Behind any effective growth hacking activity is a rigorous, structured process that’s rooted in iteration and scalability. Whether you’re a startup or large organisation, B2B or B2C, this process can be customised and incorporated into a successful growth strategy.

  • Perfect Your Product: Analyse the needs and preferences of your target market and use this data to enhance your product. Growth hackers call this the “product-market fit”. It’s important to make sure your offering is as strong as possible before using it as a catalyst for growth.
  • Set Measurable Goals: A growth hacker’s success lies in defining precise, actionable goals that will feed into the overall goal of growth. This will limit the temptation to broaden your focus and maximises the time you can spend on testing and refining your approach.
  • Test Your Approach: Growth hacking is underpinned by creativity and experimentation. Testing is essential for gauging what will and won’t work for you. Keep your tests lean and simple and record the data so you can implement the best combinations to enhance your growth.
  • Analyse Performance: Analytics are essential to staying on track with your goals. As you chart your progress, this data can also be used to adjust and adapt other areas of the process accordingly, from your product to your goals.
  • Optimise: Whether this involves implementing an entirely new approach or refining a previous effort, there is value in the “learning-by-doing” concept. Success, like most things, will come with a little bit of patience and practice.

Where Can I Read More About Growth Hacking?

  • Quick Sprout’s Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking
  • Matt Barby’s Growth Hacking Guide
  • Sujan Patel’s 100 Actionable Tips to Grow Your Startup
  • Kissmetrics’ 35 Growth Hacking Tools for Marketers Who Don’t Code

What are your thoughts on growth hacking, as a practice? Is it something you are mindful of, or incorporate into your digital strategy? Please share your thoughts, tips and top growth hacks in the comments below!

Related posts:

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  • Digital Hacks - How Not To Get Left Behind
  • 5 Digital Marketing Myths
  • The Anatomy of Your Digital Marketing Dream Team
  • 5 Predictions on The Future of Mobile Marketing

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Growth Hacking Strategies for Startups That Guarantee Success

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Updated on August 12, 2021

Growth-Hacking-Strategies

In order to scale a business, it’s crucial for entrepreneurs to market their products effectively. There are many challenges down the road, however, scalability is possible with these best growth hacking strategies.

In order to reach out to a massive audience, entrepreneurs need to adopt different growth hacking techniques. Although some amongst these techniques have only been around for a few years, nonetheless, they prove to play a vital role in the growth of modern-day businesses.

Many entrepreneurs have made them an integral part of scaling their business because they saw fruitful results, and it’s about time you do so too.

Entrepreneurs search for various growth hacks and want to grow quickly by gathering millions of customers that increase their revenue. Growth hacking ideas for businesses is a proven element of success. But not every business is able to execute these marketing growth hacks in the best way.

What is Growth Hacking?

  • Pre-Launch Email List
  • Launch on Product Hunt
  • Leverage Referral Marketing
  • Make New Brand Partnerships
  • Attend Community Events
  • Leverage Adjacent Markets
  • Build a Social Media Community
  • Follow Your Competitors
  • Create an Aggressive Content Strategy
  • Do Guest Posting
  • Work with Influencers
  • Cash the Trends
  • Use HARO for Press Opportunities
  • Send Gifts to Your Customers
  • More Techniques
  • Growth Hacking Examples

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Growth hacking is an experiment-driven technique to determine the most effective ways of growing a business. The process involves a mix of marketing, development, design, engineering, data, and analytics.

The reason why it’s called growth hacking is that a hacker finds a quick, cost-effective but innovative method to attain growth instead of following conventional processes.

Who is a Growth Hacker?

A growth hacker is someone who is clever, original, and innovative. Their primary goal is to implement creative, cost-effective strategies to ensure businesses are able to acquire and retain customers for as long as they can.

growth-hacking-quote

A growth hacker may use a combination of methods to achieve his goals like content marketing, viral marketing, email marketing, SEO, A/B testing or reverse engineering. But you must also remember, growth hackers can be growth marketers, however, growth hackers can never be defined as just marketers.

A formula that growth hackers follow rigorously is: Product + Growth = Impact

Growth Hacking Strategies Every Startup Should Follow

To assist you to outgrow your potential, leverage the following business growth strategies in order to expand your horizon and increase profits sharply.

#1 Create a Pre-Launch Email List

When it comes to an effective startup growth strategy, email marketing remains king to find both leads and conversions.

Put your focus on building an email list. It will allow you to reach your audience and deliver your message effectively. Additionally, email marketing greatly helps businesses to build pre-launch hype for any product or event.

It will also allow you to acquire potential customers even before your launch. But don’t just create a list of email addresses and sit idle. You should take a few weeks to build up the hype and try to make your audience eager for your launch. Do cold emails work ? ; sure, when executed effectively, they can significantly boost interest and expand your pre-launch list

For setting up email lists, you should opt for email services like MailChimp as it allows you to push emails effectively. Since communication plays a vital role in conversions, make sure that you reach out to your potential customers at least a week prior to your launch. A great case study involves Author Stash that used this tactic for adding about 2000 subscribers in just two weeks .

Want to Build Email List with High Converting Lead Magnets?

Take the Cloudways Lead Magnert 101 course so you can learn to build an email list for a results driven email marketing strategy.

#2 Launch on Product Hunt or Similar Platforms

A launch on Product Hunt is an essential checkpoint. Week after week, there are dozens of startups launching. Such platforms allow you to deliver your message to fresh audiences.

Product Hunt continues to remain a market leader to expose your business to a global audience. It’s your “golden ticket” to get devoted attention to numerous innovators and journalists. Your chance to receive feedback and ideas for new opportunities.

cloudways-startup-program-Product-Hunt

We used Product Hunt as the primary launchpad for our Startup Program . We were very encouraged with the response of the community and received 50+ applications within the first 24 hours of the launch.

#3 Leverage Referral Marketing

Referrals from friends, family or industry influencers relatively convert a lead much faster than other means. The CPA of referral customers is less, allowing you to cut down your costs too.

Such customers have better retention rates that result in a 16% higher LTV. Additionally, sales experts with referral programs earn four to six times more  using referral software .

Uber-referral-program

Uber started out as a ride-sharing business. They used referral marketing to increase their brand awareness and user reach. The idea was simple: Users get $5 credit for every time other users use their referral code. The idea was so successful that it has been replicated by every ride-sharing app ever since.

#4 Make New Brand Partnerships

Business partnerships and collaborations are one amongst the best growth hacking techniques as they create a lot of noise. Many brands have realized the fact that co-marketing and product partnership is an effective growth marketing strategy.

It will not only create a great social media buzz but will also send relevant organic traffic to your website. It is an opportunity for news coverage and will enhance the visibility of your products and services globally.

