5 Growth Hacks to Become a Leading Online Brand in 2021

Are you a freshly minted online startup? Or a long standing eCommerce giant? Either way, the goal is still the same. To increase your online sales.

Truthfully no matter what your situation is, there’s always room to improve.

There might not be a magic bullet, but there a number of “hacks” you can use to boost your growth rate, and boost your online sales.

Some of these hacks take a little time, but as you’ll find out, they can pay off in spades. You’ll pay far less to acquire new customers, and you’ll hold onto those customers for a lot longer.

So let’s find out what hacks you can use to boost your online business in 2021:

1. Hack Your Email

There is a reason email marketing has been king for so long. Your email list is yours and no one else’s, and it has great ROI. For every $1 spent on email marketing, the ROI can be upwards of $38, and the ROI can be 70:1. No wonder businesses are still heavily invested into email marketing and still will be in 2021. It’s also why it’s important to grow your email list. If you’re not actively engaging in ways to grow your email list, you’re just leaving money on the table.

Why’s is such a good growth hack? Because you can build your email list for free. There are tools you can use (like mailchimp) that is free for use in low volumes, until you get big enough that you need to upgrade, at which point it’s worth doing anyway. You can also use programs like Sumo which provide free means to collect email addresses from visitors that visit your site.

Is a visitor going to leave your page? Show them a pop-up to try to get their email on the way out. Then send them a newsletter enticing them to come back. Eventually email them a product offer too enticing to refuse!

2. Personalize Your Ads

Social media has long since changed the way people act online. Instead of scrolling random sites, people now scroll personal social feeds. This not only means people now respond better to a personal touch, it means you can give them one.

Individuals give a lot of data to social media websites that you can now use to personalize the social media ads you give them. A more personalized ad, targeted to their interests will resonate with them more, and lead to much higher conversion rates.

3. Discounts and Incentives

The power of social media cannot be ignored, or it’s power for growth hacking. Does your business have social network followings? If not, make profiles already. But if you already do, there is nothing more powerful than your trusted customers words of mouth, and you can get them to do a lot of heavy lifting for you. Ask your customers to share your work or social media, or leave reviews. All are invaluable.

Now some won’t need a push to do so, but for those that do, offer them an inventive. A discount can give them the required nudge, or even something free that can get business from them in the long run anyway. Like if you’re a dentist, offer them a free check-up? Who knows, they might need fillings anyway, and not only have you gotten a review and share from them, you’ve also gained yourself business fixing their teeth. Win-win.

4. Gamification

Creating a game to onboard customers is an excellent growth hack that many companies use. It’s fun for the customer, and creates a good impression of your business. You can use a product offer to reward customers for their success (making them feel like they deserve to buy it) and keep customers interested in sticking around for more. You can also reward them for referring you to others, and make it fun through something like a competition, and offering the biggest referrers an extra prize, while all others referrers still get a discount or something. It’s a great way to drum up business as nothing is more powerful than a word of mouth referral from a friend or at least acquaintance.

To use this strategy you’ll need to design an onboarding workflow that helps users become familiar with your brand or product. Ensure that your workflow also encourages them to spread the word about you to their social sphere.

A good tool for gamifying your onboarding process is involve.me.

5. Test Your Headlines

Headlines are important for everything. Getting your readers interested in reading the first lines of your article (which should then attract them to read the rest), getting people to click your post on social media, and getting your articles to rank and garner interest on search engines.

You need to create compelling headlines, and once your content ranks, or does well on social, that’s great. But you can do better. Test with different headlines and find out what does better or worst. And never settle until you are getting the best conversions you can muster.