Growth Hacking: 36 Real Case Studies - Part 2

    We continue to analyze the grows hacks of successful companies. In this article, you will learn how Moz and Qualaroo get a loyal audience through online communities, how the young CRM service attracts customers through Instagram, due to which Reddit and Quora gained a critical mass of users + some cool offline hacks from offline.



    If you missed the first article, here is a link to it . I advise you to start with it - it describes very interesting grows hacks. If you are in the subject, then drove on!

    Creating an active thematic community



    This hack is still actively used by two well-known services - Moz (offers various services for SEO-readers) and Qualaroo (a service for conducting surveys on the site). Both companies are dedicated to helping online marketers do their job better.
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    When the question arose about how to get additional loyal customers, they chose not the easiest way. It was decided to create a full-fledged community, something in the form of a forum where marketers will be able to ask questions, receive tips, share information. In general, communicate and pump your skills.

    So there were 2 powerful community.

    Moz created the Moz Community, in which they conduct several webinars ("Mozinarov") per month with the best experts, conduct Q&A (question and answer) sessions, online and offline events.



    In addition, the Moz guys put a lot of emphasis on content marketing - they have about 5,000 posts on their blog. Almost every day they prepare high-quality material on topics that are of interest to online marketers.

    The Qualaroo guys did exactly the same thing - they created the Growth Hackers Community. Every day, the best articles on Internet marketing, grow hacking, and startup development are added to this site. Each community member can ask a question, take part in discussions and AMA sessions (Ask Me Anything - ask me anything you want) with the best industry experts, analyze cases of successful companies, watch thematic videos and even find a job.

    Neither Moz nor Qualaroo are trying to sell their services directly through these communities. The main goal is to create a place where the target audience will hang out. And what's more, where the target audience will benefit, value. And that means it will come back again and again, become attached to the community, and, in parallel, to the company itself.

    Although, some organic advertising is present. For example, on GrowthHackers on the main page there is a small banner about the upcoming conference. And in the Moz community, the menu has links to company products, free services, company pages, etc. But this is not the obsessive advertising that annoys us every day.



    If you have the technical, financial and time resources, then consider how you can make an active community around your product. Of course, this is not done in a day. And it will not bring leads and profit tomorrow. This is a long-running topic that, if implemented correctly, can be a key factor in your success.

    Article in the topic - Upgrade content marketing: 16 working methods. Part 1

    Instagram hack



    I want to warn you right away that this is not a case from a well-known company. This is a case of a small Brazilian startup - a CRM system to optimize the work with potential customers. I found it on the Quora Q & A site, which we will talk about further.

    At the first stage of the startup’s development, Instagram and offline events in Brazil were used to attract customers. The essence of this hack was as follows:

    1. Medium and large events in Brazil were tracked, and based on this, a calendar for the next month was compiled.
    2. When the event started, the guys tracked the hashtags of the event on Instagram (they did the same on Facebook and Twitter)
    3. On behalf of the company, they left comments under photos and posts about this event. The comments were of the following type - “Cool that you are now at this event. If you need help interacting with everyone you met at the conference, try our CRM system. ” The text may not be entirely accurate, but the message, I think, is understandable.
    4. They also posted thematic images using their CRM system. For example, if a fashion event took place, they posted 2-3 pictures on their account, which explained how their system worked effectively in the fashion industry. If someone went to their account, then this positively influenced the first impression of the company.

    Here is such a small hack that a startup used at the initial stage of his “life”. Of course, this option is not suitable for all companies. But the meaning of the cases is different. The main goal is to make you think creatively and start looking for non-standard opportunities for promoting the project and attracting customers.

    I hope I can get it across to you. And you can find and implement your own grows hacks. Related

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    Fake activity



    Who knows Reddit?

    This is another community of users, only it is not focused on any particular topic, unlike Moz or GrowthHackers.

    Wikipedia describes Reddit as a social news site where registered users can post links to information they like. In addition, there are heated discussions, there you can promote a business, earn a rating and much more. The site looks old-fashioned, but it is very popular. Sometimes there you can get information that is unlikely to be found elsewhere.

    In general, the entire site is based on user activity. If they are active, upload links, vote for the best materials, then the site lives. If there is no activity, then there is no sense for visitors to go there.

    Therefore, at the initial stage, in 2005, when it was just created, the main problem was how to create activity? A critical mass of users, materials, comments were needed, after which the rest would see the value of the site and begin to register there.

    The critical mass itself will not be typed. Only in exceptional cases does the product sell itself. As a rule, you first need to plow hard to attract the first users. And only then, when the project earns a good reputation, one can hope for organic growth.

    How was activity created on Reddit?



    The founders riveted fake accounts with their own pens. They did this for several months, simulating real activity on the site. Due to this, the real visitors got the impression as if the site is live and there are real users on it. After several months, painstaking work began to pay for itself and organic growth began.

    The same strategy was used by the Quora website (the most popular question and answer service abroad). The two founders created new questions without interruption and answered them themselves. Then the first workers, beta testers, joined them. Thanks to this, the base of questions and answers began to fill up, the site came to life, organic growth began.

    Yes, it’s not easy. Yes, often this has to be done manually (although, I think, some may automate such processes). But when there are no other ways to get out of the "valley of death", then such a hack can turn out to be saving.

    Think about this option if you are developing something like an online forum, where at the initial stage there will always be a dilemma “an empty site means no users” and “no users means an empty site”. Although the same situation exists with marketplaces and social networks, where this dilemma is always necessary.

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    Personal contact with the target audience



    Consider the examples of Tinder (dating application) and Alibaba (the largest site selling goods on the Internet).