Some of the most successful partnerships with not-too-shabby ROIs have been those that created new products around a theme. Any small-medium company can develop an effective collaboration if it finds the right partner to bring value to its brand and vice versa.

flipboard-aribnb

Partnerships even work for businesses that operate in very different industries. A great example is a partnership between Flipboard (a news app) and Airbnb ( a room sharing app) that allows users of one brand to leverage the strengths of the other partner.

In this case, Flipboard offers customized content to Airbnb users who could then make informed decisions when booking residences through Airbnb. On the flip side, these users create content (in the form of comments and reviews) that Flipboard aggregates for its users.

case study growth hacking

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#5 Host and Attend Community Events and Conferences

The fact is that 30% of new businesses won’t make it past 24 months. These are heavy statistics that should make entrepreneurs think. But by attending the best startup events , you can acquire the tools and insights you need to make sure your business doesn’t fail.

Go ahead, learn from the best, make connections, learn about your industry, and get some inspiration. You don’t have anything to lose. Exposing your business on relevant business events and conferences will allow you to taste success with minimum effort.

#6 Leverage Adjacent Markets

Adjacent markets is an excellent sales growth hack. It’s often confused with ‘white space opportunity.’ But, by adjacent, I mean markets that are close in proximity to what you do.

The secret to adjacent markets is to export your skills and capabilities, not products and services. It’s taking your core competencies and creating new value for new customers.

Before evaluating any new market, consider a few factors like what’s the competition like? How big is the opportunity in terms of volume and profits? Are there legal barriers you’ll need to tackle? Look at your skills and existing channels. Find new ways to use those skills and you’re on your way to new sales growth opportunities.

Most people associate Nike with products that focus on track and field sports. However, Nike’s product range covers almost all sports and activities for which you need high-quality apparel and footwear.

When Nike decided to enter the competitive market of mountaineering products, they decided to bring the principle of Adjacent Markets into play. They started by offering footwear for mountaineering activities. Once they had built customer loyalty, they branched out to the apparel industry with great success.

#7 Social Media Growth Hacking: Build a Community Around Your Brand

Social media is an essential part of the marketing mix for businesses. You can leverage social media communities to promote yourself, receive market feedback and interact with industry influencers.

It takes time to develop content and build an audience. For this, you must strive to align social media activities with the overall direction of your growth.

One of the best social media growth hacking strategies of leveraging social media for your business success is creating a Facebook group around your brand where your audience would engage with your brand. You need to ensure you’re creating value for them through that group. The chances are fair that those who are not aware of your brand may get to know about it once they get inspired by the content in your group.

Facebook-Group

Growth hacking & outbound marketing is a Facebook group created by the founder of Find that Lead – Lead generation tool. The audience of the group consists of potential buyers of his product and he does his best to inspire them by sharing his best growth hacking tips every day.

#8 Follow Your Biggest Competitors

Competition can come in different shapes and sizes but it always exists. Once you’ve acknowledged your competitive landscape, it is important to display why your company has a competitive advantage in any respective market. Make sure – as an entrepreneur – you, not only zero in on your business venture but also remain aware of the changing factors in your competitive landscape. This will position your business to quickly adapt and leverage its strengths.

Many businesses fail due to following the competition without an action plan. As a result, they fail to produce the desired results. A good plan should focus on discovering all the conversations that are happening around the target brand.  For this, you need to be at the same digital places (social media, forums, etc.) where the target (and its target audience) hangs out.

The plan should also include a thorough and regular analysis of the competitor blog (and the keywords in those blogs) so that you can tailor your content for maximum impact. Similarly, you should also track their backlinks so that you have a fair idea of how they are marketing their products and services.

#9 Create an Aggressive Content Marketing Strategy

For your business customer feedback is highly essential. It will help you resolve complaints and queries faster. It will also help you handle customer objections effectively.

Effective growth marketing strategies consist of an aggressive content marketing strategy that helps you focus on customer feedback and market your product with ease.

With a modest budget, create a content marketing strategy for your business that allows your audience to understand the value of your product. Regardless of what type of business you are, your content marketing strategies should always focus on attracting the right audience.

When planning content marketing campaigns, always focus on creating shareable content. Video content, for instance, has become the central pillar of many content marketing campaigns. Serious entrepreneurs double down on efforts to create online courses and engaging explainer videos. Mainly because you can convey a lot of information in a concise package.

Take the example of Marketo, a popular marketing automation tool that relies on videos to replace the traditional text-only user education articles.

This is a tough challenge for content creators because there is no set formula that dictates the virality of a content piece. The good news is that regardless of the size of your team or the volume of resources at your disposal, you have the potential of creating highly shareable content by adding emotion, value, and of course the proper hooks for reeling in potential customers to the landing pages.

#10 Do Guest Posting

Guest posting services help to build a connection. There are numerous guest posting services available online. Almost all of them have their own websites up and running.

These service providers make it easier to get high-quality organic leads through the content by providing a link to your website which ultimately, helps in boosting up your SERP rankings.

Guest blogging is a great marketing growth hack which bloggers tend to use for the purpose of gaining organic website traffic and reaching out to different audiences by improving their search engine rankings.

Buffer is one of the brands that use guest posting as a growth hack. In their early days, they asked influential bloggers to create shareable content which they used to build an impressive number of backlinks from websites with good Domain Authority (DA).

#11 Work with Influencers

When it comes to brand building, there is a reason why brands pay influencers to endorse their products. Collaborating with well-known influencers is a powerful way to reach out to a wider audience. Worth mentioning, influencers having over 50,000+ followers are most impactful.

influencer-marketing-growth-hack

Entrepreneurs should collaborate with influencers in order to promote their products and services by sharing the latest news. Influencer marketing if done right can help any business to raise awareness and achieve massive reach

Using influencers’ authority and reach is a great marketing growth hack for fresh startups who cannot afford to compete with established brands in terms of marketing budgets. Since influencers already have an established following, businesses can use them as a potential customer base.

Take the case of Gymshark, a brand that is well known for using influencers to increase brand reach and sales. In fact, in the early days, Gymshark depended heavily on the influencers in bodybuilding and fitness industries for creating brand awareness and generating traction.

#12 Cash the Trends

Between customer service, budget tracking, marketing, sales, and product development, it can be difficult to stay on top of all the latest industry advancements and innovations. Staying on top of trends is key to the success of your business.

Identifying trends at an early stage will allow you to come up with profitable campaign ideas — or alter your business plans to jump on a new trend just as it takes off. You can achieve accelerated results by staying abreast of the latest trends.

#13 Use HARO for Press Opportunities

One of the best growth hacking tips is considering Helping A Reporter Out (HARO) as a platform where you can display your expertise. It is not a brand-building tool, instead, a place to read various requests by journalists that may or may not be relevant to your domain.

Yes, it will take up a lot of time but can be well worth it if executed correctly. If you can find 30 seconds three times a day to read their newsletters, consider that as the much-needed investment.

Also, bear in mind that reporters are very specific about what they need. Hence, do not waste their time pitching an idea they have not asked about.

