Growth Hacking is constantly changing – here’s how to keep up

Your path to hacking quantifiable growth involves a small dose of tools and a large dose of executing on ideas and strategies. Your goal is to figure out what actions yield results for your startup and business.

It’s crucial to understand one thing—What worked for someone else may or may not work for you.

This Growth Hacking Sourcebook compiles the tools, education, blogs, books, and even communities to follow. It’s all that you need to execute.

Remember This: for every 1 hour of consuming content, you should spend 2 hours implementing and testing.

Growth Hacking Education

What is “Growth Hacking” really?

If you’re still unsure of what all this means—this post gives you a 30,000-foot definition of growth hacking and how your brand can benefit from doing it.

What Is Growth Hacking and Why You Need To Know About It

This is a nice post that gives marketers who are new to the idea of growth hacking a general understanding of how it works.

A Beginner’s Guide to Growth Hacking

Another great overview of growth hacking (with a tad more depth). This one comes from Think Apps and covers everything from acquisition channels and testing.

The Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking

Once you’re convinced that hacking is the right move, this 30,000-word guide from Quick Sprout does a deep dive in which explains exactly what growth hacking is, the process behind it and the tactics marketers can use.

10 Personality Traits Of A Great Growth Hacker

A quick infographic that provides a look at some of the most important traits you can look for in a growth hacker.

5 Rules for Successful Growth Hacking

A great post by Lincoln Murphy that gives five main rules any growth hacker should follow for success (with examples).

How to Hire a Growth Hacker

A quick and easy guide on how to should approach hiring a growth hacker. Great for executives and hiring managers ready to grow their brand.

What 300 Years of Growth Hacking Can Teach Us

Growth hacking has actually been around for 300 years. Ritika Puri covers the best growth lessons from the past and what we can learn today.

The 5 Phases of Growth Hacking

Roundup article from Mashable with a number of pros giving their secrets to success. Peek at their best advice on using the growth hacker methodology for success.

Growth Hacking 101: Read This To Become A Magician

If you’re in a hurry, this is a step by step guide and detailed infographic on how to approach growth hacking aimed at new marketers looking to get an edge.

5.5 Key Components of Growth Hacking for Non-Startup Marketers

Growth hacking isn’t just for start ups. More established organizations can still see big gains. This post gives key components any marketer can use to help accelerate the growth of their site or brand—no matter the stage.

A Guide To Mastering Growth Hacking Analytics

Hacking is all about metrics. This post makes sure marketers understand exactly what their metrics are saying about performance to help guide what needs to be changed.

The Ultimate Guide to Unlocking Mobile Growth

Perfect for brands looking to grow their app. A guide showing how to turn your app into a “self-sustaining growth engine” for the long haul.

Growth Hacking Articles

13 Critically Important Lessons from Over 50 Growth Hackers

If you want a glimpse into the minds of dozens of growth experts, this is the place to get it. Established marketers, brands, and entrepreneurs put together by the always thorough Kissmetrics team.

15 Google Analytics Tricks To Maximize Your Marketing Campaign

You cannot drive growth properly without understanding your analytics. This post gives you 15 tips that allow marketers to judge how their growth hacks are working. Avoid analytics at your own peril.

9 Content Marketing Growth Hacks to Drive Traffic and Conversions

Content marketing is a hacking strategy all by itself. Unbounce shows hackers how they can apply certain tips and tactics to get the most from their content.

21 Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics

Jon Yongfook is a pro. This post is where he pours out his very best (and actionable) tips to improve your brand’s growth hacking methods and overall strategy.

50 Entrepreneurs Share Their Top 3 Social Media Marketing Tips

A list of 150 hacks, tips, and tactics from so many successful entrepreneurs that have dramatically grown their social media accounts—a key growth area.

18 Marketing Channels To Find New Customers For Your Online Store

B2Bs can go vertical and achieve tons of good growth, but e-commerce and other B2C businesses need width and depth to see spikes in sales. Here’s a fantastic list to get you started.

