20 marketing and growth hacks that real companies pulled off, from scrappy startup tricks to wild brand stunts. Each one says what they did, why it worked, how much effort and money it takes, and links to the source so you can check it yourself. Last updated 30 October 2026.
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Showing 20 of 20 matching hacks (20 in total)
ContentYouTubeAdded 30 October 2026
Dollar Shave Club
A cheap founder video that explains the whole business in a minute
Dollar Shave Club founder Michael Dubin wrote and starred in a deadpan warehouse tour: "Are the blades any good? No. Our blades are f***ing great." In one funny minute it explained the subscription, poked fun at overpriced razors and set the brand voice. Fast Company reported 12,000 customers signed up in the first two days.
Why it works
Humour makes people share an ad on purpose, and a founder on camera feels honest in a way a polished spot rarely does.
Effort
Medium
Cost
Low
Best for
Direct-to-consumer brands taking on a big, boring category leader
A pre-launch page where prizes unlock at referral milestones
For one week before launch, Harry's ran a two-page microsite: drop your email, then get a personal link plus share buttons. Refer 5 friends and win shave cream, 10 for a razor, 25 for a premium set, 50 for a year of free shaving. They open-sourced the code afterwards.
Why it works
Clear tiers give people a goal they can actually reach, and the friend arriving through a link already trusts the sender. Harry's says it gathered nearly 100,000 emails in one week.
Effort
Medium
Cost
Low
Best for
Consumer brands and apps building a list before launch day
Borrow a bigger platform's audience with a one-click cross-post
Early Airbnb let hosts post their listing to Craigslist from inside Airbnb, even though Craigslist had no public API. Engineers worked out how Craigslist's posting forms behaved, pre-filled everything, and handed the host the last click. Andrew Chen used it as the poster child for the growth hacker idea.
Why it works
You tap an audience that is already there and already searching, and you are early to a channel with little competition.
Effort
High
Cost
Low
Best for
Marketplaces and tools whose users already sell or post on a bigger platform
Build a page for every 'X + Y integration' people search for
Zapier generates landing pages for each app it supports, every app-to-app pair, and even three-app combos, each with its own title, heading and URL. People search for other companies' integrations (like Google Sheets plus Trello), and Zapier owns those pages.
Why it works
It matches what searchers literally type, at a scale no team could write by hand. Ahrefs estimated the app pages drove 16% of Zapier's organic traffic.
Effort
High
Cost
Low
Best for
SaaS and marketplaces with lots of combinations: integrations, locations, templates, comparisons
Drop your story into the world's most filmed landmarks with FOOH
To launch its creature series Below, Netflix ran FOOH (fake out of home) films: shaky, phone-style CGI clips of a sea monster dragging a patrol boat under in front of the Statue of Liberty and at Niagara Falls. The show is set in a small Newfoundland town most people will never see, so the monster went where everyone already points their phone. A real 3-metre printed tentacle on Toronto's waterfront carried it into the street.
Why it works
A famous backdrop makes people stop and argue about whether it is real, and the passenger-phone camera style makes it feel like a sighting instead of an ad. The New York film passed 56.8 million views on Netflix's Instagram in eight days.
Effort
High
Cost
High
Best for
Entertainment, gaming and consumer launches with a strong visual hook
Give away a free grader that scores your buyer's problem
In 2007 HubSpot launched Website Grader, a free tool that scores a site's marketing from 0 to 100 and suggests fixes. It was built to create buzz, traffic, links and leads for HubSpot's software, and it graded over 2 million websites within a few years.
Why it works
A score is irresistible and the gap between your score and 100 makes the sales pitch for you. Each report is also a natural lead.
Effort
Medium
Cost
Low
Best for
B2B SaaS and agencies whose buyers have a measurable problem
Wordle's colour-square grid was invented by a player in New Zealand who typed it out by hand to share her score without giving away the word. Creator Josh Wardle saw others copy it and built it into the game. He also removed the link from the share text because it felt spammy.
Why it works
The grid tells a little story at a glance and makes people curious without spoiling anything. Wardle told Slate the share feature had a huge impact on the game going viral.
Effort
Low
Cost
Free
Best for
Games, quizzes, fitness apps, anything with a daily result
Keep a team on standby for the moment nobody planned
When the power went out during the 2013 Super Bowl, Oreo tweeted an image of a lone cookie in the dark: "Power out? No problem. You can still dunk in the dark." It was not luck. Oreo had a 15-person social team ready to react to anything in 10 minutes or less.
Why it works
Speed plus relevance beats a big budget when everyone is staring at the same thing. When Wired wrote it up the next day, the tweet had nearly 15,000 retweets.
Let every message your users send carry your invite
Hotmail added a line to the bottom of every outgoing email: "Get your free email at Hotmail", with a link to sign up. Investor Tim Draper says he pitched it as "P.S. I love you. Get your free email at Hotmail" and the founders dropped the love part. Every user became a tiny ad to everyone they wrote to.
Why it works
The pitch rides on a trusted message from a friend, at zero media cost. Draper writes that Hotmail spread to 11 million users in 18 months.
Effort
Low
Cost
Free
Best for
Any product where users send things to other people: docs, forms, invoices, scheduling links
Literally pay people to sign up and to refer friends
PayPal needed critical mass fast, ads were not working and bank deals kept falling through. So it gave new customers $10 for joining and $10 more every time they referred a friend. Peter Thiel says this brought in hundreds of thousands of customers.
Why it works
Cash is the clearest incentive there is. It only makes sense when each user is worth more later, which Thiel says PayPal had through small transaction fees.