#14 Send Gifts to Your Customers and Showoff

Branded gift products, ranging from pens to office supplies that have your company’s logo and name embossed on them, provides great value to the user.

It will raise your brand’s awareness and maintain customer loyalty. It also helps in spreading positive word of mouth. Moreover, it improves customers’ perceptions of your brand. A happy customer becomes a promoter of your brand and allows you to enjoy more referrals and leads.

Cloudways Swags - Customer

Bonus Growth Hacking Tips You Can Try

#15 Offer Discounts to Beta Testers.

#16 Feature User Stories on Your Blog.

#17 Repurpose Existing Content on Your Website/Blog.

#18 Leverage Quora by Answering Relevant Questions.

#19 Make Affiliate Partners.

#20 Create Email Drip Campaigns.

Grow Your Business to More Revenue and Customers this Year

5 Best Growth Hacking Examples

1. facebook.

The world’s most favorite social media platform is undoubtedly one of the best growth hack examples in today’s digital landscape. With more than 2 billion users, Facebook has now become a fact of life for us. This question on Quora regarding Facebook growth hacks reveals 2 effective techniques this social media giant used to scale themselves.

Firstly, they encouraged people to add their friends and family so that they can share content within their circle on Facebook. Secondly, Facebook sent emails to their friends and family inviting them to create an account with Facebook.

This growth hack piqued the interest of many as they became curious about who tagged or mentioned them on Facebook. They wanted to see what was being told about them on Facebook. Also, they wanted to see what would they get after signing up.

Facebook Invite

Another business that’s proving to be one of the best growth hacking examples is PayPal. Ever thought of the fact that giving away money will help your organization grow? Well, it certainly worked wonders for Paypal.

Their growth hacking strategy was to use a referral program. They began to incentivize users who brought in more users by using PayPal’s referral program. As a result, PayPal’s business began to grow by 7% to 10% on a daily basis. The total cost of incentives was nearly $60 million.

Additionally, what’s more, interesting about their growth hacking strategy is that social media wasn’t as common or powerful as it is today. Paypal grew mostly via word of mouth, SMS, blogs, and emails.

PayPal

3. Dollar Shave Club

Video content is in more demand than ever. This growth hacking example of the Dollar Shave Club proves how effective video marketing is and how conveniently you can get all the conversions you need with the right video content. According to Business Insider, the Dollar Shave Club  made more than $20 million in revenue by using the following video growth hack.

The Dollar Shave Club created a video in order to promote their services, particularly sending their prospects to brand new razor blades every month for a mere $1 only. The video went viral like wildfire, as it successfully garnered 19 million views within a short passage of time. Today, the promotional video of the Dollar Shave Club is at more than 25 million views.

Dollar Shave Club

4. HubSpot Academy

Hubspot Academy is one of the best examples of using a growth hacking strategy . With the help of growth marketer Eric Peters, Hubspot academy managed to increase its certifications per student ratio to 1.3 certifications throughout 2016.

An interesting finding from HubSpot’s experimentation was that the status bar helped users discover new certification courses. Eric and his team also use a color code; grey represents the certifications that aren’t complete or have expired, while orange is for the ones that are complete.

The team also added a status bar to the emails of registered students so each individual would see their progress on various certifications. This ingenious growth hacking strategy allowed Eric Peter and his team to overshoot their initial goal of 1.5 certifications per user all the way to 1.3 certifications per user. Overall, this increased the number of certifications by 18%.

HubSpot Academy

5. Cloudways Ecommerce Tools

r great growth hacking example is the Cloudways Ecommerce Tools . The idea behind these tools was to pull targeted audiences towards this page and to engage with them. The user would need to provide their email address to see the results of the tools, thus making them leads.

Through the use of these tools, lead generation improved significantly, bringing in about 30% more subscribers in a matter of three months.

Cloudways Ecommerce Tools

Final Words

Growth has always been a challenge for many businesses. The real issue is that your market and target audience aren’t exposed to creative marketing campaigns on a regular basis.

In such a competitive environment, you can only grow your business by adopting these aforementioned growth hacking strategies.

While there is no harm in trying out new things (in fact, this is the number one advice from all experts), businesses must focus on deploying tried-and-tested growth strategies. There is no single hack that resolves all pain points. Henceforth, don’t hesitate to practice with new growth hacking strategies.

If you would like to share other growth hacking strategies, please feel free to share your opinion in the comments section below. You can get help from the cloudways webinar about how to improve your shop’s conversion rate .

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Arsalan sajid.

Arsalan, a Digital Marketer by profession, works as a Startups and Digital Agencies Community Manager at Cloudways. He loves all things entrepreneurial and wakes up every day with the desire to enable the dreams of aspiring entrepreneurs through his work!

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Growth hacker is the new vp marketing.

The rise of the Growth Hacker The new job title of “ Growth Hacker ” is integrating itself into Silicon Valley’s culture, emphasizing that coding and technical chops are now an essential part of being a great marketer. Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of “How do I get customers for my product?” and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph. On top of this, they layer the discipline of direct marketing, with its emphasis on quantitative measurement, scenario modeling via spreadsheets, and a lot of database queries. If a startup is pre-product/market fit, growth hackers can make sure virality is embedded at the core of a product. After product/market fit, they can help run up the score on what’s already working.

This isn’t just a single role – the entire marketing team is being disrupted. Rather than a VP of Marketing with a bunch of non-technical marketers reporting to them, instead growth hackers are engineers leading teams of engineers. The process of integrating and optimizing your product to a big platform requires a blurring of lines between marketing, product, and engineering, so that they work together to make the product market itself. Projects like email deliverability, page-load times, and Facebook sign-in are no longer technical or design decisions – instead they are offensive weapons to win in the market.

The stakes are huge because of “superplatforms” giving access to 100M+ consumers These skills are invaluable and can change the trajectory of a new product. For the first time ever, it’s possible for new products to go from zero to 10s of millions users in just a few years. Great examples include Pinterest, Zynga, Groupon, Instagram, Dropbox. New products with incredible traction emerge every week. These products, with millions of users, are built on top of new, open platforms that in turn have hundreds of millions of users – Facebook and Apple in particular. Whereas the web in 1995 consisted of a mere 16 million users on dialup, today over 2 billion people access the internet. On top of these unprecedented numbers, consumers use super-viral communication platforms that rapidly speed up the proliferation of new products – not only is the market bigger, but it moves faster too.

Before this era, the discipline of marketing relied on the only communication channels that could reach 10s of millions of people – newspaper, TV, conferences, and channels like retail stores. To talk to these communication channels, you used people – advertising agencies, PR, keynote speeches, and business development. Today, the traditional communication channels are fragmented and passe. The fastest way to spread your product is by distributing it on a platform using APIs, not MBAs. Business development is now API-centric, not people-centric.