15 Tested Ways to Grow Your Audience

New and revolutionary experiments are cool, but it definitely doesn’t hurt to implement strategies that been consistent in producing results. Leave pure experimentation for later in the process.

Increase Conversions 30% With The Live Chat Growth Hack

Live chat is quickly moving from revolutionary to standard. Your customers will soon expect to you able to get a hold of you most of the time. There’s still some time to get in before this becomes the expectation.

An Epic List of 100 Growth Hacks for Startups

Epic is right, this huge list covers 100 growth hacks split into categories like retention and activation that any aspiring or even established growth hacker should look at and learn. Written by a serial entrepreneur who ran a 7-figure marketing agency.

The 5-Minute Linkedin Growth Hack

One small to your LinkedIn account can cause huge growth to your list. This quick post shows you exactly how to pull it off.

Everything is Marketing: How Growth Hackers Redefine the Game

A great theory piece that is very encouraging. It’s good to see that you can achieve growth without massive ad spend.

15 Community Growth Hacks from Polyvore’s CEO, Jess Lee

Building an insulated and engaged community is key for sustainable growth and product success. This is a video talk from Jess Lee where she touches upon not only the importance of growth hacking but also actionable hacks she’s used with success.

7 must-know growth hacking tips from Justin Wu

An experienced growth hacker, Justin Wu, goes through shares his best tips for anyone who is interested in diving deeper into the arena marketing.

19 Growth Hacking Resources You Won’t Want to Miss

Growth hacking expert Sujan Patel has built his own mini resource list featuring a number of posts, case studies and books marketers can use to learn about growth hacking. He’s helped some of the biggest companies achieve massive gains.

22 Ways to Reduce Churn with Growth Hacking

Churn is a recurring revenue model can kill growth and maybe the company as a whole. Growth hacking can be a powerful tool to slow down churn over the long run.

6 Great Hacks for User Growth

Early stage software products need bulk users but often have low budgets. Here are 6 ways to get quick wins with for launches.

35 Growth Hacking Tools for Marketers Who Don’t Code

A good growth hacker understands how the internet is put together, but it’s not necessary to know how to build a software product. This is for any marketer looking for some of the best growth hacking tools.

17 Free Tools To Become A Growth Hacking Expert

Free tools. There is money to be spent in marketing, but it doesn’t have to all go toward gear and products.

30 Useful Tools for Growth Hackers and Startups

Experienced growth hacker Mike DeVerna shows us his list of tools he’s used over his career, separated into helpful categories like social monitoring, optimization, and feedback.

70 Awesome Tools for Growth Hacking and Bootstrapping your Startup

If you’re not satisfied with a small list of tools, In this list you’ll find close to a master list that start up brands can use to not only help with growth hacking but to getting a startup off the ground.

25 Ways To Prioritize Growth Hacking Tactics

Juggling growth with the every day (deliverables, sprints, etc.) can be a bear. Elan Mosbacher wrote this quick and easy guide to understanding what tactics are the most important to tackle first.

How to Growth Hack Anything: Lessons from a “BitTorrent Best Seller”

A higher-level look from growth hacking pro Ryan Holiday. Some his best tips and insights into how he was able to hack launching his own book.

5 of the Most Famous (and Effective) Growth Hacks of All Time

There is a hacking hall-of-fame. See some of the biggest companies use five of the top growth hacks ever—from Facebook’s use of The Little Bighorn Technique to Airbnb’s Cross Post strategy.

Growth Hacking Lessons For Established Businesses

Growth hacking isn’t just for startups. Established brands can skyrocket growth and here are six lessons on how.

Growth Hacking Books

Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday

A “behind the scenes” look at how to succeed in the new media landscape using growth hacking case studies and tactics from author and marketing expert Ryan Holiday.

Rework by Jason Fried and David Hansson

This straightforward book was written by the guys behind 37 Signals. All based on experience in growing a company from the ground up. A how to for new brands on how to stop planning and start working quickly and successfully.

Growth Hacking: A How to Guide on Becoming a Growth Hacker by Jose Casanova

A step by step guide on quickly growing a brand by focusing directly on customer engagement and retention over the long haul.

