I hate the term growth hacker, but I love the concept. The idea that you can grow a business from 0 to thousands of customers without much of a marketing budget is a beautiful thing, and very much the result of growth hacks — free marketing tactics that grow traffic, brand, links, and eventually, a customer base.
Moz is my fourth startup, and at each one, the same question has kept me up at night: What else can we do to expedite growth? You see, an early-stage company is never lacking time and effort, it’s lacking tactics — tactics that earn customers without relying on a big budget.
Which leads me to this post.
I wanted to pull together a list of all of the “hacks” that I’ve picked up over the years, along with those from other startups, into a holistic view on how a startup can grow on the web today. For the sake of this post, I’ve focused the list primarily to software and consumer internet startups — which is where most of my experience lies — but it can apply to nearly any web business. As you’ll notice, I’ve broken the list down into two categories to help you prioritize; low-hanging fruit and long-term investments. The low-hanging fruit tactics are the things that you should be doing today. The long-term investments are those that you should evaluate, but put some thought into whether or not you should pursue, as they may not make sense for every business.
But enough talking, let’s dig in.
Low-hanging fruit
1. FAQ for the long-tail
This one was picked up from my good friend Neil Patel, who is a master of SEO and startup growth. The basic gist is to use your FAQ (or help forum) to target long-tail search queries, specifically those that lead to a buying decision. By the very nature of long-tail queries, the potential customer is usually pretty far along in the buying process. Using keyword research, targeted FAQ topics can help put you in the top of the search results for the questions that your customers are looking for answers to. When you do this, make sure that the FAQ has a clear call to action to sign up for your product or service, as well as a custom domain that doesn’t rob you of the indexed pages and content. Content, mind you, that your community is often times creating. Tools like UserVoice (Perks Listing) and GetSatisfaction are great platforms to use for your FAQ, as they allow for domain customization and the use of your own CSS styles. CrazyEgg (Perks Listing), Neil’s company, is a fantastic example of this in action.
2. Manual outreach to first customers
Your first customers will likely become your biggest advocates if — and only if — you treat them the right way. For your first 100 customers, you should be reaching out to each one, personally. I’m not talking about a canned email or an email from your info@ alias. I’m talking about a personal email. This is your chance to build advocates by thanking them for signing up and offering your help, whenever they may need it. It’s so simple, yet so many companies overlook it. If you’re beyond 100 customers (and have a budget), take a page out of MailChimp’s book (Perks Listing) and make the high-touch process a bit more scalable. After sending your first campaign on MailChimp, you’ll receive the email below, prompting you to claim your free gift — a MailChimp t-shirt (#want).
3. Partner distributions
It amazes me that more software companies don’t do partner distributions. The concept of a partner distribution is simple; a discounted offer on your product or service that you distribute through partners. We’ve done this at Moz, and it’s been a huge channel — over 7,000 free trials and 2,000 paid conversions in under a year. Keep in mind, there’s no cost to running partner distributions, only the increased operating costs of offering an extended free trial (in the case of Moz). To apply this to your business, you’ll need a few things. The first thing is a partner page, a custom URL that you can create for each partner that explains the offer and factors in the discount. Next, you’ll need some platform to return the favor. At Moz, that’s Perks, which allows us to co-market, while providing some awesome value to our customers. Below is an example of a partner distribution that we did with our friends at WPMU (Perks Listing).
4. Track competitor mentions
As many link-builders know, one of the best ways to find link prospects is to monitor where your competitors are getting mentioned. With that context, we built Fresh Web Explorer, to help you understand where your brand and your competitor’s brand is being mentioned. Each mention of a competitor is an opportunity. An opportunity to build a relationship and a link. Along with that, you can find press opportunities by searching relevant subject matter in FWE. For example, if I was in the Wordpress hosting industry, I could search things like “Wordpress Hosting” or “Wordpress Development” to find sources that are covering topics related to my product — example of that below. Let’s call this PR 102.
5. Double loop referral programs
Perhaps one of the most well-known (yet underutilized) tactics is the double loop referral program. Dropbox famously did this with the “invite your friends, get free storage” campaign. In the non-virtual world, DirectTV does this by giving every user that refers a new customer $100 off their bill, forever, along with $100 off to the customer that they refer. The structure can take many forms, but the concept is the same — provide monetary value, from both sides, for your users to refer your product, and they just may. Sometimes the traditional affiliate model just won’t cut it. Pro tip: try just simply asking your users to refer their friends if they like the product or service. Often times, a reward isn’t necessary if the product is good enough.
