A New Growth Hacking Strategy: Influencer Marketing and Social Media Working Together

Modern businesses seek innovative methods to stand out in the digital noise. But they face a common pain point: budget constraints. That’s where growth hacking comes into play. Growth hacking is a cost-effective tactic for businesses looking for rapid expansion. It allows them to try different marketing strategies and identify the ones that can help them scale.

One of the most effective growth opportunities comes from the combination of social media and influencer marketing. These tools have become staples for any business that’s after lead generation, sales, and brand recognition. Numbers show that influencer marketing keeps gaining ground since it’s estimated to reach a market size of $24 billion by the end of 2024:

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In this article, we’ll explain how to use the powerful duo to unlock growth and engagement opportunities. Plus, we’ll list the benefits of growth hacking and how you can leverage other channels to take it one step further.

Why Should You Use Growth Hacking?

Growth hacking started as a start-up strategy to grow conversions rapidly. As time went by, large corporations adapted their strategies to a growth hacking mindset, too. Here’s why:

• It’s cost-effective:

Growth hacking is an alternative way to expand without spending heavily on traditional tactics like PR. It helps marketers discover low-cost and creative tactics to boost return on investment. Plus, it allows for fast monetization since you can reach a wider audience in less time.

• It drives innovation:

We live in an era of rapid changes and innovative techniques. Which makes it more difficult to be groundbreaking. Growth hacking is based on innovation, focusing on analyzing data, testing tools, and optimizing approaches to develop products and services that address current needs.

• It helps you develop better products:

Growth hacking involves constant experimentation and research to understand the shifts in your industry and consumer expectations. It’s about analyzing real-time customer feedback and iterate product development to design better products based on that feedback.

The Power of Social Media

Social media helps brands engage with their audiences in real-time and hit growth trajectories. The sky is the limit as to what you can do, but let’s check some popular practices:

• Share useful, entertaining, and viral content to encourage social sharing. You can also use incentives like free products, special discounts, or extra contest entries.
• Ask users to create and share content showing your products or services in action. Then, you can use this user-generated content as social proof on several touch points.
• Encourage engagement through contests, giveaways, videos, polls, and quizzes.
• Prompt users to refer a friend, offering them something in return like a free guide.
• Collaborate with other brands to create buzz and gain exposure to their audience.
• Create a community of engaged users who connect with each other and your business in exclusive spaces like Facebook or LinkedIn groups.

We should note, though, that you don’t need to have a presence on all social media platforms. It’s better to focus your efforts on the most relevant to your brand and target audience.

For instance, Starbucks uses seasonal campaigns to encourage users to share UGC where they enjoy the brand’s beverages. Then, they feature the content on their social media channels, emails, and website to promote their products and foster a sense of community.

The Role of Influencer Marketing

Reputable influencers like bloggers, podcasters, or other experts in your niche give you instant access to already engaged leads. Successful content creators’ suggestions tend to affect their followers’ buying decisions while freeing up time for brands from content creation.

So, integrating influencer marketing into your growth hacking strategy is a bulletproof way to boost visibility and attract new customers. But it’s important to answer some basic questions before reaching out to influencers:

• Which audience group do you want to target?
• How much are you willing to pay?
• Do they have engaged followers? If so, do they match your customer personas?

Once you’ve figured things out, it’s time to start planning your influencer marketing strategy. The must-haves include a clearly defined objective, willing influencer(s), and the right incentive to get them motivated.

Fiji Water recognized that health consciousness was a rising concern for consumers and chose to collaborate with Danielle Bernstein, a successful influencer and blogger. She created a series of workout videos and posted them on social media. The Bodyworewhat campaign was a big hit, showing the brand’s commitment to keep people with health-conscious lifestyles hydrated.

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Social Media and Influencer Marketing Joining Forces

Combining social media and influencer marketing might require some trial and error. But there’s a checklist to have the best of both worlds:

• First, you should find which social media channels you’ll use. Based on your company’s audience, each platform can provide you with different growth opportunities.
• Do thorough research to find a relevant influencer; by relevant we mean one who aligns with your brand’s identity, values, and audience.
• The next step is to pitch influencers to discuss mutually beneficial partnerships. At this stage, you need to create a win-win value proposition based on the influencer’s needs. Besides payment, there’s the option of giving them exclusive access to a service or free products as incentives for content creation.
• Then, influencers can either create their own content or present the content you have prepared. It should feel authentic, add value or solve pain points, and fit the influencer’s tone. You can experiment with formats like videos, stories, or reels, and promote them using your social media and the creator’s handles.

