8 Must-Use Growth Hacking Tools

8 Must-Use Growth Hacking Tools

Over the past two years, we’ve seen the term “growth hacking” almost double in interest on Google Trends. Earlier this month, it hit an interest score of 100%, which is the highest it gets.

As the approach gains popularity, growth hacking has grown from a vague buzzword to a marketing concept that has brought many products and companies like Gmail, Hamilton, and Dropbox great success.

But now that we know what growth hacking is and how to apply it, which tools can we use to streamline and optimize the process?

In this post, we’re going to get a little meta and growth hack your growth hacking efforts by rounding up all the tools you need in one place:

1) Optimizely

At the core of growth hacking is a lot of testing. It’s about constantly setting hypotheses, and then testing until you find something that sticks.

Optimizely is a tool that allows you to A/B test your website to compare performance. At Bitly, we use the software to test call-to-actions, website layouts, and more.

Optimizely streamlines the usual steps of experimentation since developers don’t need to create several test pages and track engagement separately. An Optimizely snippet and jQuery work together so that all users land on one page, but they see customized content depending on previously defined parameters.

Before investing the resources into rolling out major updates like revamping a checkout funnel or building a new subscription page, A/B test what users are responding to most using a tool like Optimizely.

2) Typeform

What better way to get quick feedback on new products, to identify old products that need improvement, or gauge interest on a potential product than to run a survey?

Typeform’s user-friendly site makes it really easy to build sophisticated looking surveys, quizzes, payment forms, lead gen forms, and more.

Typeform offers powerful customization such as answer piping, where part of a respondent’s previous question is populated into the next question. For example, let’s say we at Bitly are surveying users about their favorite feature of our platform. One user says they like “Audience Intel”. In the following question, answer piping would ask, “Why do you like Audience Intel?”.

Typeform also offers the ability to build responsive forms across all devices and platforms.

3) Marketo

Marketo is a growth hacker’s dream.

The software allows teams to automate various parts of their marketing efforts and track it all in one place. With Marketo, teams can eliminate a lot of the manual work that goes into growth hacking and spend more time testing and innovating.

Marketo houses a range of marketing automation, email marketing, social media, and analytics tools. The software also integrates with many CRM solutions (Customer Solutions Management) to help marketers nurture leads and drive conversions.

At Bitly, we use the Marketo and Salesforce integration to organize and prioritize leads for our sales team, so they can have the right conversations with leads at the right time. Our content team also tracks who’s registering for and attending our webinars. We send follow up emails to all registrants with a recording of the webinar, and identify prospective clients from our registration list.

4) MovableInk 

Make the purchasing decision easier for consumers by using dynamic content that populates according to their interests or shopping behavior.

Most consumers (74%) get frustrated when website content appears that has nothing to do with their interests.

Contextual email service provider, MovableInk, allows you to create engaging, immersive email experiences. Email has traditionally been the biggest ROI-driving marketing channel, with a 66% conversion rate.

As VR and augmented reality technology becomes mainstream – research showing that 171 million people could be using VR hardware and software worldwide by 2018 – dynamic email may be the key in keeping consumers engaged.

In addition to hyper-targeting by device, weather, and geo-location, MovableInk also supports live and streaming content.

5) Click to Tweet 

This WordPress plugin makes it easy for marketers to turn parts of their content into tweetable excerpts.

The average reader spends less than 15 seconds on a page. This means that most people won’t read all the way through your blog posts. Embedding Click to Tweet blocks throughout your posts maximizes the reader’s engagement while they’re on the site. The key points are highlighted in big, bold text and is easily shareable.

At Bitly, we also use Click to Tweet internally to create pre-written tweet templates for our teams and partners to easily share new content pieces.

6) Moz

Don’t underestimate the power of SEO. Moz helps you organize keywords you’re trying to target, tells you how your site is ranking according to those words, and suggests related keywords that you may also want to target.

7) GrowthHackers.com

Kill two birds with one stone with GrowthHackers.com, a forum for sharing and chatting about growth strategies and trends. You can use the site to both growth hack your content and keep up-to-date on best practices and case studies.

At Bitly, we often use GrowthHackers to syndicate related content and to find thought leaders to partner with.

Check their “Top Trending” & “Must Read” lists on the homepage for a quick sampling of the latest growth hacking news, and to get some insight into what kind of content is most likely to gain traction on the site.

8) Bitly

Today’s digital landscape is complex. Americans now own four devices on average, and the average U.S. consumer spends 60 hours a week consuming content across devices. Every touchpoint a customer has with your product or service matters.

In order to get the most bang for our buck, our marketing team uses Bitly links to track all paid and organic efforts across all channels. We use Bitly Campaigns, a feature of Bitly Enterprise to track how much traffic our influencer marketing drives, which CTAs on our Twitter Ads perform best, how affiliates are performing, and more.

The link can help you see clearly across the Internet.

The Tool Is Only As Good As The Marketer Using It

All this being said, these tools are only as powerful as the strategies and knowledge behind them.

Be sure to spend some time solidifying your goals, learning about best practices, and testing out free trials of these tools (and other ones out there that we might have left out) before locking down your growth hacking stack.

Ultimately, the right toolkit should help you better understand your user base and shape your relationship with them.