Whereas PR and press used to be the drivers of customer acquisition, instead it’s now a lagging indicator that your Facebook integration is working. The role of the VP of Marketing, long thought to be a non-technical role, is rapidly fading and in its place, a new breed of marketer/coder hybrids have emerged.

Airbnb, a case study Let’s use case of Airbnb to illustrate this mindset. First, recall The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs :

Over time, all marketing strategies result in shitty clickthrough rates.

The converse of this law is that if you are first-to-market, or just as well, first-to-marketing-channel , you can get strong clickthrough and conversion rates because of novelty and lack of competition. This presents a compelling opportunity for a growth team that knows what they are doing – they can do a reasonably difficult integration into a big platform and expect to achieve an advantage early on.

Airbnb does just this, with a remarkable Craigslist integration. They’ve picked a platform with 10s of millions of users where relatively few automated tools exist, and have created a great experience to share your Airbnb listing. It’s integrated simply and deeply into the product, and is one of the most impressive ad-hoc integrations I’ve seen in years. Certainly a traditional marketer would not have come up with this, or known it was even possible – instead it’d take a marketing-minded engineer to dissect the product and build an integration this smooth.

Here’s how it works at a UI level, and then we’ll dissect the technology bits:

(This screenshots are courtesy of Luke Bornheimer and his wonderful answer on Quora )

Looks simple, right? The impressive part is that this is done with no public Craigslist API! It turns out, you have to look closely and carefully at Craigslist in order to accomplish an integration like this. Note that it’s 100X easier for me to reverse engineer something that’s already working versus coming up with the reference implementation – and for this reason, I’m super impressed with this integration.

Reverse-engineering “Post to Craigslist” The first thing you have to do is to look at how Craigslist allows users to post to the site. Without an API, you have to write a script that can scrape Craigslist and interact with its forms, to pre-fill all the information you want.

The first thing you can notice from playing around with Craigslist is that when you go to post something, you get a unique URL where all your information is saved. So if you go to https://post.craigslist.org you’ll get redirected to a different URL that looks like https://post.craigslist.org/k/HLjRsQyQ4RGu6gFwMi3iXg/StmM3?s=type . It turns out that this URL is unique, and all information that goes into this listing is associated to this URL and not to your Craigslist cookie. This is different than the way that most sites do it, where a bunch of information is saved in a cookie and/or server-side and then pulled out. This unique way of associating your Craigslist data and the URL means that you can build a bot that visits Craigslist, gets a unique URL, fills in the listing info, and then passes the URL to the user to take the final step of publishing. That becomes the foundation for the integration.

At the same time, the bot needs to know information to deal with all the forms – beyond filling out the Craigslist category, which is simple, you also need to know which geographical region to select. For that, you’d have to visit every Craigslist in every market they serve, and scrape the names and codes for every region. Luckily, you can start with the links in the Craiglist sidepanel – there’s 100s of different versions of Craigslist, it turns out.

If you dig around a little bit you find that certain geographical markets are more detailed than others. In some, like the SF Bay Area, there’s subareas (south bay, peninsula, etc.) and neighborhoods (bernal, pacific heights) whereas in other markets there’s only subareas, or there’s just the market. So you’d have to incorporate all of that into your interface.

Then there’s the problem of the listing itself – by default, Craigslist works by giving you an anonymous email address which you use to communicate to potential customers. If you want to drive them to your site, you’d have to notice that you can turn off showing an email, and just provide the “Contact me here” link instead. Or, you could potentially fill a special email address like [email protected] that automatically directs inquiries to the right person, which can be done using services like Mailgun or Sendgrid .

Finally, you’ll want the listing to look good – it turns out Craigslist only supports a limited amount of HTML , so you’ll need to work to make your listings work well within those constraints.

Completing the integration is only the beginning – once it’s up, you’d have to optimize it. What’s the completion % once sometime starts sharing their listing out to Craigslist? How can you change the flow, the call to action, the steps in the form, to increase this %? And similarly, when people land from Craigslist, how do you make sure they are likely to complete a transaction? Do they need special messaging?

Tracking all of this requires additional work with click-tracking with unique URLs, 1×1 GIFs on the Craigslist listing, and many more details.

Long story short, this kind of integration is not trivial. There’s many little details to notice, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the initial integration took some very smart people a lot of time to perfect.

No traditional marketer would have figured this out Let’s be honest, a traditional marketer would not even be close to imagining the integration above – there’s too many technical details needed for it to happen. As a result, it could only have come out of the mind of an engineer tasked with the problem of acquiring more users from Craigslist. Who knows how much value Airbnb is getting from this integration, but in my book, it’s damn impressive. It taps into a low-competition, huge-volume marketing channel, and builds a marketing function deeply into the product. Best of all, it’s a win-win for everyone involved – both the people renting out their places by tapping into pre-built demand, and for renters, who see much nicer listings with better photos and descriptions.

This is just a case study, but with this type of integration, a new product is able to compete not just on features, but on distribution strategy as well. In this way, two identical products can have 100X different outcomes, just based on how well they integrate into Craigslist/Twitter/Facebook. It’s an amazing time, and a new breed of creative, technical marketers are emerging. Watch this trend.

So to summarize:

  • For the first time ever, superplatforms like Facebook and Apple uniquely provide access to 10s of millions of customers
  • The discipline of marketing is shifting from people-centric to API-centric activities
  • Growth hackers embody the hybrid between marketer and coder needed to thrive in the age of platforms
  • Airbnb has an amazing Craigslist integration

Good luck, growth hackers!

I write a high-quality, weekly newsletter covering what's happening in Silicon Valley, focused on startups, marketing, and mobile.

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case study growth hacking

Andrew Chen is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he invests in games, AR/VR, metaverse, and consumer tech startups. He is the author of The Cold Start Problem , a book on starting and growing new startups via network effects. He resides in Venice, California (more)

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Growth Hacking Explained

case study growth hacking

If you’ve spent any time hanging around the mean streets of LinkedIn in the past few years, you’ve probably seen the term ‘growth hacking’ thrown around.

You might have seen loud, brash posts by growth hacking evangelists, claiming it’s marketing 2.0, 3.0 or even 4.0. That it’s what every company needs to be doing if they want to gain traction, win customers and get into the VIP section at the club. 

Or you might have seen posts by ad agency/marketing department bigwigs calling it balony, jargon, a total con.

Get ready to have your mind blown – it’s neither of these things. Stick with us, and we’ll tell you what it’s all about.

What Is Growth Hacking?

To define growth hacking we may as well go straight to the source: Sean Ellis. Sean Ellis was the first marketer at Dropbox and ran growth at several successful startups. He’s earned a sparkling reputation as a big thinker, motivator and teacher in the growth marketing industry. 

Sean coined the term growth hacking back in 2010 to describe the approach to marketing he and his teams used in DropBox, Eventbrite and elsewhere. 

He said that a growth hacker is “a person whose true north is growth. Everything they do is scrutinized by its potential impact on scalable growth.”

