7 Growth Hacking Techniques to Increase Your Customer Base
Proven ways to boost your company’s metrics
The seven growth hacking methods I compiled here helped Facebook, Dropbox, Airbnb, and Paypal to achieve massive growth in a short period of time. The great thing about most of these techniques is that they require little to no money to accomplish, meaning they’re perfect for startups without a marketing budget!
The key to growth hacking is to be creative by attacking the problem from multiple directions. The SaaS company RJMetrics, for instance, got positive results by using cupcakes as an incentive instead of luring customers with free iPads.
The last technique in this article is one I discovered during my own experimentation with marketing my own products. This trick helped me to get valuable market feedback and drastically grow my brand’s email list.
1. Referrals
Paypal
To grow its user base, PayPal implemented a double-sided referral program, allowing its users to invite their friends to sign up for PayPal. When an existing user’s friend opened an account, PayPal gave free money to both existing and new users. This strategy resulted in 7–19% daily growth (100 million new users).
According to Elon Musk, PayPal spent between $60-$70 million on this growth hack.
Elon mentions this growth hack during the interview below:
Dropbox
In the early stages of Dropbox, the startup used AdWords to gain new users. This method was quickly scrapped as the cost per acquisition turned out to be too expensive. Dropbox had to spend $233 to $388 per new user for a product sold for $99.
Dropbox’s breakthrough came in the form of a double-sided referral program, inspired by PayPal’s growth hack.
An existing user would receive extra free storage space whenever they invited a friend to join Dropbox. The invited friend would receive extra free storage too when opening a new account on Dropbox.
This growth hack resulted in a 60% increase in signups.
Harry’s
Prior to its launch, the New York-based grooming company added 100,000 subscribers to its email list in just one week. This was done thanks to a milestone referral campaign.
This is how Harry’s did it:
- Step 1: people signed up on a prelaunch page.
- Step 2: once registered, people were asked to invite their friends to sign up.
Harry’s incentivized subscribers to send out more invitations thanks to a four-milestones referral system.
- Referred five friends: free shave cream
- Referred ten friends: free razor
- Referred 25 friends: free premium razor
- Referred 50 friends: free shaving for a year
Takeaway: double-sided or milestone-based referral programs can give you great results if your incentives are valuable for the buyers you’re targeting. All men need facial grooming products. This is why Harry’s did so well.
Side note: The app Calm (which I personally use) allows its users to invite friends to test the app for free during a month. Unfortunately, Calm has not yet implemented a double-sided referral program. I would love to get a few extra free days whenever a friend I referred signs up to Calm.
2. Piggybacking and Being Where Your Customers Are
Airbnb
During its early days, Airbnb identified Craiglist as a website catering to many of its potential users. At that time, if someone wanted an alternative to a hotel stay, Craiglist was the place to look for a short stay rental. Knowing this, Airbnb developed a way to piggyback on Craigslist's success.
With the help of a bot, Airbnb placed its rentals on both Airbnb and Craiglist. Thanks to their superior quality*, Airbnb’s listings gain popularity among Craigslist’s users. Impressed by their experience with the young startup, it was a no-brainer for Craiglist’s rental users to switch to Airbnb.
In addition to hacking their way into Craigslist, Airbnb’s founders emailed property owners in popular vacation spots to invite them to join the platform.
*Pictures taken by a professional photographer, well-crafted rental descriptions, easy communication with the hosts, and reliable customer service all matter.
Forums
You might not have the technical expertise to create a bot as Airbnb did. Don’t worry, there is a simpler method to reach out to potential users. Go on specialized forums or Facebook groups to show them your product or service. It’s the perfect way to start a conversation and get feedback from potential users. That’s how Dropbox did it when introducing its cloud service to the Hacker News community.
Young watch brands love to use forums specialized in watches to get feedback from watch enthusiasts. The WatchuSeek forum, which is the largest platform for watch enthusiasts, has a whole sub-forum dedicated to conversations between designers, brands, and users, and I’ve been using it for my own watch brand, Timelocker.
