If you’ve read or heard any material on Growth Marketing or Growth Hacking, you’ll know these three brand case studies like the back of your hand – Hotmail, Airbnb, and Dropbox.
Hotmail added a signature at the bottom of every email sent using their service. “P.S. I love you. Get your free email at Hotmail.“
Airbnb reverse-engineered Craigslist’s forms so their users could cross-post their accommodation listings.
Dropbox got their users to invite more users by offering free space as an incentive.
These are great examples of growth marketing success. They are simple; easy to preach; and they help sell ‘Growth Marketing’. A big section of the current generation of marketers are very likely to have personally experienced the above three examples!
How did these above brands arrive at these successful hacks? Did they squeeze their brains and teams to arrive upon that one magical trick? Or, did they fail hundreds and thousands of times before arriving at the great hack?
It’s important to keep an open mind when companies and their teams embark on process of the growth experiments. Growth hacking isn’t a one hit wonder. You are (most likely) not going to find the billion dollar hack in a single or even dozen experiments. You are very likely to fail hundreds of times. But that’s okay! It’s about failing fast and often. It’s about learning from all those failures. Keep a detailed log of the data and analyses. You’ll start figuring out what to do and what not to do.
There will be a couple of successes along the way. Celebrate them, but don’t park them and move on. Build on top of those successes and figure out how you can scale them.
Photo by Christina Winter on Unsplash