6. HARO
Wouldn’t it be great if press came to you, rather than trying to guess what they’re going to write about? Well, that’s where HARO (Help A Reporter Out) comes into play. Created by the amazing Peter Shankman, HARO is a twice-daily email that pulls together all of the editors that are looking for quotes or opinions on articles that they’re writing, usually on top-tier publications. It’s free, and a complete no-brainer. HARO was the only reason why I was quoted in the Wall Street Journal about, yes, workplace fashion. Go figure.
7. Verified program
Link building without the manual outreach? Yes, please. It’s amazing how underutilized verified programs are from a marketing standpoint. Some of the best examples of verified programs in the wild are Google Analytics and Twitter. All of these programs provide some sort of verification process or educational program, which in turn provides the individuals and companies that go through that process with a badge to proudly display on their site. As we all know, along with showing some credibility to the individual or company, an embedded certification badge also provides a link back to any site you’d like. Which, I hear, makes the SEO gods happy. We like this idea so much, that we’re kicking around the idea of adding an embeddable badge to the Recommended Companies List.
8. Social prospecting
Consider this the guerrilla marketing tactic of the digital age: social prospecting via Twitter. Run a search on your favorite Twitter client for terms related to your product or service and provide helpful responses to those that are looking for help. For example, we do this for Stride, an app I helped create, by searching for the terms like “CRM recommendations” or “client tracking software.” Having these searches saved pulls in a constant feed of prospective customers. However, I put this out there with caution; don’t be that guy. Don’t just tweet out a link. Provide helpful recommendations, often of your competitors, or engage on a topic that may be different from the keywords that led you. There’s nothing worse than a feed of promotional garbage.
9. Video syndications
Online education is all the rage these days, and rightfully so. There’s platforms like Coursera, Grovo, Udemy, and many more that empowers anyone to learn. If you produce video content and aren’t taking advantage of these platforms, you’re missing out on a great distribution source. We’ve done this with Udemy, utilizing our Whiteboard Friday content, and it’s been a huge hit. What this allows us to do is reach an audience that wouldn’t otherwise know about Whiteboard Friday, and are now exposed to the Moz brand. Like you needed more reason to create video content.
10. Comment marketing
Speaking of Whiteboard Friday, Rand did an awesome one on the next tactic, comment marketing. Using comment marketing intelligently, while providing value, is a great way to build relationships, earn links, and expose your brand to a completely new audience. In attempt to avoid duplicating what Rand said so elegantly, head on over to that Whiteboard Friday post to learn the right way to do comment marketing.
11. In-app sharing
Just putting links to share a page on Twitter or like an app on Facebook isn’t enough these days, there’s got to be more of an incentive for a user to share your site. The best integrations of social sharing come in the context of the application. For example, when a user achieves a certain milestone or unlocks a certain badge, they’re presented with an option to share that achievement publicly. Perhaps the best, and most well-known example of a company that does this beautifully is Foursquare. When you unlock a badge, you’re presented with the option to share that achievement socially. A great way to boost your ego, and an even better way to drive brand impressions for Foursquare.
12. Winbacks
This is one that Justin and Renea on the marketing team have been piloting at Moz, and it’s simplistically brilliant. For most SaaS companies, once a user cancels their account or doesn’t convert on their free trail, they’re forgotten about. Why? Just because the product wasn’t a fit at that time doesn’t mean that it’ll never be a fit. The concept of a winback is to send an email to those in said cohort, with an offer that makes it easy to come back to the product. For Moz, it was an extended free trial period:
13. Customer thank-you cards
On the topic of keeping your customers around, a “thank you” can be so simple, yet so powerful. At Moz, we do this in the form of a “happy package” (yes, really) once a Moz member hits a certain level of MozPoints. But it doesn’t have to be that elaborate. An investment in something as simple as thank you cards, with a hand-written message, can go a long way in keeping your customers passionate about your product — and there’s no better marketing than word of mouth.
