20 amazing growth hacks

Table of contents

  1. What is a “growth hack”?
  2. #1 Spotify’s Facebook integration
  3. #2 Betabrand’s Model Citizen campaign

What is a “growth hack”?

So what exactly is a growth hack and how is it different from a normal marketing campaign? Is a billboard campaign a growth hack? What about an online Adwords campaign? To uncover the answer, I scoured GrowthHackers.com to understand how people generally differentiated growth hacks. Here are some common recognized attributes of growth hacks:

So for the purposes of this article, my working definition of “growth hack”:

Growth hack: A scalable, data-driven user growth technique not yet widely used. Likely (but not always) product driven and always optimized through continued experimentation.

With that definition in mind, let me present some of the most innovative growth hacks that have inspired me.

#1 Spotify’s Facebook integration

  Already pending

 #2 Betabrand’s Model Citizen campaign

Companies like 17. betabrand - upload a photo for a discount - http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/04/how-betabrand-creates-the-most-engaging-content-in-online-retail115/ http://www.betabrand.com/modelcitizen   mailbox app fast launch - http://www.businessinsider.com/qa-with-mailbox-founder-gentry-underwood-2013-5 http://untether.tv/2013/quick-steal-these-strategies-from-the-mailbox-app-launch/ http://appflood.com/blog/ios-android-app-pr-strategy-examples   instagram speedy app -https://speakerdeck.com/mikeyk/secrets-to-lightning-fast-mobile-design   pinterest follow high quality users right away - http://www.adambreckler.com/pinterest-growth-hacks-how-did-it-grow-so-fast 5. mint - highly sharable blog content strategy - http://www.quora.com/How-did-Mint-acquire-1-0m+-users-without-a-high-viral-coefficient-scalable-SEO-strategy-or-paid-customer-acquisition-channel 6. airbnb professional photography - http://firstround.com/article/How-design-thinking-transformed-Airbnb-from-failing-startup-to-billion-dollar-business 7. dollar shave club viral launch video - http://www.fastcompany.com/1835082/3-marketing-takeaways-dollar-shave-club%E2%80%99s-fing-great-ad 8. twitter sending automated activity update emails - http://www.forbes.com/sites/markfidelman/2013/10/15/meet-the-growth-hacking-wizard-behind-facebook-twitter-and-quoras-astonishing-success/ 9. slideshare embedded slides - http://blog.slideshare.net/2013/09/13/the-slideshare-sizzle-effect-lets-get-embed/ http://growth-hacks.quora.com/Slideshare-embed-code-classic-growth-hack 10. moz built a massive community of potential users - https://medium.com/b2b-startups/28-clever-under-the-radar-growth-hack-examples-b8a90781087d 11. art of manliness hosted massive giveaways - http://www.artofmanliness.com/2014/07/19/the-weekly-huckberry-giveaway-july-19-2014/ 12. new relic used free tshirts to convert customers - http://www.printfection.com/resources/case-study-new-relic/ 13. udemy content acquisition - http://www.quora.com/Udemy/How-did-Udemy-get-5-000-courses-online-so-quickly http://mixergy.com/interviews/gagan-biyani-growth-hacker-interview/ 14. uber - partnering with other businesses / leveraging popular events - http://blog.uber.com/drybar 15. Tim Ferris - bittorrent distribution hack - http://readwrite.com/2013/04/04/so-did-tim-ferrisss-bittorrent-book-promo-gamble-work http://blog.bittorrent.com/2013/04/04/your-book-is-a-startup-tim-ferriss-the-4-hour-chef-and-the-bittorrent-publishing-model/ 16. justin timberlake - released for streaming before publication - http://readwrite.com/2013/04/02/justin-timberlake-proves-streaming-isnt-a-death-wish-for-music-sales   18. facebook - you’ve been tagged - http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-350-million-photos-each-day-2013-9 19 slack onboarding experience - http://www.useronboard.com/how-slack-onboards-new-users/ 20. gleam.io powered by - http://growthhackers.com/hacks/powered-by-test-increases-signups-by-474/ http://blog.gleam.io/split-test/ 21. buffer purchased the digg digg plugin and added their bit - http://www.appvirality.com/blog/buffer-growth-hacked-reach-1-2-million-users-2m-3-years/ 22.wordpress went open source and built a community - http://www.majordojo.com/2011/02/how-did-wordpress-win.php 23.