5 Proven Growth Hacking Strategies for SmB Worth Implementing Immediately

To small and medium-sized business owners, it is important to stay up-to-date with the latest growth strategies to remain competitive and thrive. Growth Hacking has proven its effectiveness across various industries:

• More than 2/3 of respondents in the GrowthHackers survey confirmed that they increased their revenues through the implementation of Growth Hacking strategies.
• According to a McKinsey study, rapidly growing companies more often utilize digital marketing methods such as SEO, E-commerce, and SMM (Social Media Marketing).
• CB Insights’ research revealed that a strong marketing growth strategy was a key success factor for startups.

It’s time to go beyond traditional marketing efforts. Without further ado, here are 5 proven Growth Hacking strategies to promote your business, which you should implement right now if they suit your niche.

1. Corporate Blogging

More than half of consumers make a product or service order after reading a blog. It showcases your expertise, boosts your visibility in search results, informs and engages the audience, and attracts new leads. Even at the beginning, a company blog can provide you with twice as many external links and 4–5 times more indexed pages.

Action plan

1. Content must meet modern requirements for expertise, uniqueness, relevance, timeliness, and regularity of publication. It requires skillful variation of article types and topics, careful selection of channels and publication timing, high-quality presentation, and more.
2. A content marketing strategy starts with a clear understanding of where precisely your target content can attract traffic and increase your revenue. To achieve this, conduct an in-depth niche analysis and a comprehensive online audit. Define the goals and objectives of your content marketing, create a profile of your target audience, formulate a promotion tactic, and establish key performance indicators and metrics to evaluate effectiveness.
3. Compile a semantic core and choose relevant keywords (e.g., lower-frequency ones) that large companies and publishers aren’t promoting.
4. Follow the empirical rule: if you cannot create content significantly better than what already ranks well among your competitors, choose another topic.

Go beyond

• Optimize the content using SEO. Utilize specialized plugins. Consider relevance, search volume, and keyword competitiveness. Place Title tags, meta descriptions, Alt attributes, URL structure, and body content. Distribute them throughout the text. Use LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing).
• Write powerful headlines suitable for both search engines and people. Many tools can assist you with this, such as Headline Studio and Analyzer, Blog Title Idea Generator, Title Experiments, etc.
• Promote your blog in email campaigns and on other niche platforms frequently visited by your target audience. Use guest posting and cross-posting, and collaborate with other bloggers.
• Employ internal linking, including links to other relevant articles and posts. Regularly clean up broken and outdated links.
• Publish content regularly. Write valuable expert long-form articles, but post them less frequently than shorter posts and articles.
• Update and repurpose content that resonates the most with your target audience. Convert old content into quotes, infographics, images, audio recordings, teasers, transcriptions, guides, presentations, FAQs, etc.
• Encourage audience comments and feedback, and don’t leave them without a response or pre-moderation.

It is crucial to know what are the genuine interests of your target audience. One way to achieve this is by directly asking them and becoming an authoritative source of information to help address their problems.

2. Word-of-mouth marketing

According to the Nielsen report from 2012, at least 90% of users trust recommendations from family and friends more than regular advertising.

Even after 10 years, the situation has not changed significantly: word-of-mouth marketing remains a powerful brand promotion channel, being five times more effective than paid advertising. This strategy is based on the fact that customers share their experiences with products and services within their social circles.

Action plan

1. Set up the right triggers. Your products and services should contain X-factors, unforgettable or exceptional experiences that make your existing customers talk about your business. For example, a family restaurant that allows customers to bring their pets along.
2. Be unique and stand out from the crowd. Break industry norms within reasonable limits. Unique delivery style, communication, or promotion, as well as innovative products, can encourage people to talk about you.
3. Provoke emotions. The best way to establish a place in people’s minds and hearts is to emotionally connect them to your brand. This can be achieved through the company’s story and values, social responsibility, exceptional user experience, appropriate design, personalization, and interactivity.
4. Use visual content. Eye-catching visual impressions attract more people. For instance, sharing photos of happy customers on social media.
5. Utilize user-generated content as powerful social proof. Encourage its creation and distribution with attractive prizes. Don’t forget to use hashtags, keywords, and other possible tools to improve visibility.
6. Collect reviews and ratings, they play a vital role in a competitive environment. Create channels for feedback: surveys, reviews, questionnaires, emails.
7. Launch a referral program to encourage people to promote your brand. Offer discounts, coupons, cashback, or gifts as incentives.

