Initially embraced by startups, growth hacking has matured into a desired strategy for established companies as well. Business leaders across the board are recognizing that a growth hacker – defined by the term’s inventor, Sean Ellis, as "a person whose true north is growth” – can work magic in any company.   

However, SMB and enterprise attempts often fun afoul of risk aversion and heavy reliance on processes. Why? Growth hacking is rooted in the idea that failure is all right, as long as you can quickly execute agile, measurable, out-of-the-box tactics that solely affect the price of execution.

To achieve outstanding growth-hacking results, companies need to be willing to test a new approach without certainty it will work. Success stories demonstrate it’s worth the effort.   

Want to try growth hacking or take it up a notch? Here are three business-proven pathways:  

1. To increase market share, use "what if" analysis to step out of your comfort zone and seize new opportunities.

If your company has a viable product or service, use growth hacking to expand awareness.

Take a cue from Airbnb. The company, which enables nearly anyone to convert a spare bedroom into a hotel room for rent, reverse-engineered an application program interface (API), allowing its users to post listings to Craigslist.

Undaunted by the fact that the Craigslist’s model prevented this action and success wasn’t guaranteed, the Airbnb team executed the hack based on its potential payoff. The plan worked. Because Airbnb’s high-quality, detailed listings surpassed traditional Craigslist ads, Airbnb attracted more traffic to its application at virtually no advertising cost.

2. To create a new market, discover and address pain points your ideal customers don’t know they have.

Slack’s story illustrates how. Two weeks before Slack launched, co-founder Stewart Butterfield sent a memo to his development team with the title “We don’t sell saddles here.” Butterfield wrote: “Despite the fact that there are a handful of direct competitors and a muddled history of superficially similar tools, we are setting out to define a new market. And that means we can’t limit ourselves to tweaking the product; we need to tweak the market too.”

Butterfield described Slack as a vehicle for “organizational transformation.” He explained: “We’re selling a reduction in information overload, relief from stress, and a new ability to extract the enormous value of hitherto useless corporate archives. We’re selling better organizations, better teams. That’s a good thing for people to buy and it is a much better thing for us to sell in the long run.”

3. To engineer your product to fit the market, use your best customers as a research laboratory.

B2B market intelligence provider ZoomInfo did just that. Inspired by Instagram, which shifted its focus to photo sharing based on user behavior, ZoomInfo successfully broadened its Salesforce-integrated ReachOut solution after 16 years in business.

The original version of ReachOut, a downloadable Chrome extension, gave sales and recruiting professionals one-click access to ZoomInfo’s company and direct contact data from LinkedIn profiles. Users reached the right contacts more quickly, leading to greater efficiency, effectiveness, growth and profitability.

However, by observing usage, ZoomInfo last year expanded ReachOut to make it even more convenient and functional. ReachOut now enables Salesforce users to tap ZoomInfo data immediately, and, in a first, turns any corporate website into an instant prospecting tool. Benefiting customers include sales intelligence startup ExecVision, which has boosted sales productivity by more than 20%.

Results like that justify venturing out of the box. With informed boldness, you can spur the growth of your company and its customers, whether you’re just starting out or have a long track record.  

What growth-hacking tips have worked for you?     

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Anna Fisher is the Senior Director of Marketing and Head of Lead Generation at ZoomInfo, an Inc. 5000 company whose Growth Acceleration Platform combines the most comprehensive and actionable B2B database with integrated tools to help companies optimize sales and marketing effectiveness, jump-start growth and maximize profitability. She is responsible for brand awareness, lead generation, and lead nurturing strategies. Her industry recognition includes listing among the “Sales Lead Management 40 Women to Watch” and a Stevie Award for ZoomInfo for the “Best Demand Generation Program of the Year.” You may contact her at anna.fisher@zoominfo.com.