7 Growth Hacking Examples to learn from and Increase Your E-commerce Sales

If you closely analyze success stories in the world of digital marketing, you will find Business to Customer (B2C) brands who have used growth hacking techniques to good effect.

What really is growth hacking? Growth hacking is a process of growing your business without spending a lot of money on marketing and advertising.

Your creativity and experimentation are the only barriers restricting you. Experiment with new things and let your imagination go wild. Even small businesses can use growth hacking strategies and grow their business. For instance, you have a small-scale E-commerce business and want to implement growth hacking techniques to take it to the next level.

How can I use growth hacking techniques to grow my E-commerce business and increase sales? Is that what you are thinking? Here are seven growth hacking examples from brands that show how to do it the right way.

1. Hubspot

HubSpot is popularly known as a CRM software for inbound marketers. They went all in with growth hacking. Instead of depending on their blog for content marketing purposes, they took a diversified approach. They published books about marketing and went on to launch a Twitter grader and a free website. HubSpot did not stop there and offered webinar, email tutorials and much more. If that is not enough, they are also giving users access to free tools. All this helped them establish themselves as a marketing powerhouse HubSpot is today.

2. Evernote

Evernote has a fascinating story. Since its launch back in 2008, Evernote did not have an ideal start. In fact, it was about to crash before even taking off. The company cash flows were down to three weeks. Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote got a message from a Swedish Evernote user who came as savior and gave the company much-needed injection of cash it needed to survive.

Soon Evernote was available in all app stores. Despite all the challenges, they offered two different version of their app, a freemium version, and a business version. The freemium model helped them surpassed the million-user mark in less than 450 days. In 2016, they reached 200 million marks.

Evernote did what most E-commerce businesses can only dream of reaching clients with deep pockets. The freemium version helped Evernote in spreading the word out and harness the power of word of mouth marketing, which later turned out to be a great move on part of Evernote.

3. Buffer

Buffer needs no introduction when it comes to social media management. Today, it is the market leader but that was not the case when it started. Back when writing 500 words blog post was a norm, Buffer experimented with a unique blog strategy and was one of the first to write long-form blog posts. Their content stood out from the crowd because their blog post contains 3000 words.

Instead of focusing on quantity, they posted one long-form post a month and broken down their social media strategy and converted into an email course. Buffer generated more than 18,000 signups in six days from it. People like comprehensive posts that cover all basis more than superficial posts and thin content. Not only that, long-form posts attract more backlinks and you can also repurpose them and use them on multiple platforms, making it a double-edged sword.

4. Moz

When you are purchasing a product from an E-commerce store, you set the high expectation and don’t want to be paying for anything other than the product itself. From an E-commerce business perspective, it is important that you provide extra value to customers at no or minimal cost. That is exactly what Moz did brilliantly and achieved success.

To attract the target audience, they created an advice forum for digital marketers. Digital marketers don’t have to create a separate account for the forum and can use their existing Moz account credential to log in to the forum. This saved marketers from the hassle of creating a new account. Moreover, they also offered marketers a great tool called Open Site Explorer that has free link building SEO tools to those who signed up for an account.

5. Unbounce:

Unbounce tagline, “The easiest way to test custom landing pages and improve post click conversion rates.” says it all. They reached where they are today by offering clients highly responsive landing pages, pop ups and sticky bar templates. Unbounce did not get their overnight and toiled hard to reach where they are today.

Instead of resorting to hard selling tactics, they roped in niche influencers and did educational webinars with them. This helped them win over customers as customers tend to believe more on influencers. To make the deal sweeter, they offered a free demo of their software at the end of the webinar. Their webinar went viral and become their top customer acquisition channel.

6. Aweber

Testimonials are a powerful tool for E-commerce businesses and E-commerce web development Dubai is done with that in mind. It is a social proof that has the power to convince prospects into buying your products and telling them that the product they are buying is worth their investment. Adding testimonials on product pages will help you increase your sales. Aweber, an email marketing platform used testimonials in a subtle, yet effective manner.

They used an innovative technique and included a subscriber count featuring the names of the users. Not only does this helped them build trust among first-time users but it also persuaded prospects to check out the service and explore it further, increasing your chances of converting visitors into paying customers.

7. Zapier

Zapier, task automation service is famous for its ease of use and decentralized software integration. Even a layman can integrate all the software they use with Zapier without breaking a sweat. Just like Evernote, it had a torrid start as it was denied funding. Despite that, Zapier managed to 600,000 user mark in three years. How did they do that?

They took a bold step and offered paid beta version and end up charging people for an unfinished product, but people are happy to pay because it was a novel concept that no one has ever come up with before Zapier so it worked in their favour. Zapier got early adopters that stayed loyal with their brand. After a while, these early adopters turned into brand advocates. They used content marketing and took to social media to promote their product.

Which is the best growth hacking example you know that could help E-commerce business to grow? Feel free to share it with us in the comments section below.