How to Shape a Growth Hacking Strategy

Social media and influencer marketing offer a great starting point for your growth hacking. However, to create and execute a successful growth hacking strategy, you should use more tools, such as email marketing, SEO, and storytelling.

Email Marketing

For growth hacking to work, you need to share valuable and helpful information with your leads on a regular basis. After acquiring new subscribers, you can engage them with helpful tips, seasonal offers, and exclusive promos. Your emails serve as an opportunity to direct recipients to your blog, promote new products or services, or ask for feedback and UGC.

Affordable email marketing software allows you to do these things with a tight budget and little input on your part. Such an email solution offers optimal results at a reasonable price and relatively quickly. Plus, their email automation features empower you to set your emails on autopilot and focus on other tasks.

For instance, pre-built automated workflows let you create and send relevant email content at the right time. Think of timely promotions, transactional emails, and abandoned cart series. Also, cost-effective email marketing platforms come with segmentation options, helping you send personalized emails based on each subscriber’s demographics, history, and interests. And if you worry about your branding, email builders allow you to stick to a consistent brand identity by customizing the colors, fonts, and visuals and adding assets like your logo.

Casper is a company that uses email to share useful content. In the following email, they feature an action-oriented CTA to lead readers to their blog and discover tips to sleep better. They also include links to other popular blog posts for further reading. Cleverly so, they add a call-to-action for recipients to earn up to $75 by referring a friend.

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SEO

SEO has conquered the digital world as an essential content marketing practice for business success. With an effective SEO strategy in place, brands ensure the right target audience can find and click-through their content. The more helpful the content you put on blog posts, landing pages, and social media, the more likely it is to be seen as an authority in your niche.

SEO goes hand in hand with understanding user intent and conducting keyword research. That way, you can craft content relevant to users’ queries and help them and search engines understand the value of your products or services.

You should remember, though, that SEO doesn’t just involve your articles and posts. Everything can be SEO-optimized. An important aspect of SEO includes elements like images and videos. Images should always include relevant alternative text so screen readers can communicate their message to users. Video SEO, on the other hand, involves optimizing your video titles so users can easily understand what they’re about. Also, you should use videos to build links to relevant pages on your website, increasing targeted traffic.

Example: Charmin isn’t what we’d call a sexy product. But the toilet paper company has increased its standing, audience, and outreach by creating useful content. Both on its website content and its social media accounts, Charmin connects with its audience through playful copy and eye-catching visuals. Here’s a sample of their blog post content:

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Storytelling

The truth is you can’t always incentivize leads with discounts or freebies—especially with limited resources. Storytelling is one of the most powerful marketing tools to stand out without giving anything away except for your creativity. Successful brands and influencers use effective storytelling to engage with their audience and build strong emotional connections with them.

Adding storytelling elements to your website, email, or social media copy will keep readers on the edge of their seats. People love to read real stories from real people. You may use anecdotes on how you paved your way to success, describing the challenges you faced before getting there.

Include emotions like joy, sadness, or surprise, to help people connect with your brand at a deeper level. The best way to craft engaging stories is to truly know your audience. So, invest in psychographic segmentation to understand them better so you can create authentic content they can relate to.

Everlane is a clothing company known for promoting high social ethics during every stage of its clothes production. This principle is the basis of their storytelling. Because of this, consumers feel that by choosing Everlane products, they’re a part of a socially conscious community that guides them towards self-improvement. Here’s how they promoted their organic cotton packs while highlighting the benefits of organic clothing for the planet and society.

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Designing a Successful Growth Hacking Strategy

Creating and designing a growth hacking strategy is no easy task. But it can be highly effective for businesses looking to grow and achieve goals in a limited timeframe with few resources.

First, let social media and influencer marketing join forces to expand your reach and increase visibility. Then, add email marketing, SEO, and storytelling into the mix to further engage, educate, and excite your audience. Remember that consistency and value are key to offering prospects a unified and memorable experience that makes them trust your business in the long run.

You can always experiment with different growth hack techniques and combinations to see what serves your objectives best. Also, keep track of essential KPIs to understand what works and what doesn’t. Lastly, leverage various marketing channels to collect valuable customer feedback and improve your marketing strategy based on their patterns and needs.

Maria Fintanidou works as a copywriter for email marketing automation software Moosend, having created the Help Articles (FAQs) and overseen the platform’s translations in Greek and Spanish. She loves exploring new cultures and ways of thinking through traveling, reading, and language learning.