Effort
Low
Cost
High
Best for
Network-effect products where each user makes the product better for the next, with funding to burn
Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen threw a big party at his parents' California home in September 2012 and invited popular sorority and fraternity members from nearby colleges. The ticket to get in was not cash. It was downloading Tinder.
Why it works
You seed the app inside one tight, influential group, so the first people who open it find people they know.
Effort
Medium
Cost
Low
Best for
Social apps and marketplaces that need a dense local network on day one
Duolingo's first TikToks were mostly about the product and learning languages, and they did not connect. In September 2021 social lead Zaria Parvez relaunched the account with Duo the owl acting like a creator, jumping on trends and running gags. Their big lesson was that the owl needs to be in each video, and they track results with a "How did you hear about us?" survey in the app.
Why it works
People want to be entertained, not sold to, and a recurring character gives them a reason to follow. The account reached 6.6M followers by May 2023.
Effort
Medium
Cost
Low
Best for
Consumer apps and brands with a mascot or a strong character
Dropbox gave both the person inviting and the friend who joined extra free storage. Storage was cheap for Dropbox and valuable to users, so the reward cost little and pulled people deeper into the product. Drew Houston's own Startup Lessons Learned deck says it permanently increased signups by 60%.
Why it works
The friend gets a real reason to sign up and the referrer gets a reason to keep inviting. In April 2010 users sent 2.8 million referral invites in 30 days, and referrals drove 35% of daily signups.
Effort
Medium
Cost
Low
Best for
SaaS and apps with a usage limit people care about (storage, seats, credits, minutes)
Reply to fans with personal videos, in near real time
Old Spice's Response campaign had the Old Spice Guy answer fans' comments from Twitter, Facebook and more with short YouTube videos. Wieden+Kennedy wrote, filmed and posted 186 replies in about two and a half days, starting with big accounts like Ellen DeGeneres to spread the word.
Why it works
A personal reply is rare and shareable, and doing it live makes people want in. D&AD reports 5.9 million YouTube views on day one and sales up 125% year on year by the end of July 2010.
Effort
High
Cost
Medium
Best for
Brands with a recognisable character or founder and a fan base already commenting
Burger King geofenced more than 14,000 McDonald's locations in the US. Open the BK app within 600 feet of a McDonald's and a 1 cent Whopper unlocked, then the app routed you to the nearest Burger King to pick it up. The whole point was app downloads, and the trolling did the advertising.
Why it works
It turns the competitor's footprint into your own billboard and gives people a joke to share. The One Club case says the promo drove over 1.5 million downloads and more than half a million redemptions.
Effort
High
Cost
Medium
Best for
Brands with an app that are late to their category and need a story
On a Tuesday morning rush, investing app Pearler put life-sized skeletons in business suits at three of Sydney's busiest train stations, each holding a sign that just said "Don't Work Forever". No logo, no QR code, no call to action. Commuters filmed it, the meme pages picked it up, and only then did Pearler reveal itself and tie the stunt to its research on young Australians doubting they will ever retire.
Why it works
A mystery with no branding makes people do the sharing for you, and the reveal lands on an audience that is already curious. Campaign Brief reports no paid media was used and one bystander video passed 3 million Instagram views.
Effort
Medium
Cost
Low
Best for
Challenger brands with tiny media budgets and a strong point of view
In Australia in 2011, Coca-Cola replaced its logo on bottles and cans with the 150 most popular first names in the country. The ask was to "Share a Coke" with someone, so even people whose names were missing could join in, and later waves let fans vote on new names.
Why it works
Seeing your own name on a famous product is personal and very postable. Coca-Cola says it sold more than 250 million named bottles and cans that summer, in a country of just under 23 million people.
Turn your customers' best work into your billboards
Apple invited people to post their best iPhone photos with #ShotOniPhone (or email them in). Judges picked 10 winners whose photos ran on billboards in select cities, in Apple stores and online, and the winners were paid a licensing fee.
Why it works
The ad proves what the product can do using real customer work, and a hashtag challenge fills your feed with proof for free.
Effort
Medium
Cost
High
Best for
Any product people create things with: cameras, design tools, cookware, apps
When the influencer is too pricey, put your CFO on camera
Le Pain Quotidien built a Reel around a creator allegedly quoting a 2,000 euro fee, then cast its own global CFO, Frank Gysbrechts, to do the job with a coffee and a profiterole. It was shot in about ten minutes on one iPhone inside a bakery. When it took off, the team changed its upcoming schedule, made follow-up videos and built an in-store launch event around Frank and the profiterole.
Why it works
The fee story gives viewers an argument they already understand, and an unlikely executive makes it funny. The brand reported 10M+ views, 500K+ engagements and 15K+ new followers around the first video.
Effort
Low
Cost
Free
Best for
Restaurants, cafes and consumer brands with a funny, real person on staff
Every December Spotify Wrapped turns a person's listening history into a personal story of top songs, artists and quirky stats like Listening Age, built to be posted. The 2025 edition added new features like Wrapped Party and Clubs.
Why it works
People love sharing what their data says about them, and every share is a Spotify ad. Music Business Worldwide reports 2025 Wrapped hit 200 million engaged users in about 24 hours and around 500 million shares.
Effort
High
Cost
Medium
Best for
Any product sitting on a year of user activity: fitness, finance, reading, food delivery, SaaS
Every hack is written up from the linked source, checked on the day it was added. Numbers are as reported by that source, often by the company itself, so treat them as claims, not audited results. Effort and cost are our own rough judgement. Some of these are from years ago and the platforms have changed since, so test before you copy, and stay within each platform's rules and local advertising law. Company and product names belong to their owners, and we are not affiliated with any of them.
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