Takeaway: look at products and services that have an audience similar to your target audience. Can you piggyback on this company to gain exposure? A forum or Facebook group could work too.
3. Give Value
Cool Cousin
The social travel app, Cool Cousin, relies on travel tips created by a global community of cool cousins.
To grow its community, Cool Cousin offers to its cousins a professional photoshoot. Like with Airbnb, quality pictures improved the user’s experience and brought value to the platform by improving the look of their cousin members who lead the community within the app. Good photographs have a real benefit in our digital lives — be it for social media, LinkedIn profiles, or dating apps. With this growth hack, Cool Cousin found a nice way to attract new cousins and make them feel special in the process.
Takeaway: there is always a creative way to bring value to your newly acquired users and make them into brand ambassadors.
4. Let Them Become Your Promoters
Hotmail
We are all familiar with the email signature “Sent from my iPhone” — a simple, yet efficient way for Apple to promote their iPhones by leveraging social proof (see the work by Robert Cialdini on the psychology of persuasion).
Apple wasn’t the first company to use this growth hack.
When Hotmail launched its free email service, Tim Draper (who invested in the young startup) suggested adding at the bottom of each email,
“PS: I love you. Get your free e-mail at Hotmail.”
Tim’s idea was inspired by Tupperware’s business model, which is allowing customers to sell Tupperware’s products to their friends, colleagues, and family members.
At first, the Hotmail founders weren’t thrilled by this growth hack, judging it too spammy. After back-and-forth discussions between the team and their investor, Hotmail added a modified version of Tim’s suggested hack to all emails sent with Hotmail: “PS: Get your free email at Hotmail.”
Within six months of its implementation, Hotmail acquired more than one million new users.
Takeaway: Find ways to allow your users to become brand ambassadors. Let them promote your products or services on your behalf.
The extreme case of this hack are restaurants who are designing the dishes they serve to look great on Instagram, banking on the virality of their foods and beverages on social media.
5. Spend Money
Attracting new users with money or in-store discounts works. This growth hack is common among larger companies that can afford it.
Paypal offered free money, and both Uber and Uber Eats gave in-app purchase credits to new users.
In South Korea, KakaoPay gives back money whenever you pay something with the app.
Takeaway: make sure that the lifetime value of the newly acquired user is higher than the offered incentive.
6. Wow Them
RJMetrics
When RJMetrics needed to run a survey, the company decided to offer a different incentive than the previously used “win an iPad” spiel. This time, survey takers could win cupcakes.
To the surprise of RJMetrics, people loved it, and the results greatly exceeded their expectations.
“People would rather receive a dozen cupcakes than an iPad’’.
- Janessa Lantz, Marketer at RJMetrics
This little hack went viral with people tweeting about it (including the winners), who shared pictures of themselves enjoying their free cupcakes.
Clickfunnels
To educate potential users on the science of sales funnels, Clickfunnels published a book made available for free to everyone. Readers just have to pay the shipping fee.
With this book, Clickfunnels positioned itself as a figure of authority. As demonstrated by Robert Cialdini (see reference), leveraging authority will help you influence people.
Takeaway: offer something that stands out. We are all familiar with the “10% discount on your next purchase”, or the chance to “win an iPad or [insert product here].”
Try something different to create a pattern interruption. Who doesn’t like cupcakes? A book seems more valuable and insightful than a PDF or a webinar.
7. The Instagram Hack (My Personal Discovery)
Not so long ago, I needed to gather feedback from followers of my watch brand on Instagram. Using Google Forms, I created a short survey that included the possibility for survey takers to leave their email address if they wanted to receive updates from my brand and an alert prior to the launch of our watches on Kickstarter.
My virtual assistant sent a short DM containing the link to the survey to all my brand followers.
This method allowed me to get valuable feedback from watch enthusiasts while also picking up their email addresses. Whenever possible, try to utilize your existing audience by engaging with them or directly providing value in exchange for an email address.