Things have changed in the decade since then, though. Many digital marketers, channel experts or sales people could claim that their primary objective is growth. But we wouldn’t necessarily think of them as growth hackers. Today, the term needs a little more nuance. 

They key aspects of growth hacking are:

A relentlessly experimental mindset . Growth hacking meant constantly hunting out opportunities to run experiments across marketing and product development, with the aim of finding ways to grow and squeeze more value out of the customer base. It’s a more aggressive, fast paced approach to growing a company than traditional marketing. 

Looking beyond customer acquisition. A growth hacker does not have to be a marketer. Product developers, engineers and project managers could all be growth hackers. The important thing is that you look for ways to improve the growth prospects of the company everywhere you can – from the onboarding process (if a customer has a bad first impression, there will be no second impression, which will eventually halt scalable growth) to the digital ad creative. 

Thorough data analysis. Growth hackers should have an excellent understanding of analytics and data and how to interpret results. Now, this isn’t a skill set exclusive to growth hackers – in fact a lot of people who call themselves growth hackers aren’t actually very good at reading data. However, for effective growth hacking you need to be able to understand the results of your experiments, and it’s not always as simple as conversion rates or channel return on ad spend. And an experiment that does not produce the results you wanted or expected doesn’t necessarily mean it was a failure – as long as you gain learnings that you can use in future experiments.

Growth Hacking Examples

To help illustrate what growth hacking entails we’ve collected a few examples below:

Hotmail – Before growth hacking was even a term, Hotmail was doing it. They added ‘PS I love you’ to emails sent on the platform with a link to the recipient to sign up for free email from Hotmail. This achieved viral/referral growth, without the referring user having to take any action. 

Gmail – Another email provider. Gmail used behavioural psychology to create FOMO (fear of missing out) among potential users. Gmail was invite-only initially, and because it had some pretty groundbreaking features such as great email search people were desperate to get an invite. Clearly, this growth hack worked in conjunction with having a great product that people wanted to use. Google has tried this with other products (remember Google+?) and not had anywhere near as much success.

Groupon –  Groupon has created FOMO and a sense of urgency among users to incentivise sharing. Users must get enough other people to take up a deal for them to be able to get the deal themselves. 

Hubspot – Hubspot are masters of what we’d call engineering as marketing. They create free, useful tools for people that either drive email sign ups or referrals. For example, their website grader tool (which does some SEO analysis of an inputted URL) gathered a user’s email address in exchange for the results. Hubspot’s email signature-generator gathers email addresses, and by default includes a link to Hubspot in the signature it generates, which means users are referring their contacts to Hubspot every time they send an email. 

Growth Hacking Vs Digital Marketing

Growth hacking and digital marketing both include a lot of the same activities. The difference is one of hierarchy. 

Digital marketing describes the tactic of using digital channels (social media ads, digital display, SEO, affiliate marketing etc) to market a product. Digital marketing doesn’t just describe one skillset/job title. It’s a huge area, and you will find that many marketers specialise in one or two of the channels within digital marketing. In fact, it’s often better to find channel-specific experts to execute on a digital channel than to get one generalist ‘digital marketer’ to do everything. 

Growth hacking describes an approach to growing a company, which can include executing marketing initiatives on digital channels and platforms. Within a growth hacking team you may find digital marketing experts, and even channel experts (eg, Facebook Ad experts). These people are both digital marketers AND growth hackers. 

Growth Hacking Or Growth Marketing?

At Growth Division we prefer not to use the term growth hacking too much. Since Sean Ellis coined the term it’s been grabbed with both hands by some absolute charlatans in the marketing industry. For example, doing research for this article, I discovered one blog by a ‘growth hacker’ that claimed that growth hackers use data, whereas traditional marketers do not. That’s just…. complete nonsense. In general, we prefer to use the term growth marketing. Growth marketing is the same mindset – setting hypotheses, rigorous experimentation, careful analysis and insight generation. It also includes the entire marketing funnel – from top of funnel growth, to onboarding and product development. 

If you want to find out about what strategies and tactics could work for you, get in touch for a free discovery call with us. 

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Top Social Media Case Studies and Lessons to Learn

Nivanya M.

Social media case studies provide practical, actionable insights for your online marketing campaigns. They can highlight what works and what doesn’t. By learning from the experiences of others, you can refine your strategies to boost engagement and increase social media conversion rates for your business. 

As of 2024, the average internet user spends 143 minutes daily on social media. This high level of engagement presents a significant opportunity for brands to connect with potential customers. And adopting the best practices and strategies demonstrated in successful social media case studies can help you achieve this. 

In this blog, we’ll be exploring examples of social media case studies and their valuable lessons. So be sure to glean insights from them to ramp up your social media marketing game. 

Social media case studies of best social media brands

Using the right social media strategy can be a game changer for your brand as it will help you reach your audience effectively. Let’s look at a few success stories: 

#1: Spotify

In 2013, Spotify introduced its "Year in Review" feature. The company realized it had a treasure trove of streaming data. While the graphics were on-brand and less quirky than today’s versions, they still captured the audience’s attention.  

Fast-forward to 2016, Spotify rebranded these data stories as " Wrapped ." Each year, Spotify Wrapped introduces new and fun features based on users’ listening habits — from identifying your unique “audio aura” to categorizing you into one of 16 “listening personality types.”  

Spotify Wrapped-s mobile share images

Why this campaign?    The campaign taps into users' love for content personalization and nostalgia, allowing them to reflect on their past year in music and share their unique listening habits with their friends and followers. This annual tradition has become a highly anticipated event. It generates buzz and drives customer retention and new sign-ups.  

What did they do?    Spotify collates vast amounts of listening data and presents it with eye-catching graphics that are instantly shareable on Facebook, Instagram and X. This enhances shareability and personalization, contributing to the viral success of Spotify Wrapped. 

How did it help?    Spotify Wrapped's social media metrics highlight its viral success. The campaign generated significant engagement, with more than 156 million users interacting with their personalized Wrapped summaries in 2022. What’s more, the first three days after its 2022 launch, Spotify Wrapped generated over 400 million tweets/X posts, highlighting its strong shareability and user engagement on social media platforms. 

A Tweet (X post) highlighting the popularity of Spotify Wrapped

What to take away?  

  • Embed shareability for virality: Spotify Wrapped is highly shareable. The content is perfectly optimized for social media. The app even encourages you to share your Wrapped summary. Crafting personalized content that people are excited to share is a successful social media strategy , as active participation naturally follows when you engage your audience. 
  • Create rituals: While Spotify Wrapped's format remains consistent, it gains more traction on social media each year. Annual campaigns, particularly those towards the year's end, establish a sense of ritual, and consumers are conditioned to anticipate them. Ritualized content gives your audience something to look forward to, year after year. 
  • Jump on that bandwagon: Making brand-specific versions of popular content is a fantastic way to participate in the conversation. For instance, SEMRush used the Wrapped format to create unique content tailored to its audience. 

