5 Growth Marketing Strategies Examples (Based On Tips From Growth Marketers)

TABLE OF CONTENT

· Introduction
· What is Growth Hacking? And why such a fuss about it?
∘ Strategy 1: Incentivized Referral Programs
∘ Use case of incentivized referral marketing
∘ Strategy 2: Host/Parasite Marketing
∘ Strategy 3: LinkedIn Marketing
∘ Strategy 4: product-led content strategy
· Why is product-led marketing effective?
∘ Strategy 5: Steal your competitions’ customers
· Final thoughts

Introduction

When scaling a business, there’s an endless list of marketing strategies and tactics to test for growth. But instead of wasting time trying every possible option, it pays to go straight to the source—growth marketing.

Growth marketing is one of the most important strategies for any digital business. It’s a well-thought-out combination of tactics and activities that help businesses rapidly attract their target audience and increase revenue.

From acquiring new customers to engaging existing ones, growth marketing empowers organizations to become more agile while simultaneously scaling operations up or down.

But what exactly is growth marketing? To answer this question, let’s explore five winning growth marketing strategies based on successful companies.

But first…

What is Growth Marketing? And why such a fuss about it?

In his words, Sean Ellis, founder of GrowthHacker, defines growth marketing as:

“Growth marketing is running smart experiments to drive growth within your business,”

According to him, growth marketing breaks the rules of traditional marketing by testing out new marketing ideas rapidly with different audiences on multiple channels until you discover what works best for your product.

Unlike traditional marketing, growth hacking aims to:

• examine a range of marketing strategies to discover the way to growth
• establish an MVP for a product faster
• Discover a product-market fit early enough.
• Reduce the cost of growth of a startup, including the cost of acquisition
• Decrease the risk of overspending on marketing that does not work.

With more entrepreneurs starting new companies each year, the need to scale fast has equally increased the demand for growth marketers to exploit various marketing strategies. You must remember that although these strategies worked well to scale the companies discussed, results are usually not typical.

With that said, here are five growth marketing strategies you can test out:

Strategy 1: Incentivized Referral Programs

Strategy 2: Host/Parasite marketing

Strategy 3: LinkedIn marketing

Strategy 4: Product-Led Content Strategy

Strategy 5: Steal your competitions’ customers.

· Introduction
· What is Growth Marketing? And why such a fuss about it?
∘ Strategy 1: Incentivized Referral Programs
∘ Use case of incentivized referral marketing
∘ Strategy 2: Host/Parasite Marketing
∘ Strategy 3: LinkedIn Marketing
∘ Strategy 4: product-led content strategy
· Why is product-led marketing effective?
∘ Strategy 5: Steal your competition’s customers
· Final thoughts

Strategy 1: Incentivized Referral Programs

An incentived referral program exploits two things: people telling their friends about awesome products they discovered and, in return, receiving gifts for doing so. This marketing method has been around for a while but was never fully utilized until the rise of Dropbox.

If you have earned extra space from Dropbox by inviting a friend through a special link, you have come across the Dropbox referral program. Likewise, if you have won free rides from Uber or travel credits from Airbnb, you have taken part in an incentivized referral program.

An incentivized referral program is an amplified word-of-mouth marketing campaign achieved through marketing campaigns—in this case, incentives.

The benefits of incentivized referral marketing include the following:

• It reduces the cost per acquisition of customers: when compared to other types of marketing, the cost of acquiring new customers with incentivized referral programs is cheaper.
• Increases awareness and reputation of a brand: referral marketing does the heavy lifting of establishing your credibility as a brand.
• Referrals are more likely to become customers: With a new customer, you have no idea if the customer is interested in buying or just looking up information. Customers acquired from referral marketing are most times ready to make a purchase.
• Lowers churn rate of customers

Use case of incentivized referral marketing

Airbnb Travel Credits

Airbnb is a great example of how to nail a referral program. A large percentage of their success can be attributed to the referral program designed by the company to drive word-of-mouth. It involves designing a program with a great user experience, building on psychology, and encouraging people to recommend the program to their friends.

Key Takeaway from Airbnb Referral Marketing:

• Test and measure referral programs
• Make referral simple enough to use
• Without the right traffic, referral marketing is of no use
• Attach rewards that you can afford. It’s that simple.

