25 Marketing Growth Hacks to Try

Growth hacking makes it easier for customers to do something we would like them to do, like using the product, sharing the product, or repurchasing the product. Growth hacks take effort, but usually do not require media dollars. Here is a list of categories and ideas to consider to hack some free distribution. Some are so obvious that it is just plain embarrassing to admit you are not doing it. If anyone has done more than half of these in 2019, let me know in the comments, and I will send you a free copy of my book.

Subscription The original subscriptions were magazines and newspapers and then email newsletters. Hack the basic subscription by offering filtering and curating logic for alerts. Use the advanced subscription channels, like browser-based push that do not require form completion or email address.

Headline Testing Even if you do not have an A/B testing tool or access to Google Optimize, (formerly Experiments) in Google Analytics, you can test headlines in email body or in paid search ads to find the one that generates the most engagement. Test home page and web page headlines. Test blog and post headlines. Evaluate click-through rate, dwell time, and next-event conversion.

3PN: Third-party networks Make sure to add social sharing links to your content—this one is so obvious, but test the different sharing widgets and options to increase sharing—that wasn't so obvious, right?

3PN: Syndication Share your content as a feed to a 3PN as long as you receive some business value in return. Figure out if you can technically and legally use content generated in a 3PN to bolster your own content or marketplace offering. Curate and redistribute content where allowed.

Freemium and Free Trial In the digital era, Netscape pioneered freemium by giving away the browser to build audience and demand for paid server solutions. Dropbox gave away 2 gigabytes of storage. Netflix gives a 1-month free trial. People like free but remember to focus on activation right away.

Access Customer Contacts Pioneered by LinkedIn to expand its network, this hack is so common some mobile apps, like Flashlight request access to your contacts--presumably to help your friends see the light? Or maybe to share some ads with them.

SEO Organic search is the largest channel at 51% of tracked traffic. Google has eliminated almost all the SEO hacks, so make sure to follow the Google guidelines by being relevant, authoritative, engaging, multi-media, and fast loading. Also, hack competitor user intent by publishing solutions to known competitor problems and then pull your competitors' customers down funnel.

Gamification We can thank arcade games for this hack and for sucking up all my allowance in quarters trying to get on the leaderboard. Winning isn't everything, but all things being equal who would not want to be on top of a stack rank? Or insert your company and product into a virtual world or in an interactive game.

Powered By Links This hack became famous as a way to generate SEO backlinks until Google eliminated credit for it. Even without SEO value, it has branding and traffic value.

Hack the Calendar Get people you invite to an event the invite that works best for their calendar software. I also want to be able to update the event and update on their calendar. And I want to see their aggregated RSVP replies, but I don't want the people to see the email addresses of the other people I invited. The hack in Outlook is to go into Scheduling Assistant and add the emails and change them to Resource. It's klunky, especially when inviting important customers.

Hack Your Help Section Consider making your Help content and knowledgebase articles public and indexed by Google to make it easier for your customers to find solutions without driving up your support costs.

Incentivized Tell-a-Friend This hack was used by Paypal and Venmo, but the problem with paying for referrals is that you create demand for professional affiliates who will hack your program by referring all their friends and telling them to set up accounts to receive the payments. These lower-quality registrants will bust your financial model because they will convert at lower rates and have lower LTV. Monetizing an emotional experience complicates the self-perceived motives of the referrer. Would you recommend your boss use something to get $10? Would you tell him/her that you got $10 for doing it? Better than incentives is making product so good that your users naturally tell their friends.

Hack Your Onboarding Get your customers to consider opting into all of your subscription programs and avoid asking when their attention has moved on to other activities.

Hack Customer Patterns Amazon pioneered the collaborative filter for shopping almost 20 years ago: “Customers who viewed this also viewed this” or “Frequently bought together.” So, "Customers who use this feature also like to use this one." "People who reserve this restaurant for dinner like to reserve this one for lunch the next day." "Customers who watched this webinar also watched this one." "Customers who visited and liked Austin also like New Orleans." "People who like this podcast also like this one."

Hack Recommendations Make reviews and recommendation visible at funnel and lifecycle decision points. Hack your recommendation algorithm and tell people why you are recommending something, “because you liked this movie, we think you will like this one.”

Hack Reviews Automate your customers' ability to rate and write reviews for you. If you are collecting NPS data, identify the high NPS responders and provide easy links to Yelp, TripAdvisor, TrustRadius, G2Crowd or whichever review site is most relevant for your industry.

Hack a Panel Some of the largest internet analytics tracking sources are built by offering free software that users allow to watch and report traffic and purchases. One of them offers free malware software in exchange for data sharing, and I would guess the majority of people are not aware that they are opted in.

Hack Media Pioneer new disruptive media vehicles, like popups, popunders, desktop popups, and browser sliders. Capitalize on the new vehicles before countermeasures are in place to stop them.

Hack Your Customer Database Scrub your database and remove hard bounces, dupes, old job titles, competitors, and email addresses that do not fit your business. Append data with services, like Discover.org and Peopledatalabs.com. Set up data-cleansing automation.

Hack Your Email Deliverability Consider a dedicated IP, so you will not be blocked by someone else's bad practices. Implement email DKIM, DomainKeys Identied Mail, to validate your domain and IP as the legitimate publisher of the email campaigns you send.

Regulations Understand the regulations and where they can be bent to create opportunities. My childhood friend's father built his life insurance company by offering short-duration insurance at rates higher than the annual rates allowed by the state insurance commission but not explicitly forbidden.

Competitions and Prizes Offer a prize to a large population and reap the input but only pay one for the winning material. Netflix offered a $1 million prize and crowdsourced improvements to the movie recommendation algorithm. Doritos sometimes crowdsources Super Bowl commercials and saves on creative production costs.

Digital Badges and Virtual Goods Nice looking digital badges and virtual goods cost nothing and give people a surprising amount of satisfaction. People spending money on digital branded goods with no function caught me by surprise 10 years ago. Now racking up an astonishing $15 billion a year in sales.

In-Product Messaging Take advantage of this owned media space and create messages for different events along the customer lifecycle by popping up messages on the login page, in the browser, in the app, in text, and on the phone.

Video Messaging Viral videos are a contradiction because commercial messaging in a video will have an inverse impact on its virality or k-factor. However, invest the time to understand what pre- and post-video, in-video, and on-video messaging is possible. Make sure all of your videos have a linked call to action.

Automate Executive Reports and Case Studies For B2B hackers, enable your product to produce reports on progress that are ready to share with executives in the major formats, like PowerPoint and PDF.

Hack Yourself Earn certifications, read posts like this one every day, read non-fiction books, and write a post or a blog. And read my book, Hack the Corporate Fast Track: Accelerate your corporate maturity.

So there are about 2 dozen hacks to consider. If you are a marketer and are not growth hacking, you are not leveraging your earned and owned assets and media to the fullest.