SEMRush piggy-backing on the Spotify Wrapped trend

Deep Dive: How to adopt trends and broaden your channel coverage mix (while staying on brand)  

#2: The Barbie Movie 

The 2023 film Barbie brought the beloved Mattel doll to life in a dazzling, contemporary adventure. Starring Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie, the movie seamlessly blends fantasy and reality as Barbie embarks on a transformative journey from her idyllic, pink-hued world to the real one. 

Why this campaign?  The Barbie marketing campaign was a masterclass in leveraging nostalgia, contemporary pop culture and innovative social media promotion strategies. It generated a massive buzz and captured the imagination of audiences worldwide. 

What did they do?    Warner Brothers and Mattel collaborated to create a multifaceted campaign. This included vibrant teasers, interactive social media content and high-profile brand partnerships. Here are the specifics:  

  • Shared behind-the-scenes content, trailers and other promotional materials on all social media platforms 
  • Engaged influencers and celebrities to create inspired memes and generate excitement 
  • Created a sense of community by reflecting the diversity of its audience   
  • Barbie-themed Malibu DreamHouse listed by Airbnb 
  • Barbie-styled clothing line launched by Forever21 
  • Barbie-themed meals offered by Burger King in Brazil 

Airbnb-s Malibu mansion activation with Barbie

  • Utilized innovative tactics like a selfie generator to keep fans engaged 
  • Benefitted from the unplanned "Barbenheimer" phenomenon 

The simultaneous release of Oppenheimer and Barbie really captured the public’s imagination. It sparked an unexpected cultural phenomenon known as "Barbenheimer." Christopher Nolan's intense biographical drama "Oppenheimer" explored the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb, while Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" was inspired by the iconic doll. The stark contrast between the two films captivated both audiences and the media.  

Lead actors of Oppenheimer and Barbie promoting the Barbenheimer phenomenon

The phenomenon was fueled by social media buzz, memes and fans' enthusiasm for the unique cinematic experience of watching two drastically different films back-to-back. This boosted box office numbers for both movies and created a shared cultural moment transcending typical movie-going experiences. The playful rivalry and the combined marketing efforts led to unprecedented social media engagement , making "Barbenheimer" a standout event in 2023. 

How did it help?    The movie had grossed $1.45 billion worldwide , including $636 million in North America. Barbie was the top-grossing film of 2023, largely due to its strong social media engagement. In fact, in a Statista survey, more than half of the respondents claimed that they primarily learned about the movie through social media. 

  • Generate buzz: The Barbie social media marketing campaign is a true masterclass in creating viral content. It clearly demonstrates that, when utilized effectively, social media can be an incredibly powerful tool for bringing a brand, product or film into the spotlight. Your marketing message becomes more powerful when it consistently appears in the feeds of your target audience .   

🤔 Are you looking to be in the public eye consistently?   

To be the talk of the “global town,” you need to be steady with your posting and ensure that your content is delivered at the ideal times. However, keeping track of all your social media posts and activities can often seem like a Herculean task. Though, there is a quick way to simplify all that manual heavy lifting.  

Sprinklr's Social Media Publishing & Engagement tool helps you streamline the organization, planning and execution of your social media content. With it, you can:

👁️ Get a complete overview of your posts, events and campaigns  

📚 Publish across 30+ channels at the same time 

🖼️ View comments, mentions and messages across channels in a single space 

🔎 Monitor the performance of your paid, owned and earned media in one single dashboard 

Creating a new post on Sprinklr-s Social Media Publishing & Engagement platform

Pro Tip💡: Ensure your top content receives the exposure it merits. Influencers offer a distinctive viewpoint that authentically resonates with customers and potentially influences purchasing decisions. As such, using a tool like Sprinklr's AI-led Influencer Marketing Platform can help you find the right influencers across multiple demographics. It identifies the best-suited influencers to maximize the reach, authenticity and impact of your marketing message, and it also gives deeper insights into their performance. 

Sprinklr's Influencer Marketing Platform displaying top advocates

  • Innovate to resonate: Barbie's marketing campaign showcased various inventive strategies to captivate fans. Due to the interactive experiences offered through the film's promotion, audiences remained eagerly anticipating its release. For instance, typing "Barbie," "Margot Robbie," "Ryan Gosling" or "Greta Gerwig" into Google search triggered a magical makeover and turned the screen pink with sparkles, thrilling fans worldwide. 
  • Be inclusive: The Barbie campaign embraced inclusivity by appealing to various audiences. By featuring diverse characters and themes in its marketing materials, Barbie made audiences feel represented and included in the brand's narrative. The propagation of social media accessibility and inclusivity strengthened Barbie's connection with its fan base and drew new audiences.

Related Read: 10+ Ideas for Social Media Posts That Move the Needle  

#3: Shiseido Japan 

Shiseido Japan is a renowned global beauty and cosmetics company with a rich heritage of combining Eastern aesthetics and Western science. The company has established itself as a leader in the beauty industry and is known for its innovative skincare, makeup and fragrance products.  

A Shiseido cosmetics store

Why this campaign?    Historically, Shiseido Japan's makeup marketing teams collaborated with agencies to monitor social media performance. They relied on agency-provided reports or manually checked each social account, which prevented them from responding quickly to any issues. In 2021, Shiseido Japan decided to overhaul the marketing strategies for makeup brands like MAQuillAGE, Snow Beauty, INTEGRATE and MAJOLICA MAJORCA. 

What did they do?    Shiseido adopted Sprinklr's Unified-CXM platform to transform its marketing teams. It helped them collaborate effortlessly by combining tools and data on a single platform.

Pro Tip💡: Automate and manage workflows , such as campaign deployment and reporting, to free up time for teams to focus on strategic initiatives. Look for platforms or software solutions that offer features such as campaign scheduling, account addition via emails and customizable dashboards. Modern platforms like Sprinklr Social and Sprinklr Insights are purpose-built for this task, with all the aforementioned offerings and more. They unify channels, tools and data, providing a comprehensive view of the customer.

Sprinklr’s Unified CXM platform enables seamless collaboration between customer-facing teams

How did it help?    Sprinklr significantly enhanced Shiseido's social media management by centralizing all media accounts on a single platform. It allowed the marketing teams to access real-time data through customized dashboards and generate automated, shareable reports, enabling better social media measurement. This resulted in a 244% increase in overall owned media account performance in 2022.  

The shift to Sprinklr also facilitated a new data-driven culture for social campaigns, moving away from guesswork. Teams could validate ideas, check for viral potential using past trends and analyze campaign performance against social media KPIs (key performance indicators), making the necessary adjustments for future campaigns. This structured approach resulted in better campaign outcomes. Mentions of Shiseido's makeup brands on social media through user-generated content (UGC) increased by 406% in 2022, when compared to 2021. 

