The slickest growth hacks are generosity, insight, and creativity.

Let’s start with generosity.

The demise of cookies, rise of data protection laws, and ever tighter privacy policies are ushering in a world where marketers have no choice but to provide a truly compelling reason for people to hand over their info — since following them all over the internet is now considered poor form.

The most successful marketers are expansive in what they bring to the table. They solve a problem, inform, facilitate, celebrate, or inspire.  

A sterling example of this generosity is the Swedish Number campaign from the Swedish Tourist Association, launched in 2016. The country got its own phone number and then recruited (generous) Swedes from all walks of life (including Sweden’s Prime Minister, Stefan Löfven) to download the app so they could answer the phone when people started calling. And call they did: more than 200,000 calls were made from nearly 200 countries. The campaign budget was close to $0 yet generated $146m in media value. And think about it: in most cases those calling to chat with a Swede were providing their personal cell phone number — the last piece of info you want to hand over to a “marketer”. 

Brilliant!

Another example of generosity is the smartly produced “Explainer Series” from Zelle and Vox Media about The Science Behind Scams. This content is interesting and presented in a very inviting manner. There’s even a quiz to assess one’s vulnerability to being scammed. Plus, there’s not a gate in sight. Not even a gentle request to “sign up for more information”.  According to Zelle, the Explainer Series engaged 148,406 unique users (and presumably still counting). This delightful provisioning of scam acumen makes sense coming from Zelle which depends upon both sender and receiver of funds being completely trusted and trustworthy.

For marketers, this new landscape (with its tamped down data flow) is a clarion call to craft journey experiences with meaningful value offered up at each touch point. 

As consumers we should all cheer this (quasi) level playing field. If marketers want to profile us, they better up their engagement game.

Which brings us to growth hack number two: insight.

As discussed above, as a marketer your job is to develop a relationship — and over time drive intent to purchase — by providing value along the journey.

Of course, customer journeys are messy, building familiarity takes time and budget and the intractable reality is that for most products and services people are out of market for longer periods than they are in market. 

Put differently, the majority of early stage marketing efforts are seen by people who aren’t poised to buy anytime soon. How, then, is it possible to ensure this segment engages with both head and heart — at least enough to build some simple “memory structures”* so they seek you out when they are ready to buy?

IMHO, the surest way to do this is to make your prospects feel seen as individuals with needs, values, and aspirations. This requires insight gleaned from IRL conversations (qualitative and quant research), and data collected at every possible touchpoint.

Demonstrating sufficient insight about your target audience’s needs, values, and aspirations to make your brand reasonably relevant to them goes a long way toward being noticed and then remembered even by those with little reason to pay attention. 

Bonus: being memorable and likable combined with providing details to buy boosts performance marketing yield by engaging those with high intent.

Hello, growth hack number three: creativity.

First, it must be stated that everything communicates.  

EVERYTHING communicates. 

A-B testing executed like so much spaghetti hurled against a wall, ridiculous stock photography grabbed with not even a nano-second of contemplation, busy layouts that scream, “I just downloaded Canva!”**, even bad hold music — these are all things which means they communicate something about their brands.

And because we’re drowning in this dreck, these communications are generally only noticed by those who want to buy right now.  If they are noticed by others, it’s for being quite bad — and hardly likely to be remembered.

So no harm done, if you’re good with wasting time and money. 

Conversely, content that’s infused with insight, has copy that one actually wants to read — and might even enjoy — and is produced with a commitment to originality and quality design is much more likely to be noticed and remembered.

Let’s repeat that: Unique and interesting content crafted with care is much more likely to be engaged with and remembered — even by the majority who aren’t looking to buy at the moment.

The argument made here is that that budget invested in higher caliber creative pays for itself with communications that are more effective at achieving marketing goals, including differentiating the brand from competitors, delivering measurable results by delivering inbound engagement from those in the market NOW while also ensuring future demand generation.

Of course, all other elements of effective performance marketing need to be in place: a responsive website with relevant content, a SEO strategy and true commitment to ongoing optimization, prospect profiles, and vetted e-mail lists.

However, the hack — the devious trick — that fills funnels and coffers with outsized results is doing all this with a commitment to generosity, insight, and creativity.

*Step 4 of 7 in Byron Sharp’s “7 rules for brand growth”.

** This is not a dig at Canva, we use Canva daily at Curry & Collective — but just because you can blend a template/typeface/animated effect combo doesn’t mean you should.