14. Influencer program
Taking care of influencers, and getting them into your product early can be one of the most impactful things you can do for your company. For example, if I were creating a new product in the inbound marketing space, Rand is one of the first people I’d reach out to offering him early access. Using tools like FollowerWonk or Klout is a great way to find the influencers in your space — it’s then up to you to provide them with early access, a free account, or anything else to incentivize them to use your product. Nothing fancy here, just good old fashioned influencer outreach.
Long-term investments
15. Tap into the viral loop
If you’re lucky enough to have a product that lends itself well to the viral loop, you’d be a fool not to take advantage of it. Simply speaking, a viral loop is the idea of utilizing a natural function of your product to expedite growth. Heading back down the path of congratulating MailChimp on all their awesomeness, they do a fantastic job of utilizing the natural viral component of their product. If you’ve ever used MailChimp, it’s likely you’re familiar with MonkeyRewards, an option they offer when sending a campaign that allows users to place a “Powered by Mailchimp” badge at the bottom of their email in exchange for campaign credits. By doing this, they exchange a cheaper bill for free marketing to hundreds of thousands of people. Not a bad trade.
16. Guides
You’re likely all familiar with Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO. What you may not know, however, is how powerful it is from a growth perspective. Without digging into too much detail on numbers, it’s suffice to say that the beginner’s guide contributes significantly to our consistent stream of free trial sign-ups. If you’re thinking to yourself, “Well, that’s just because you’re Moz,” you’re only partially correct. I wanted to test it for myself, with a lesser known brand, so I did. We created a Beginner’s Guide to Sales for small businesses through Stride, and it’s been just as powerful from a growth perspective, only on a smaller scale. But beware, guides, if done correctly, are a huge investment of time and design resources. At Moz, Ashley and her team have been working on some new guides on the topics of social media and content, and they’ve taken months of work. But, from the data I’ve seen first-hand, it’s well worth the investment.
17. OEM deals
Back in the business development camp, there’s a heavy investment opportunity that exists for most products called an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) deal. Essentially, this is a deeply integrated partnership where a software (or hardware) provider bundles your product as part of their offering in order to fill a need or gap in their offering. The reason why it’s such a heavy investment is that it often requires co-branding work, a separate billing infrastructure, and the negotiation of complex agreements. We’ve gone down this path a few times at Moz, only to walk away because the investment was greater, in our opinion, than the output. OEM deals are more commonly found on the hardware side, where a laptop, for example, ships with a software product pre-installed (example of that below). However, software OEM deals are becoming more and more common. If you’re in the service business, play around with pairing your services with a related software product, similar to what we’ve done with Distilled.
18. Product integrations
The integration of your product into an existing, often much larger product, makes a lot of sense. Depending on how in-depth of an integration you’re looking to do, this could almost be considered a low-hanging fruit option. There’s truly no barrier to do it, only the investment of your time. In the software world, there’s a few examples of great integration marketplaces. Notably Salesforce, Hootsuite (Perks Listing), and Zendesk. From our discussions with Hootsuite, they see an average of 100 to 500 installs per day of each application in their gallery. The impact of an integration, in terms of users acquired can be in the thousands. Not only that, but product integrations are often the entry point to a much deeper relationship — potentially even an acquisition.
19. Industry surveys
Becoming the voice of an industry can have massive implications on growth. One way to do this, as we’ve found at Moz, is to create an industry survey and publish the results. By doing this, you not only get to use the results for your own product intelligence, but also become the point of reference for thousands of people in your industry. This, as you can imagine, is a lot of work. Evangelizing the survey to the point it has enough data to make an impact, putting time into the analysis, and finally visualizing the data in a beautiful way can be a huge time investment. That’s not to say it’s not worth it, only something to consider when prioritizing. Looking back on the impact of industry surveys at Moz, it was definitely worth the time.
20. Rally the troops
21. Free standalone tools
And, that’s it. Easy, right? 🙂 Don’t let this list overwhelm you. Depending where you’re at in the stage of your company, some of these tactics may make a whole lot of sense — others not at all. This is meant to be your ammunition belt, something that you can pull ideas and tactics from as you reach certain plateaus or sticking points in your business. It’s not meant to be a checklist.
Adapt to it, add to it, and put your own spin on it. Even better, if you have something to add to the list, feel free to drop it in the comments below.
I’ll see you at the top of the growth curve.