  • Facilitate data-driven decision-making: Like Shiseido, consider investing in technologies like Sprinklr's Unified-CXM platform . It will transform your decision-making processes by providing real-time actionable insights by analyzing data collected across multiple channels.  
  • Prioritize social listening : Make sure you prioritize social listening to analyze audience sentiment, track trends and identify opportunities for brand engagement. By actively monitoring social media conversations, engaging with your audience and leveraging UGC, you can foster authentic connections with your customers. 
  • Customize your dashboards: Tailor your social media analytics tools to your unique needs, just like Shiseido did with Sprinklr's dashboards. By customizing metrics and dashboards to track social media KPIs relevant to your business goals, you'll gain deeper insights into your social performance. 

Read More : Sprinklr’s Social Media Case Study on Shiseido Japan

How do you write a social media growth case study?  

Now that we’ve examined some great social media case studies, let's explore how you can create one. Here’s how you can structure and populate one on your own:  

1. Introduction 

  • Introduce the brand: Start by briefly introducing the brand whose social media growth you are examining. 
  • State the purpose: Explain the purpose of the case study and what you aim to demonstrate. 

2. Background

  • Ground zero: Describe the initial state of the brand's social media presence. Include metrics like follower count, engagement rates and notable challenges. 
  • Objectives: Clearly outline the brand's goals for social media growth. These could be increasing followers, boosting engagement or enhancing brand awareness . 

3. Strategy 

  • Target audience: Define the target audience for social media efforts. 
  • Platform selection: Explain which social media platforms were chosen and why. 
  • Content strategy: Explain what types of content were created and their messaging. 
  • Campaigns: Describe the brand’s advertising campaigns, apart from influencer partnerships, paid advertising or user-generated content campaigns. 

4. Implementation 

  • Timeline: Provide a timeline of key activities and milestones. 
  • Resources: Discuss the resources used, including team members, tools and budget. 

5. Metrics 

  • Growth metrics: Present metrics that indicate growth, such as changes in follower count, engagement rates, reach and impressions . 
  • Additional metrics: Include other relevant metrics like click-through rates, conversion rates and social media ROI . 

6. Results 

  • Compare and contrast: Compare the initial metrics with the final results to show the growth. 
  • Achievements: Highlight major achievements and milestones reached during the campaign. 

7. Solutions 

  • Obstacles: Discuss any challenges faced during the campaign. 
  • Fixes: Explain how these challenges were addressed and what solutions were implemented. 

8. Takeaways 

  • Successful strategies: Summarize the social media growth strategies that worked well and contributed to success. 
  • Lessons learned: Reflect on what could have been done differently and any lessons learned for future campaigns. 

9. Conclusion 

  • Summary: Recap the main points and results of the case study. 
  • The future: Briefly mention any next steps for the brand’s social media strategy. 

10. Visual elements  

  • Charts and graphs: Use reporting charts and graphs to visually represent the data and growth metrics. 
  • Screenshots: Include screenshots of successful posts, campaign highlights and other visual elements.  

Final thoughts  

These social media case studies showcase innovative strategies for capturing audience attention and driving significant engagement. However, this is easier said than done. The challenge for large brands in social media marketing lies in effectively leveraging data insights and managing multiple channels. 

Sprinklr Social can help you with this. It offers real-time actionable data insights, streamlines social media management and enables personalized engagement with audiences. The platform is trusted by global companies for its in-depth listening, unmatched channel coverage of 30+ digital channels and enterprise-grade configurability. This is so you’re always in the know of every customer interaction. The best part? It automates your end-to-end social media management with the industry-leading Sprinklr AI and accelerates content creation with top-tier generative AI capabilities. 

Keen to find out how this software can elevate your social media marketing efforts?  

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  • Resources and Development Class 10 Case Study Social Science Geography Chapter 1

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Last Updated on September 3, 2024 by XAM CONTENT

Hello students, we are providing case study questions for class 10 social science. Case study questions are the new question format that is introduced in CBSE board. The resources for case study questions are very less. So, to help students we have created chapterwise case study questions for class 10 social science. In this article, you will find case study for CBSE Class 10 Social Science Geography Chapter 1 Resources and Development. It is a part of Case Study Questions for CBSE Class 10 Social Science Series.

Resources and Development
Case Study Questions
Competency Based Questions
CBSE
10
Social Science – Geography
Contemporary India-II
Resources and Development
Class 10 Studying Students
Yes
Mentioned

Customised Study Materials for Teachers, Schools and Coaching Institute

Table of Contents

Case Study Questions on Resources and Development Class 10

Read the following passage and answer the questions:

We have shared our land with the past generations and will have to do so with the future generations too. Ninety five per cent of our basic needs for food, shelter and clothing are obtained from land.

Human activities have not only brought about degradation of land but have also aggravated the pace of natural forces to cause damage to land. Some human activities such as deforestation, overgrazing, mining and quarrying too have contributed significantly in land degradation. Mining sites are abandoned, after excavation work is complete, leaving deep scars and traces of over burdening. In states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, deforestation due to mining have caused severe land degradation. In states like Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, over-grazing is one of the main reasons for land degradation. In the states like Punjab, Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh, over irrigation is responsible for land degradation due to water logging leading to increase in salinity and alkalinity in the soil.

Q 1. How does human activities have brought about land degradation? Ans. Human activities have brought about land degradation through the factors like deforestation, over-grazing, mining and quarrying.

Q 2. How is over irrigation responsible for land degradation? Ans. Over irrigation is responsible for land degradation due to water logging leading to increase in salinity in soil.

Q 3. Why is human considered as the main culprit for land degradation? Ans. Human is considered as the main culprit for land degradation due to the following reasons: (i) His excavation work at mining sites. (ii) His significant contribution to deforestation. (iii) He has aggravated the pace of natural forces causing damage to land. (Any two)

Planning is the widely accepted strategy for judicious use of resources. It has importance in a country like India, which has enormous diversity in the availability of resources. There are regions which are rich in certain types of resources but are deficient in some other resources. There are some regions which can be considered self-sufficient in terms of the availability of resources and there are some regions which have acute shortage of some vital resources. For example, the states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh are rich in minerals and coal deposits. Arunachal Pradesh has abundance of water resources but lacks in infrastructural development. The state of Rajasthan is very well endowed with solar and wind energy but lacks in water resources. The cold desert of Ladakh is relatively isolated from the rest of the country. It has very rich cultural heritage, but it is deficient in water, infrastructure and some vital minerals. This calls for balanced resource planning at the national, state, regional and local levels.

Q. 1. Which of the following statements correctly describes about resource planning? a. Identification and quantification of available resources. b. Development of available resources. c. Both a. and b. d. Uneven distribution of resources.

Ans. Option (c) is correct.

Q. 2. Resource planning is important in a country like India due to: a. enormous diversity in availability of resources b. deficiency in certain types of resources c. abundance of water resources d. rich cultural heritage

Ans. Option (a) is correct.