Strategy 2: Host/Parasite Marketing

In nature, the host-parasite relationship is a striking connection between two entities; a smaller entity feeds off the bigger entity as support.

In his book, “The 48 Principles of Marketing," Jay Abraham explains host/parasite marketing as when a smaller business feeds off the audience of a bigger, more established business. Put, brand partnership.

For example, let’s say you buy ad space on the mailing list of a bigger business with ten thousand emails. Or maybe you sponsor a podcast episode of a business with an audience similar to yours. Then you can get your product in front of the target audience without building your audience from scratch.

Should you adopt host/parasite marketing as one of your marketing strategies? Depends.

If you have enough marketing resources at your disposal, then go ahead. Exploiting the audience of bigger businesses saves you a whole lot of time. But if you are very limited on resources, you might want to reconsider including this in your marketing strategies.

A use-case of host/parasite marketing is the strategy designed by Uber. Uber formed brand partnerships to drive brand awareness by forming meaningful long-term and short-term partnerships with bigger and smaller businesses.

Strategy 3: LinkedIn Marketing

Originally, LinkedIn was designed as a social network for professionals to network with other professionals. If you operate in the B2B niche, LinkedIn is one of the biggest social networks to reach your target audience.

Apart from being a social network for professionals, LinkedIn is a great tool for lead generation. There’s a whole list of what you can do on LinkedIn: generate high-quality leads, engage with prospects, and nurture leads.

With LinkedIn, you can run LinkedIn ads to reach a larger audience in a shorter time, or you can take the longer route of uploading valuable content to nurture leads.

SaaS leaders and founders of startups have recently taken to using LinkedIn to connect with their audience and promote their brands by providing valuable content. The trick is to create value and avoid sounding salesy—people hate that.

Here’s how you can use LinkedIn:

• Use a personal account to interact with people. People connect with people, not businesses but people. Using a company page to put out content on LinkedIn is too emotionless.
• Create valuable content. The more you give, the more you attract. The better you attract, the faster you grow.
• Polish up your profile. What I discovered with using LinkedIn is that when you have a polished profile page, more people will accept and send connection requests to you.
• Research the content of your niche by watching people already doing it. LinkedIn is a watch-and-learn community. Unlike other social media, things are done differently on LinkedIn. So, if you want to scale with LinkedIn, it is best to watch what others are doing and try to replicate.

Strategy 4: product-led content strategy

Content marketing and product-led content strategy are similar terms that are often misused.

While the first aims to educate an audience about the solution to a problem they face, the second transforms the product into a solution.

To some marketers, the product-led content strategy appears too pushy because of the direct approach to discussing the product. When it is strategically done, product-led content is an effective strategy.

“Product-led content strategy is any content that illustrates the problem of the user, points out a solution, and weaves in a product as the solution of the problem to help the audience make a decision.”

Why is product-led marketing effective?

It explains a key problem an audience faces and presents the product as the solution to the problem, either directly or indirectly. The product-led content strategy demonstrates how easily a user can use a product with complicated issues.

Here are examples of product-led content done right:

Trello- Life Can Get Messy: Here’s How To Clean Up Your Digital Space

Ahrefs- 10 Lead Generation Tactics That Work (With Examples)

Hubspot- How to Send Effective Order Confirmation Emails [Examples + Template]

Strategy 5: Steal your competition’s customers

What was once a secret is now an open competition. SaaS companies are out to steal their competition’s traffic and go ahead to tell their customers why they are the best alternative.

They do this by targeting competitors’ primary keywords and running the ads to an alternative landing page. Let’s have a look at the e-signing industry.

For example, when you Google Docusign, the first result is a paid ad leading to a SignNow Alternative landing page.

The landing page headline was intended to convert customers looking up Docusign to convert. The same thing happens when you search signNow.

Running ads to rank an alternative landing page is a last-minute conversion strategy companies use to steal their competition’s customers. To do this, you must have a better offer than your customer and be interested in spending money on ads to rank.

Final thoughts

Growth marketing is the magic pill for startups to cut customer acquisition costs and reach a larger audience. Companies are taking growth marketing seriously and testing multiple strategies to reach multiple audiences simultaneously.

It takes effort to test out multiple channels, but in time, you will find a marketing channel that’s right for you and will get you results.