As it turns out, no is the answer to both of those questions -- all we really need is a bit of creativity!
In the SlideShare below, we take a look at some "overnight" success stories and see what they did to scale their growth in such a short amount of time, and what we can learn from them.
1) Uniqlo
(A Japanese company that ensures it provides casual clothes for all kinds of people.)
Growth:
Idea: Partner with Other Brands
Uniqlo sponsor free admission to the Museum of Modern Art every Friday from 4pm - 8pm. This gets their name in front of a brand new audience that they may never have reached before, and generates positive word of mouth from people who get to enjoy the museum compliments of the clothing company.
Lesson:
Partnering with another brand will help you inherit their image and reputation, as well as creating brand evangelists outside of your customer base.
2) Dropbox
(A free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily with others.)
Growth:
Idea: Refer a Friend
Dropbox made it really easy for users to refer Dropbox to their friends byhaving sharing options for email, social, as well as a link to share via any other method the user preferred. Users did this to get more space, which Dropbox offered for every referred sign up. This helped Dropbox increase their signups by 60%. (Source: Dropbox)
Lesson:
Consider how your product can help promote itself. The Dropbox product created a heap of referral signups because people wanted to get more space. What would your users want in return for referrals?
3) Evernote
(`A tool for note taking and collaboration.)
Growth:
Idea: Launch as a Closed Beta
Evernote initially launched as a closed beta. This lasted 4 months. During this time, people had to sign up and send invitations to their network in order to actually use the service. This created a lot of buzz around Evernote.
By the end of the 4 months of the closed beta, Evernote had attracted 125,000 sign ups.
Lesson:
Exclusivity creates buzz. Plus, mandatory sharing to access a really valuable product will spread the word without costing you a penny.
4) Buffer
(A social media publishing tool.)
Growth:
Idea: Guest Blogging
By writing 150 guest posts, Buffer grew from zero to 100,000+ users in nine months.
They had to start on smaller sites and work their way up to the most popular in their industry. They got their name everywhere by creating really valuable content -- even though it wasn’t on their own site. Content marketing accounted for over 70% of their daily signups.
Lesson:
Be everywhere in your niche. Providing valuable content on other sites outside of your own will build an engaged audience. Once they know, like, and trust you, you can then market your product or service to them.
5) KISSMetrics
(A web analytics solution that helps you to increase customer acquisition and retention rates.)
Growth:
Idea: Create Infographics
Creating 47 infographics has gottenKISSmetrics 2,512,596 visitors, 41,142 backlinks, and 3,741 unique referring domains. (Source: KISSmetrics) They consider infographics to be one of the main reasons they have grown their blog from zero to 350,000 readers a month in 24 months.
“If you can make complex data easy to understand in a visual format, you can get millions of visitors to your website.”– Neil Patel, KISSmetrics
Lesson:
Experiment with the right formats for your audience. Infographics worked awesome for KISSmetrics, but something else may work for your brand.
6) Qualaroo
(A pop-up survey for your website to help with user experience on your site.)
Growth:
Idea: Conversion Optimization
Qualaroo has ‘Powered by Qualaroo[?]’ featured on every customer website, unless the customer upgrades to a paid account. The question mark is clickable and leads to a signup page for a free trial of Qualaroo.
Lesson:
Use your freemium product in clever ways to get your brand name in front of people. Leverage your customers for marketing real estate.
7) Uber
(A mobile app that connects you with a driver within minutes.)
Growth:
Idea: Freebies to Well-Connected Influencers
Uber provided free rides to well-connected attendees of local tech and venture capital events. They knew that these people would be very likely to share the experience with tech press and social media audiences, gettingUber’s name in front of their target audience.
Lesson:
Provide a wow experience to your ideal customers free of charge -- bonus points if they have a large network they can share the experience with.
8) Yelp
(A user review and recommendations site for restaurants, shopping, nightlife, entertainment, etc.)
Growth:
Idea: Make it Social
Yelp made each reviewer human by building a profile behind each one. This made reviews more trustworthy and reviewers felt like they were becoming part of a community and building their reputation by using the site. Members can interact with each other by becoming friends, chatting online, or meeting at offline events. Yelp has since accumulated over 47 million reviews.
Lesson:
Make your customers’ experience human and personal. Build communities that enable your customers to communicate with each other, allowing them to learn from their experiences and interact over a shared interest.
9) Upworthy
(A website with curated, viral content.)
Growth:
Idea: Test Headlines
At Upworthy, the curators need to come up with 25 headlines for everypiece of content. They then select theirfavorite four, and the managing editorselects two, which are rigorously tested. Upworthy saw nine million monthly unique visitors in just nine months.
Lesson:
Coming up with an attention-grabbing headline for your content can helpmaximize the reach of your content, and your brand.
10) Hotmail
(A free email service from Microsoft.)
Growth:
Idea: Email Tagline
Hotmail grew its subscriber base from zero to 12 million users in 18 months by adding "P.S. I love you – Get your free e-mail at Hotmail" at the bottom of all emails. The link directed people to a landing page where they could sign up for a free Hotmail account.
Lesson:
Optimize real estate like your email signature to make it easy for recipients to spread the word of your brand, or sign up for a free trial.
11) HubSpot
(An inbound marketing software platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers.)
Growth:
Idea: Marketing Grader
A free tool that grew out of Website Grader, it allows visitors to input their website, URL, and receive automated suggestions on where they can improve their marketing. In the first week alone, it was used by more than 140,000 companies. To date, it has graded over 4 million websites.
Lesson:
Thinking outside the box to create a tool that offers immense value to the user will help grow your audience.
Written by Lisa Toner
Lisa is an inbound marketing content creator in HubSpot’s Dublin office. Reach out to her on Twitter at @LisaToner13
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Dean Mercado
This is a fantastic and enlightening post Lisa... thank you! It clearly points out that one well-executed strategy is all it really takes to explode your brand... and business for the better.
Dean Mercado
This is a fantastic and enlightening post Lisa... thank you! It clearly points out that one well-executed strategy is all it really takes to explode your brand... and business for the better.
Lisa Toner
Thanks for your comment, Dean. It was a super interesting topic to research. There are some really cool stories out there from innovative companies who just nailed it! Gmail is another one I forgot to mention.
Peter Wolf
Great article Lisa! There is nothing more exciting than seeing how companies manufacture fast growth.
Lisa Toner
Hey Peter! Thanks for commenting. I hope all is going well for you at Azamba. Have a great weekend and please let me know if there are any topics of interest to you that you would like to see HubSpot cover.
B Coonan
This article is another 'gift' from Hubspot and a perfect representation of what the article is saying. It is worth noting how many of these ideas are based around the concept that a company that is confident enough in its capabilities will risk sharing its limited start up resources in a genuine effort to assist potential clients. Thank you for sharing.
Riaz Shah
Wow very insightful! I've never even heard some of the companies like Upworthy and Yelp but i'm getting alot of ideas from this one, thanks Lisa!