Do you feel like your company’s growth is going at a snail’s pace? Wouldn’t you rather crank the speed up to 11?

Fortunately, you can. Because today we’re going to teach you 7 growth hacking strategies that will get your business booming in no time.

By the end of this post, you’ll know exactly how to kick your growth into overdrive. But before we begin, let’s define what we mean by “growth hacking strategies” in the first place.

What Is Growth Hacking?

Growth hacking is a term used to describe a low-budget marketing plan focused on growth. It’s typically used by new businesses or bootstrapped startups.

The word “hack” is fitting because the goal is to find creative ways to get more growth with less money while using industry-standard marketing tools.

Many growth hackers are unconventional in their methods. They think outside the box to find ways of getting new results with old tools.

Unlike traditional marketers, growth hackers are often less concerned about things like brand recognition or building an online presence.

They want to see growth that’s fast and cheap. Period.

As a result, they track metrics more narrowly than other marketing strategies allow for. OptinMonster laid out the 5 stages of the growth hacking funnel in their ultimate guide to growth hacking:

• Acquisition: getting new customers
• Activation: convincing customers to use the product
• Retention: keeping customers and reducing churn
• Revenue: making money
• Referral: getting other people to refer new customers

A helpful way to remember this is by referring to them as the “pirate metrics” (because they spell “AARRR”).

This results-based driven marketing style is immensely valuable for new startups. It helps them keep their eye on the prize by focusing on what matters: earning enough revenue to fight another day.

And that’s what we want to help you do right now. So here are 7 growth hacking strategies that you can start using to see more growth fast.

7 Growth Hacking Strategies

1. Grow Your Email List

Email marketing is hands down the best way to increase your sales. A compelling email series can yield a 4400% return on investment (ROI).

That means for every $1, the right email can bring back $44 to your business.

Plus, once you have a contact list, all the power is in your hands. You can drive the conversation, nurture leads, or provide important updates about your company anytime you want.

And it’s a lot less likely your email service provider will shut down than it is that your favorite social media platform will suspend your account or lose popularity (remember Myspace, anyone?)

The problem most new marketers face is how to quickly grow an email list worth having. That’s where OptinMonster steps in.

OptinMonster is the world’s #1 conversion optimization kit. It allows you to quickly build email optin campaigns that are designed for growth. With OptinMonster, you can create:

• Lightbox Popups
• Fullscreen Welcome Mats
• Inline Campaigns
• Slide-in Scroll Boxes

And more.

You can add these campaigns to every page on your site, including blog posts. You’re also able to target and trigger your ideal customers to make sure you’re sending the right message to the right people at the right time.

That’s the marketing trifecta every growth hacker is after.

But can it grow users fast? Well, you can always ask Adam Enfroy. He grew his email list to over 11,000 subscribers in one year using OptinMonster.

Or there’s Cosmetic Packaging Now, who saw a 752.8% increase in email subscribers, 110.4% returning customer rate, and a 2326.72% growth in sitewide revenue.

In other words: Yes, OptinMonster gets results fast.

Plus, they won’t break the bank. Their basic plan starts at $14 a month. Head over to their pricing page to learn more!

Now let’s turn our attention to a growth hacking strategy that hits closer to home for us here at TrustPulse: social proof.

2. Use Social Proof

We’ve talked a lot about social proof on this blog in the past. And for good reason.

Using social proof on your website is one of the best growth hacks you can use. Because if you want people to buy from you, you need them to trust you.

And the only way to do that is to show them that you aren’t just another online scam.

There are many ways you can use social proof to grow your business. One of the best ways is by using trust badges.

Trust badges are small icons or seals on your webpage that give your customers reasons to trust you. These can include things like:

• Money-back guarantees
• Free shipping offers
• SSL certificates
• Secure checkout icons
• Payment option logos

And many more trust badges that instill trust in your user base.

You can check out this article to learn more about what trust badges are and how to use them to boost sales.

Other good forms of social proof involve displaying testimonials or reviews from actual customers. These show your prospective buyers that other people have purchased your products or services and loved the results.

Thanks to a little psychology hack that growth marketers refer to as fear of missing out (FOMO), reviews and testimonials are great at getting people to take action.

But by far the most efficient form of social proof is a recent activity popup. This is what TrustPulse does best:

These small popups show your visitors whenever a positive action has been taken on your site. In the same way reviews and testimonials work, recent activity popups leverage the power of FOMO to get you more sales.

In fact, we’ve seen these little notifications boost sales by 15%. That’s a HUGE change for such a small modification to your site.

But remember no matter which form of social proof you decide to use to grow your business, never rely on fake social proof.

Though some growth hackers are tempted by this “hack,” avoid fake social proof at all costs. Faking reviews, testimonials, or recent activity popups may yield short-term results, but it will never scale long term.

When customers learn that you’ve used fake social proof, you’ll spend all your time fixing a damaged brand instead of marketing a healthy one.

And losing your customers’ trust is something many companies never recover from.

3. Use Social Media for Online Contests

Social media is incredible for growing your business. But what do most marketers end up doing?

Scheduling 1–3 posts per day, sitting back, and hoping one of them goes viral.

It’s not the worst strategy in the world, but it’s certainly not the most effective. A much better approach is using social media to run targeted contests. Online giveaways are an excellent addition to any content marketing plan.

And the best tool for this job is RafflePress:

RafflePress is a growth hacker’s dream. It lets you build incredible contests that are designed to go viral.

There’s a drag and drop builder, so your contest looks amazing. And it’s jam-packed with amazing features like refer-a-friend sharing, social media integrations, giveaway landing pages, fraud protection, and more.