    The Tinder application had about the same problem as the quora or reddit. For girls to start using the app, there must be guys. For guys to start using the app, there must be girls. Simply put, you need a critical mass of users.

    Attracting the first users, marketing director Whitney Woolf was personally involved. The company organized a tour in which Whitney traveled to the campuses of renowned US universities.

    She performed in women's clubs and promoted the app. After the meeting, the girls installed it. Then Whitney went to the men's club, where she showed beautiful, free, but most importantly active - girls in the application that are open for dating.



    Thanks to this tour, the number of users has grown from 5 thousand to 15. Now the tinder has 50 million users, 10 million active every day. If at the very beginning of the development of a startup, Whitney did not go independently to attract each user, then this startup could die without becoming popular.

    The well-known Jack Ma (head of the largest trading holding Alibaba Group) did the same. In the early 2000s, he personally traveled to each factory to talk with executives and show them how the Alibaba and Taobao sites would help sell their products.

    This is a time consuming process and takes a lot of time. But sometimes this is an inevitable step in the development of the project. Related

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    Using widgets promoting the company



    Facebook is a company that has used a lot of grow hacks in its history. That is why their audience exceeds 1 billion users worldwide.

    In the first part of this article, I have already described several hacks that Facebook has applied and is using to interact with the audience. Let's look at another interesting case.

    Once upon a time, grow hackers of the company made special widgets that could be placed on websites. Each owner of the site, a personal blog, could place a widget with a link to his group, public page or personal account. This was useful for both the user and Facebook.

    The user got the opportunity to promote his account on the social network. And those people who want to keep abreast of everything that happens with the site owner or company subscribed to it. And Facebook received additional advertising, new users, and another way to “draw” a user to their site.



    I did not have to look long for an example of this widget. For example, in the Netology blog, under each footer article there is such a block.

    As you can see, the Facebook widget is on the left, and in the middle are the same widgets from Twitter and YouTube.

    Are there any other doubts about the effectiveness of this technique? And Facebook, and Twitter, and Youtube, and Vkontakte do it for a reason, for fun.

    By the way, the Facebook widget was shown to site visitors billions of times a month, generated hundreds of millions of clicks and a huge number of new registrations.

    Youtube came up with something similar when it made it possible to embed videos directly on sites. After this opportunity was developed, the owners of sites and blogs could completely embed the video directly to their page, and not send the user to Youtube.



    On the one hand, fewer people began to go to the YouTube site itself. But, for sure, the number of visitors is not their main metric. The main thing is the number of videos watched, the average duration of viewing one video, etc. And inserting videos on other people's sites does not contradict these goals.

    But it gives access to a huge audience of site owners around the world. In addition, it simplifies the process of user interaction with content - now they do not need to go to another page to watch the video. They can do this right on the article page, for example.

    This grow hack is one of the important factors in the popularity of Youtube. This helped to “get” to new users and get an insane amount of backlinks to the site.

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    Offline referral hacks



    Referral programs work not only online. There are many cases of how offline companies use this technique to attract new customers.

    For example, one pool service company gave each of its clients a brochure about their business and requested that it be passed on to neighbors who have pools. Some nonsense, you say. Who will advertise someone's services to their neighbors?

    But the trick was that both the neighbor and the one who gave him this brochure received the same discount on all the services of the company. Everything is in the black. That is why such a referral program worked.

    By the way, one of the important points of any referral program is that both participants should receive some kind of benefit. Otherwise, there are cases when only the one who recommends benefits. What then is the point of another person accepting his offer? Nothing.

    Let's look at another case for using referral programs in the offline world. An insurance company from Zurich offered each new client to invite their friends, acquaintances, and colleagues to use its services. For each invited customer, both program participants received a $ 100 shopping coupon. And this option of finding new customers turned out to be more profitable in comparison with other channels of attraction.

    By the way, one of the factors for the effectiveness of referral programs is the psychological principle according to which people trust the recommendations from friends, relatives, colleagues much more than anyone from outside. According to a Nielsen study , 92% of people believe such recommendations and base their choice on this information.

    In general, referral programs are a great way to attract additional target audience at the expense of existing customers. Soon on Boost, we will talk about the 50 most successful referral programs and about 25 important nuances that affect their effectiveness.

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    Interesting hack from Huoston Airport


    According to all the rules of business development, Houston Airport listens to its target audience - it conducts surveys, collects feedback and improves the process of providing services.

    One survey focused on the issues that bother customers the most. The answer was unequivocal - problems with baggage claim. And most of all, customers said that the process takes too much time - to get luggage, you had to wait 9 minutes.



    Well, since it is so annoying for customers, the airport listened to feedback, invested several million dollars and changed the process of baggage claim. Result - the waiting time was reduced to 6 minutes. It seems to be nice, they optimized the process by 33%.

    Related article - Services for user polls

    After that, we conducted a survey in the second round - the answer remained the same. 9 minutes, 6 minutes - all the same for a long time. They began to look for a new way to solve the problem.

    The idea turned out to be ingenious - they just took and changed the place of baggage claim. Now it was much further from the place of arrival of passengers. While the person reached this place, the necessary 6 minutes had already passed, and he did not have to languish in anticipation.

    Praise to the person who could think of such a non-standard solution to the problem.

    I hope the article was interesting and useful for you. In the next stat - the third portion of successful grow hacks. Do not miss.

    By the way, if you want to receive a grow hack to your mail every day, here is your invitation to the closed online community GrowthHackingIdea.com

    If you want your friends and colleagues to learn more about Growth Hacking, share this article on social networks. They will be grateful for that. And I am even more so!

    Prepared by the site about Internet marketing - Boosta.ru

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