Launch by Jeff Walker

Well-known entrepreneur Jeff Walker provides readers with a roadmap of how to successfully launch online products, businesses, and services. He knows what he’s talking about when it comes to getting people ready to buy.

Lean Startup Marketing by Sean Ellis

A nice framework overview of how startups and brands with small marketing budgets can start approaching growth efforts. It doesn’t take a huge marketing budget.

Viral Loop by Adam Penenberg

Professor Penenberg showcases a number of high profile case studies from brands like Facebook and Twitter and details how they developed their growth engines.

100 Days of Growth by Sujan Patel and Rob Wormley

100 different growth hack techniques at book length. Each is geared towards helping marketers accelerate their brand.

Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers by Gabriel Weinberg

A mix of various, high-profile case studies highlighting exactly how some of the fastest growing brands out there like Evernote and Reddit were able to hack success.

Zero to One by Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel, one of the most legendary entrepreneurs of his era has written a reminder for marketers to think for themselves to create new businesses.

Growth Hacking SlideShares

Growth Hacking 101: Your First 500,000 Users

Growth hacking expert Jon Yongfook shares exactly how to harness the power of growth hacking to get your first 500,000 users.

Think Like A Growth Hacker

A good overview of what growth hacking is and also showcases how you can use growth hacker strategies for your own brand.

29 Growth Hacking Quick Wins

29 different fast-moving growth hacking tactics you can use to see tangible results within your business in the coming days and weeks.

Growth Hacking

More of a case study style look at how a number of brands grew to millions of users in the convenient form of a slideshow.

The Ultimate Guide to Startup Marketing

Onboardly gives a deep dive into how startups and new brands can use growth hacking techniques to drive user growth and acquisition.

Acquire New Users with Better Activation

If you’re concerned with how to improve your brand’s onboarding process to slow churn and continue growth, this is a good place to start.

7 Things That Make Content Go Viral

Derek Halpern of Social Triggers knows about viral marketing. Here he’s showcasing seven strategies you can use to dramatically improve the virality of your content and grow customers.

Six Growth Hacks to Get More Conversions from Your Content Marketing

Sean Ellis joined forces with Neil Patel to put together this deck of some of their best growth hacks to drive content and convert visitors to users.

Growth Hacking Blogs

Growth Hack

One of the more popular sites out there for learning about growth hacking, it features blog posts from a variety of experts as well as case studies.

Andrew Chen

Hundreds of articles on marketing, growth hacking and even fundraising all centered around the comings and goings of Silicon Valley.

Dan Martell

A serial entrepreneur who uses his blog as a place to showcase via blog and video, some of the lessons he’s learned from his own business experiences.

OkDork

Blog run by Noah Kagan of AppSumo fame, on the site he gives a lot of case studies on his own business growth as well as some of his favorite growth hacking tips.

Optimizely

The Optimizely blog compliments the focus of the brand (which is helping other brands increase website optimization). Plenty of growth hacking tips sprinkled throughout.

HitTail

A blog with best practices of business marketing, and search engine optimization—to name a few.

Quick Sprout

Neil Patel runs a couple of sites that are amazing at tapping into the pragmatic growth hacking behind successful marketing. Quick Sprout looks specifically at increasing traffic and conversions.

KISSmetrics

Another site run by Neil Patel. This one takes more of a deep dive into how to optimize marketing with analytics and testing.

Copy Hackers

Helping growth hackers write and get highly persuasive copy that drives email and conversion rates.

The Data Point

A ton of data-driven information. Highly useful for any growth hacker to optimize their funnels.

Moz

The people at Moz are focused on SEO, but include tons of great info for online marketing growth and optimization.

ConversionXL

A site devoted solely for increasing conversion rates. ConversionXL pulls in a lot of studies and research on marketing growth hacks while showing you how to do it.

Steve Blank

Blank has founded and worked with a number of startups during his career. His blog focuses in on how lean startups can succeed.