Q. 3. The state(s) which is/are rich in minerals and coal deposits is/are: a. Jharkhand b. Chhattisgarh c. Madhya Pradesh d. All of these

Ans. Option (d) is correct.

Q. 4. The states like Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh are rich in coal and minerals but have less development in resources as: a. they are economically less developed b. they have rich cultural heritage c. they lack water resources d. they lack technological and institutional support

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  • The Making of a Global World Class 10 Case Study Social Science History Chapter 3

Nationalism in India Class 10 Case Study Social Science History Chapter 2

The rise of nationalism in europe class 10 case study social science history chapter 1, topics from which case study questions may be asked.

  • Types – natural and human
  • Need for resource planning
  • Natural resources
  • Land as a resource
  • Soil types and distribution
  • Changing land-use pattern
  • Land degradation and conservation measures.

Everything available in our environment which can be used to satisfy our needs, provided it is technologically accessible, economically feasible and culturally acceptable, can be termed as ‘resource’.

The first International Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 endorsed global Forest Principles and adopted Agenda 21 for achieving sustainable development.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on Resources and Development Class 10 Case Study

Q1: what are case study questions.

A1: Case study questions are a type of question that presents a detailed scenario or a real-life situation related to a specific topic. Students are required to analyze the situation, apply their knowledge, and provide answers or solutions based on the information given in the case study. These questions help students develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Q2: How should I approach case study questions in exams?

A2: To approach case study questions effectively, follow these steps: Read the case study carefully: Understand the scenario and identify the key points. Analyze the information: Look for clues and relevant details that will help you answer the questions. Apply your knowledge: Use what you have learned in your course to interpret the case study and answer the questions. Structure your answers: Write clear and concise responses, making sure to address all parts of the question.

Q3: What are the benefits of practicing case study questions from your website?

A3: Practicing case study questions from our website offers several benefits: Enhanced understanding: Our case studies are designed to deepen your understanding of historical events and concepts. Exam preparation: Regular practice helps you become familiar with the format and types of questions you might encounter in exams. Critical thinking: Analyzing case studies improves your ability to think critically and make connections between different historical events and ideas. Confidence: Practicing with our materials can boost your confidence and improve your performance in exams.

Q4: What are the important keywords in this chapter “Resources and Development”?

A4: Important keywords for CBSE Class 10 Resources and Development are given below: Land Use Pattern: Use of land for different purposes like forests, cultivation, fallow land, etc. Ecological Balance: The balance in our physical and cultural environment. Man’s activities cause disturbances in this balance. For example, two important aspects are balance of gases in air and balance of constituents in soil. Land Degradation: Depletion of the resources of the land through soil erosion, mining, deforestation, etc. Khadar: The new alluvium. Kankar: Substance now containing calcium carbonates. Laterite: Soils from which silicates have been leached out and iron and aluminium predominate. Bangar: The old alluvium. Conservation: Preservation and protection of natural or man-made resources. Regur: Black soil of extremely fine clayey material. Basin: A wide depression or an area drained by a river. Sub-soil: Part of the soil below the top layer, normally used for cultivation to the depth to which most plant roots grow. Fallow Land: Agricultural land left uncultivated after two-three crops to restore its natural fertility. Marginal Land: Land which is difficult to cultivate and yields little profit. Net Sown Area: The total land under crop production excluding wasteland or land left fallow. Soil: Top layer of earth containing humus.

Q5: When and why was the Rio-de-Janeiro Earth summit held?

A5: Rio-de-Janeiro summit was held in 1992 in Brazil. Earth Summit: To achieve sustainable development in order to combat environment damage, poverty and disease, it laid emphasis on global cooperation, mutual needs and shared responsibilities.

Q6: What type of soil is found in the river deltas of the eastern coast? Write three main features of this type of soil.

A6: Alluvial Soil: Its main features are: (i) Mostly these soils contain adequate proportion of potash and lime which are ideal for the growth of sugarcane, paddy, wheat, etc. (ii) Such a soil is the result of deposits of river. (iii) Very fertile soil

Q7: What do you mean by land use pattern? Name the factors that determine the use of land.

A7: Utilisation of land for various purposes, such as cultivation, grazing of animals, mining, construction of roads, etc. Factors that determine land use pattern are: (i) Topography (ii) Climate (iii) Human Factor (iv) Accessibility

Q8: What does the term ‘sustainable economic development’ mean? How can we eradicate irrational consumption and over-utilisation of resources?

A8: Sustainable economic development means ‘development should take place without damaging the environment’ and development in the present should not compromise with the needs of the future generations. We can eradicate irrational consumption and over-utilisation of resources through conservation of resources. Irrational consumption and over-exploitation of resources lead to many socioeconomic and environmental problems. To overcome these problems and to preserve resources for our future generation as well, proper management and conservation of resources is essential

Q9: What is resource planning? Write three phases of resource planning.

A9: Resource planning is a proper and judicious planning of resources. Resources are put to use according to availability and needs for development of the economy. Three processes which are involved in resource planning are: (a) Identification and inventory of resources across various regions of the country. It involves surveying, mapping, qualitative and quantitative estimation and measurement of the resources. (b) Evolving a planning structure, endowed with appropriate technological skill and institutional set up for implementing resource development plans. (c) Synchronizing the resource development with overall national development plans.

Q10: Explain the role of human in resource development

A10: Human is at the centre of resource development. Actually all resources become resources only when they are put to use by humans. It is human who makes natural things usable with the help of technology. Had no technology been there, development would not have been possible. There are regions where natural resources are in abundance but the regions are not developed, e.g., Africa. But if humans are developed, they make the region developed with technology, e.g., Japan.

Q11: Are there any online resources or tools available for practicing “ Resources and Development” case study questions?

A11: We provide case study questions for CBSE Class 10 Social Science on our  website . Students can visit the website and practice sufficient case study questions and prepare for their exams.

Resources and Development Class 10 Case Study Social Science Geography Chapter 1

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Title: flight delay prediction using hybrid machine learning approach: a case study of major airlines in the united states.

Abstract: The aviation industry has experienced constant growth in air traffic since the deregulation of the U.S. airline industry in 1978. As a result, flight delays have become a major concern for airlines and passengers, leading to significant research on factors affecting flight delays such as departure, arrival, and total delays. Flight delays result in increased consumption of limited resources such as fuel, labor, and capital, and are expected to increase in the coming decades. To address the flight delay problem, this research proposes a hybrid approach that combines the feature of deep learning and classic machine learning techniques. In addition, several machine learning algorithms are applied on flight data to validate the results of proposed model. To measure the performance of the model, accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score are calculated, and ROC and AUC curves are generated. The study also includes an extensive analysis of the flight data and each model to obtain insightful results for U.S. airlines.
Subjects: Machine Learning (cs.LG)
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