You can use RafflePress to make online contests that bring you more customers. But be sure to make the prize target a specific interest for your buyer persona.

Many marketers run contests with generic prizes that everyone wants. The problem, though, is that not everyone is right for your product or services.

Remember, you want to achieve growth, but that also means focusing on the right kind of growth. Your contest should attract leads who are likely to become loyal customers.

And the only way to develop a system that starts bringing in the leads you want is to test, track, and tweak your strategy. Which brings us to our next point…

4. Track Your Results

Earlier in this post, we talked about how growth hackers track the 5 following metrics:

• Acquisition
• Activation
• Retention
• Revenue
• Referral

What we should have said was, “smart growth hackers” track these metrics. Because these are the metrics you need to know regularly to move your company forward. Simply knowing your site’s traffic isn’t enough.

Make sure you have the right goals set up in Google Analytics to get the data you need. For help, check out this article on how to track conversions in Google Analytics.

But Google Analytics can be cumbersome to set up and navigate. If you aren’t really a Type-A personality and need some help, you should consider MonsterInsights:

MonsterInsights is the world’s best analytics plugin you can get. All the information you need is conveniently in your WordPress dashboard.

Plus, you can create and track custom Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters directly in the plugin. Doing so automatically builds goals in your Google Analytics dashboard, making everything is easier to find.

Not too bad for a plugin that only costs the equivalent of 2 coffees a month.

Keeping an eye on your key metrics is the only way to build sustainable growth. Even for growth hackers. It helps you set up clear goals, monitor progress, and troubleshoot problems as they come.

5. Automate Your Marketing Strategy

So far, we’ve given you 4 excellent growth hacking strategies to grow your business. But we know what you’re thinking:

This all sounds like A LOT of work and maintenance.

Well, we’ve got some great news for you: with marketing automation, everything we’ve covered so far is effortless.

Choose some marketing automation tools to streamline your growth hacking flow. For example, OptinMonster integrates with most major email service providers so your leads can automatically go into your email lists.

RafflePress, too, can be hooked up into your marketing flow. You can send leads directly to your email service provider.

And because RafflePress has different “tasks” that can help contestants gain entry points, you can automatically drive traffic to your site, grow your email list, or build more followers on social media.

But what happens next?

Your email service providers like Drip or Constant Contact let you build awesome email series. So once you’ve captured their email address with OptinMonster or RafflePress, your customers will automatically receive pre-scheduled email campaigns.

This helps you:

• Keep customers informed
• Nurture relationships
• Increase sales

But everything is done on autopilot.

All growth hacking takes is a little work upfront. Once you have an automated system built, you can maintain it or make quick improvements as you go.

6. Gamify Your Promotions

It’s no secret that gamification is one of the best growth hacks on the market. Starbucks’ loyalty rewards program is probably the best example. They could have done something simple like, “Buy 5 coffees and get the 6th one free.”

Instead, they made an app that feels like a game.

Every time a customer spends money, they get gold stars, which they can redeem for other products. And the user interface (UI) for the loyalty program’s app enhances this game-like feeling:

But what do you do if you’re a growth hacker who’s starting a SaaS company on a budget? How do you use gamification if you don’t have as much money as larger companies like Starbucks?

In that case, you can use OptinMonster’s Coupon Wheel campaign:

The Coupon Wheel is an easy (and inexpensive) way to gamify any of your promotions. And they work.

Check out some of these results documented by OptinMonster:

• A clothing company called Moosejaw saw a 560% return on investment when they engaged their customers with gamified activities
• Popchips, a potato chip company, saw a 40% increase in sales when they used games to personalize their mobile advertising
• Teleflora, a flower delivery service, boosted their conversion rate by 92% with a gamified loyalty program

You can get the same results by adding a coupon wheel to your promotions.

And if you use OptinMonster, you can share promotions throughout your site or in your email campaigns with shareable MonsterLinks™.

Ok, now let’s get more personal with our last growth hacking strategy.

7. Personalize Communication

Imagine for a second that you were choosing between two competing companies. One sales rep called, gave you the whole spiel on how their product helps people and said to call back if you were interested in signing up.

The second sales rep did something different.

They greeted you by name, asked about your kids’ sports team, showed how their product can help you, and followed-up every couple of days to see how they could make your life easier.

Which product would you go with? If you’re like most people, it’s not even a competition.

That’s because the second sales rep was personalizing the experience. And that’s what your customers are looking for, too.

There are so many ways to personalize your communication with customers. If you’re showing email optin campaigns, for example, you can use something like OptinMonster’s Smart Tags.

Smart tags let you address your customers by name, location, previously purchased products, and more:

These kinds of personalized touches make people feel like they’re valued customers rather than another metric on your spreadsheet. But it doesn’t have to stop there.

Many email service providers like Drip or Constant Contact help you personalize your email series.

They do that through having templates that let you address subscribers by name, segmenting your email lists, or by finding the most convenient time to send email campaigns.

The point is that you should be personalizing your customer’s experience with your site. This will make them feel welcome, valued, and more likely to repeat business in the future.

And there you have it!

7 actionable growth hacking strategies to get your company growing fast. But now we want to hear from you:

Do you have any new growth hacking strategies or tips that weren’t on this list?

If so, reach out to us on Facebook, Twitter, or in the comment section below. We love hearing from our readers.

And out of all the tips we discussed today, the best growth strategy is using social proof on your site. Again, adding small recent activity popups to your site can boost sales by 15% by leveraging FOMO with your visitors.

All that revenue from such a small change is the definition of low hanging fruit. You don’t want to miss out on that.

So join the TrustPulse community today and start seeing more sales instantly.