OnStartups

This blog has one purpose—Helping entrepreneurs succeed and grow their businesses. Posts cover case studies, how to’s and general advice on growth.

Growth Hacking Communities

GrowthHackers

GrowthHackers is perhaps the top communities out there for reading and learning from the top articles, case studie, and conversations on growth hacking.

Clarity

Dubbed a “marketplace” Clarity works to connect experts and advisors with entrepreneurs who are looking for high-quality marketing advice and research.

Growth Hacker TV

A video based community showcasing interviews and discussions with experts in startup growth.

Reddit – GrowthHacking

The Reddit growth hacking community is pretty active, with close to 1,500 members all sharing articles, case studies and their own views on success.

Quora – Growth Hacking

Another very active community featuring over 11,000 different topics on growth hacking covering advice from growth hackers, startups, entrepreneurs, and marketers. You’ll regularly see big names dropping their best answers.

HackerNews

While the news arm of Y Combinator covers a number of different topics of interest, they do have a variety of information devoted to growth hacking posted on a regular basis.

Inbound

One of the sole communities devoted to inbound marketing. You’ll find discussions, detailed articles, quick tips and case studies on growth hacking come up quite often.

Growth Hacking Case Studies

How I Grew From 300 to 5k Followers In Just 3 Weeks

An interesting and detailed case study on how one Twitter user was able to dramatically grow his followers in just a few weeks.

The LinkedIn Hack that Turned a Penny Into $100,000

Jack Smith details how he was able to hack LinkedIn and turn his chances of getting his startup into an accelerator from slim to 100%.

Social Media Growth: How We Used Buffer to Boost Our Social Traffic by 350%

A deep dive from Hubstaff on how they were able to hack Buffer and dramatically increase their social based traffic.

How I Grew Sumo Jerky to $10,000 a Month

An interesting case study from AppSumo on how Sumo Jerky was able to skyrocket growth and customer acquisition after several months of disappointing sales.

The 3 Hacks That Got SpringSled 138,790 Users in Less Than a Month

A look at how a new brand, SpringSled, specifically used viral growth hacks to gain massive users fast.

From 0 to 110k Instagram Followers In 5 Months: The Growth Story of Foundr

For brands and marketers looking to really drive their social media numbers. The magazine for entrepreneurs, called Foundr, reached over 100k new followers in just a few months.

Learn The Growth Strategy That Helped Airbnb And Dropbox Build Billion-Dollar Businesses

A quick look at just one (powerful) growth hacking strategy that was used by startups Airbnb and Dropbox and how they can apply it to their brands.

Active Campaign

The best email marketing and automation tool out there. As powerful as Infusionsoft, but with better metrics and tracking abilities. Setup automation workflows with triggers and rules, autoresponders, CRM integration, and much more. Hands down the best platform on the market (and it starts at $9!)

Site Alerts

One of the ultimate data and analytics trackers out there. It covers marketing and social media stats and traffic sources to name a few.

Sumo Me

All-in-one tool that helps to drive more signups and subscribers on a website developed by the guys behind AppSumo.

BuzzSumo

Fantastic data tool that marketers and growth hackers can use to see high performing, viral content as well as the key influencers on a particular topic.

Popcorn Metrics

Popcorn Metrics allows brands and sites to take a deep dive into tracking and data collection for visitors.

Hello Bar

Allows for sites to do things like collect email subscribers, ask for social media follows or direct visitors to specific actions on your site.

Muckrack

One of the easiest ways for marketers and PR pros to get in touch with and pitch relevant members of the media and bloggers.

Visual Website Optimizer

Allows website owners to gather so much data on website visits in order to perform A/B testing and landing page optimization easily.

Unbounce

Allows website owners, who are looking to increase conversion rates, to easily build, test and modify landing pages.

Just Reach Out

Brands and marketers, as well as PR experts, can use this tool to connect with journalists and bloggers and pitch articles and stories.

Qzzr

This tool enables marketers to create their own personalized quizzes on their sites to drive traffic and collect leads.

Polite Persistence

For marketers who struggle keeping track of their follow up emails, Polit Persistence is a platform set up to take care of that for you, with positive results.