Go beyond

• Create pleasant memories through experiential marketing.
• Share information more actively on social media.
• Motivate loyal customers to leave video reviews and feedback.
• Collaborate with popular influencers and organize vibrant partnerships.
• Don’t hesitate to share free or conditionally free content [products], but only among your warm target audience.
• Provide excellent personalized service.
• Reward your most active and loyal users.

Use the three E’s rule:

1. Engage. Listen to what your customers are saying and become part of the conversation about your brand. Encourage discussions about your product or service on social media.
2. Equip. Give your target audience a reason to talk about you. Understand what people particularly like about your brand and excel in those aspects. Maintain your reputation.
3. Empower. Create a space where customers can share their experiences about your business. Encourage reviews and positive ratings. Provide an opportunity for them to be part of your success and share positive experiences with others.

3. Influencers

In 2022, the influencer marketing industry surpassed 16 billion people. Profitable collaborations with opinion leaders have already changed the game for many small business owners. Influencers possess their own loyal audience that listens to their advice, and their endorsement of your product or service can significantly impact sales growth and expand reach.

Moreover, you don’t necessarily need to seek out well-known million-follower accounts. It would be wiser to approach micro or niche influencers with a small but engaged and devoted audience. They are more likely to collaborate quickly, and the returns on investment will be maximal.

Action plan

1. Start by searching for blogs and social media profiles (mainly on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok) that create content related to your industry and can organically promote your brand. You might even find some who already know and love your brand.
2. Analyze the audience of these channels — how active and loyal they are, and whether they consist of real users or bots. Look for potential customers interested in your product.
3. Contact the owners and propose a collaboration, but be prepared that they may insist on their own terms or not respond at all. A good practice is to start building a relationship by leaving thoughtful comments on their posts and providing valuable backlinks to their content. Some online stores even include a note on product cards: “Free for bloggers — contact us!”
4. Be ready for close collaboration to create high-quality content.
5. Track the effectiveness of the new content and use analytics to measure the results of your influencer marketing campaign. Are you reaching your target audience? Are you achieving your campaign goals? Are your efforts paying off?

To get a complete picture, a combination of analysis methods will be helpful:

• calculate the ROI (Return on Investment) of your collaboration;
• use trackable unique links and promo codes;
• evaluate engagement and impact by analyzing reactions to influencer posts;
• track website traffic through influencer links;
• assess the number of brand mentions during the collaboration period;
• pay attention to keywords and phrases associated with your brand;
• conduct surveys among your target audience after the campaign to find out how they discovered your brand;
• compare your results with similar activities carried out by your competitors.

Go beyond

• When choosing influencers, prioritize quality over the quantity of their audience. Focus on their relevance, authenticity, and level of engagement.
• Build mutually beneficial and long-term relationships with influencers, rather than limiting yourself to one-time campaigns. Collaborate regularly with influencers whose audience closely aligns with your goals and values.
• Organize sales, contests, and promotions to increase audience engagement. Develop a content strategy in closer collaboration with the influencers.
• Try not to hinder the influencer’s content creation style. For better resonance with your target audience, your collaboration should appear as natural and unforced as possible. Find a balance between the influencer’s authentic style and your brand guidelines.
• By following these guidelines, you can foster successful influencer partnerships that effectively resonate with your target audience and achieve your marketing objectives.

4. Double-sided referral program

Referrals are more likely to convert customers than other leads. The retention rate for referrals is one-third higher than that of an average customer.

Two-sided referral programs, which reward both the referrer and their friend, are more effective than others. Everyone wins, so everyone shares. Considering the ease of launching such a program, a two-sided referral program can become a key element of success in your Growth Hacking strategy.

For illustration, here are 10 good examples of referral programs from the SaaS industry.