Optimizely

To help brands best optimize their websites both online and on mobile devices. Perfect for split-testing.

Yesware

An email tool that helps track delivery and open rates, plus features an ability to send emails later, set reminders, and click-to-call functions.

Zapier

Zapier helps people automate data, applications, and tasks by giving you the ability to connect various apps and perform tasks automatically.

Price Intelligently

Product pricing can be tough. This tool collects various amounts of data from customers on your packaging, pricing, and value to form recommendations to better price your products.

Pay With a Tweet

Helps marketers drive referral traffic and engagement for site visitors using social media.

Outbrain

A content discovery platform, allowing marketers and publishers to share in driving and promoting content on their sites. Also good for getting traction for your content.

KingSumo

KingSumo is a contest software that allows you to create and drive viral traffic by focusing on giveaways and contests.

Drip

Drip is a “lightweight” email marketing tool that provides users with a fast and easy way to collect leads through email automation. Their visual automation tool is sleek.

LeadPages

A very powerful landing page creation tool that brands and marketers are using to drive and accelerate lead generation. Really effective funnel creation can happen through these landing pages.

Sell Hack

For marketers looking to make connections but don’t have email addresses. Sell Hack is a tool that runs searches to find verified email addresses from their own database.

SessionCam

Records the visits of website users. It generates heatmaps, clicks, mouse movements and more data to help you analyze drop offs and conversion roadblocks.

Crazy Egg

Use Neil Patel’s Crazy Egg to have detailed tracking where your website users click and scroll when they visit your site.

Typeform

This tool helps brands and marketers build customized forms, surveys, quizzes, tests and event landing pages for websites.

SendGrid

SendGrid is a cloud based email management tool that can send emails that abide by anti-spam regulations while tracking open rates, bounces and unsubscribes.

WBounce

A lightweight (and free) tool for WordPress based sites, WBounce is designed to help landing pages improve bounce rates and increase conversions.

Shakr

Marketers use Shakr to make ads for their business by choosing from a variety of tested templates and inserting their own text and photos.

MixRank

Sales teams use MixRank to help increase, filter and tag potential prospects into a master list of ideal prospects that can be contacted via phone or email.

Totango

A customer service platform to help brands track, understand and analyze their customer churn rates, and identify the health of your customers.

Poll Daddy

An all-in-one survey creator for your customers. Create custom surveys for your website or send the survey out via your email marketing tool.

Send With Us

A transactional email tool that helps manage branding, while allowing marketers to track, test, monitor and optimize email content.

Qualaroo

Deep-level analytics tool that allows you to track and understand your customers by taking a crazy detailed look into customer insights.

PR

A professional-style PR tool. It allows brands, marketing managers, and PR experts to easily create and publish press releases for distribution to the proper channels.

Famebit

For brands looking to partner with YouTube stars and create viral marketing, Famebit provides a platform to find, connect and hire those with an audience on YT.

Boomerang for GMail

This is a GMail app that allows users to create email messages and then schedule them to be sent at a later date even if you’re not online.

PixelBlock

Don’t want to be tracked? PixelBlock is for those not interested in having others knowing when they receive and open their emails.

Circular

An app that works in conjunction with Buffer to stock up Tweets which can then be sent throughout the day automatically.

Streak

A tool that allows brands and marketers to conduct their business right through their email rather than switching between systems. A lightweight CRM for heavy email usage.

Helio

A tool designed to track and run a number of defined tests while collecting user feedback and clicks on screens as well as on mock-ups.

Followerwonk

Followerwonk is a Twitter-based tool that allows users to understand who is following them, influencers in their network and social graphs.

Post Planner

Post Planner helps users save time by automating Facebook postings to pages, popular and viral content is delivered directly to users to help create posts.

Yozio

Helps brands and marketers help optimize and maximize the acquisition of mobile app users providing benchmarks for tracking and performance.

Delighted

Allows brands to track the feedback of their customers using a quick and easy one question survey that then delivers real time results.