Action plan

1. Carefully consider what you can offer the user to stimulate sales growth and how to package it. Determine at which stage of customer interaction it is best to motivate them to give referrals.
2. Ensure that your offer and call-to-action are attractive, transparent, and contain all the terms in a format accessible and understandable to your target audience.
3. Utilize email marketing to reach a broad range of potential customers.
4. Incorporate referral services like Referral SaaSquatch, Ambassador, ReferralCandy, etc.
5. Send a personalized email or message expressing gratitude and enthusiasm to each customer who has given a referral through the referral program.

Go beyond

• Find powerful incentives to engage both sides of the referral program.
• Strong copywriting is the foundation of effective texts, starting from landing pages and ending with emails, referral policies, and rules.
• To ensure a seamless customer experience, focus on user-friendly interfaces and straightforward navigation free from unnecessary steps.
• Flexibility and customizability are valuable qualities of any referral program. Use different templates, widgets, add-ons, and integrations.
• Track metrics: Participation rate, Share rate, Impressions and Reach, and Conversion Rate. What prevents users from sharing information about your offer?

5. User content

• 93% of marketers are confident that consumers consider user-generated content more reliable than content created by companies.
• 86% of brands incorporate user-generated content into their digital marketing strategy.
• 35% of Generation Z individuals agree that user-generated content enhances trust in brands.

Promoting your brand through content created by your customers can turn them into advocates and brand promoters. This strategy allows you to go viral on social media and reach millions of users with just one hashtag.

Action plan

1. Determine the most suitable social platform for UGC (user-generated content) promotion based on its established culture and audience. Tailor your approach to effectively use each platform:

• Facebook — suitable for video content and interactive stories.
• Twitter — benefit from retweets and hashtags.
• Instagram — repost content and use stories, hashtag search, and engage with the “Explore” and “Reels” sections.
• TikTok — a place for original videos and interacting with the audience through comments.
• LinkedIn — a professional network where your posts and messages should align with your brand’s goals and character.
• TikTok — a place for original videos and interacting with the audience through comments.
• LinkedIn — a professional network where your posts and messages should align with your brand’s goals and character.

1. In addition to social media, user-generated content can be utilized on your website, blog, print materials, email marketing, and advertisements. For example, customer reviews can be showcased in the social proof section of your landing page or on platforms like TrustPilot, Capterra, and G2. Consider creating a UGC gallery on your website.
2. Develop unique hashtags for widespread promotion.
3. Actively encourage users to create content. Engage with your audience by asking questions, responding thoughtfully to messages, quoting and reposting, and creating shared memories of events. Spark competition among users with contests and challenges.
4. Motivate for generating UGC, distribute and help it go viral. Reward users with valuable prizes and gifts, show appreciation and respect for their efforts.
5. Collaborate with influential leaders and closely cooperate with micro-influencers who share a similar target audience.
6. Demonstrate social responsibility, showcase your principles, support social movements, and engage in charity work in line with your audience’s values.
7. Invest in building and expanding your own active community.
8. Always seek permission from authors before using or publishing their user-generated content on your platforms.

Go beyond

• Context and situational appropriateness are crucial when using hashtags to avoid getting into unpleasant situations due to carelessness.
• Authenticity is essential — create excitement and hype, but do not force it if it doesn’t naturally fit.
• Respect the creative efforts and copyrights of those who contribute to your UGC. Always credit the authors and express gratitude for their participation. Share their stories and offer various collaboration formats.
• Respond to negative feedback and comments, but avoid escalating conflicts. Try to resolve issues instead of simply deleting comments.
• Actively engage with UGC through replies, reposts, quotes, and comments.
• For greater reach, launch specific UGC campaigns targeting different types of content, such as texts, photos, videos, audio, or other forms of media.
• Analyze and evaluate the results of your UGC strategy. Identify which content performs best and adapt your strategy based on this data.

Supplementary Thoughts

As with any other Strategy, no truly effective Growth Hacking strategy is created in just one minute. To increase your chances of success, follow these simple rules:

1. Don’t start anything without a specific and well-thought-out action plan.
2. Don’t blindly copy even the most successful solutions of your competitors.
3. Don’t limit all your growth strategy efforts to just one area.
4. Calculate the costs and potential returns of any experiment beforehand.