case study strategy growth

Hacking the Case Interview

A growth strategy or revenue growth case interview is a common type of case you’ll see in your first round and final round consulting interviews. This type of case interview may look something like the following:

Your client, Coca-Cola, is looking for new opportunities to grow after years of flat growth. They have hired you to determine the best way to grow.

In this article, we’ll cover a comprehensive framework that you can use to structure the different ways a company can grow. We’ll also show you the five steps you should take to solve any growth strategy or revenue growth case.

If you’re looking for a step-by-step shortcut to learn case interviews quickly, enroll in our case interview course . These insider strategies from a former Bain interviewer helped 30,000+ land consulting offers while saving hundreds of hours of prep time.

Growth Strategy Case Interview Framework

You can think about growth through two major categories, organic growth and inorganic growth.

The most common type of growth that companies pursue is organic growth, which is growth driven by expanding output or engaging in internal activities. In other words, the company is growing through its own capabilities and efforts.

Inorganic growth, on the other hand, is growth driven by acquisitions, joint ventures, or partnerships.

These two categories form the foundation of our growth strategy case framework.

Organic growth

Organic growth can be segmented into growth through existing revenue sources and growth through new revenue sources.

Growth through existing revenue sources

Growth through existing revenue sources is either driven by an increase in quantity of units sold or by an increase in average price per unit sold. 

To increase the quantity of units sold, a company can:

• Improve their product
• Decrease prices
• Sell through new distribution channels
• Target new customer segments
• Expand into new geographies
• Invest more in marketing and sales

To increase the average price per unit sold, the company can:

• Increase prices for their products
• Focus on selling higher priced products

Remember that changing prices will impact quantity of units sold, so it is important to look at the net effect price changes have on revenue.

Growth through new revenue sources

To drive growth through new revenue sources, a company can:

• Launch new products
• Launch new services

Inorganic growth

Inorganic growth can be segmented into three categories:  

Acquisitions

• Joint ventures
• Partnerships

The first way that a company can grow inorganically is by acquiring another company. This gives the acquiring company all of the revenue that the acquisition target generates. In addition, there may be revenue synergies that the acquiring company can realize.

Acquiring a company gives the acquiring company access to the acquisition target’s distribution channels, customers, and products. The acquiring company may be able to increase revenues by cross-selling products, up-selling products, or bundling products together.

The advantages of making an acquisition are that the company increases its revenues immediately. They also have full control over how they want to manage and operate the acquired company. 

The main disadvantages are that acquisitions are expensive and there could be difficulties fully integrating the acquired company.  

Joint venture

In a joint venture, two or more companies enter a business arrangement in which they pool together resources and share risk in accomplishing a particular task. Each company in the joint venture is responsible for profits, losses, and costs associated with the project.

Joint ventures are beneficial to companies because they can share resources, expertise, and can decrease costs due to scale. Additionally, joint ventures are much cheaper than acquisitions. 

A disadvantage of a joint venture is that it will take time to generate revenue. Also, the company does not have full control over the operations of its partners.

Partnership

A partnership is an association between two or more companies that provides some kind of benefit to each partner. This is slightly different from a joint venture because in a partnership, companies do not necessarily have to combine resources or efforts. They just need to be associated with each other.

One advantage of a partnership is that it is most often cheaper than a joint venture since resources don’t necessarily need to be contributed. Also, all partners get the benefit from the brand names and customer access of their partners.

Similar to joint ventures, one disadvantage of a partnership is that it takes time to generate revenue. Also, companies do not have full control over their partners’ operations.

5 Steps to Solving a Growth Strategy Case Interview

Follow these five steps and you’ll be able to solve any growth strategy or revenue growth case that you get.

1. Understand what the company is trying to grow

The first step to solve any growth strategy case is to identify what the company is trying to grow. Are they trying to grow revenues, profits, number of customers, or something else? 

Growing revenues versus growing profits can lead to very different strategies. Understanding what the company is trying to grow will help you determine what growth strategies will be most effective.

Interviewer: Your client, Coca-Cola, is looking for new opportunities to grow after years of flat growth. They have hired you to determine the best way to grow.

You: Is Coca-Cola looking to grow revenues, profits, or something else?

Interviewer: They are looking to grow revenues.

2. Quantify the specific target or goal

Next, you want to quantify the goal or target that the company is aiming for. For example, if the company wants to grow revenue, how much of a revenue increase are they hoping for? In what time period are they trying to accomplish this by?

You: How much is Coca-Cola looking to grow revenue by? And in what time period are they looking to achieve this level of growth?

Interviewer: They are looking to grow revenues by $1B over the next three years.

3. Look at potential organic growth opportunities

Once you have quantified the company’s target or goal, you can walk the interviewer through your growth strategy framework. You’ll most likely want to start by looking at organic growth opportunities first because this type of growth is more sustainable than inorganic growth.

You: To determine the best opportunities to achieve a $1B increase in revenues over the next three years, I’d like to use the following framework.

First, I’d like to consider potential organic growth opportunities. This includes growth through existing revenue sources and growth through new revenue sources.

Next, I’d like to look into potential inorganic growth opportunities. Is there a particular acquisition, joint venture, or partnership that would make sense for Coca-Cola to pursue? 

Interviewer: That sounds like a great plan. How should we proceed?

You: Let’s look at organic growth opportunities first. Since Coca-Cola is a mature company that has seen flat growth, I am guessing that there won’t be significant opportunities to increase revenues from existing revenue sources.

Interviewer: That seems like a reasonable assumption.

You: Okay, so let’s look at potential new revenue sources. Are there particular drink beverage markets that Coca-Cola has no presence in that they could expand into?

Interviewer: Let me share with you these exhibits on potential drink beverage markets Coca-Cola could enter…

4. Look at potential inorganic growth opportunities

After you have thoroughly investigated the organic growth opportunities, move onto looking into inorganic growth opportunities.

Consider whether an acquisition, joint venture, or partnership would be most appropriate given your company’s situation. Each of these methods of inorganic growth have their advantages and disadvantages.

You: After looking at organic growth opportunities, we determined that Coca-Cola could increase revenues by $600M by entering three niche drink beverage markets. However, we are still $400M in revenue short of our goal. I’d like to look into inorganic growth opportunities next. 

Interviewer: That makes sense. There are a few acquisition targets Coca-Cola is considering. Let me share with you some further information…

5. Prioritize and recommend the best opportunities for growth

Once you have investigated all of the potential opportunities for growth, it is time to prioritize and recommend the ones that are best for the company.

You’ll likely need to develop some kind of rubric to evaluate each growth opportunity. You can score each growth opportunity on the basis of:

• Ease of implementation

In step two, you quantified the specific target or goal that the company is trying to achieve. Make sure that your recommendation meets these goals.

You: To achieve its revenue growth targets, I recommend that Coca-Cola enter three emerging drink beverage markets and that they acquire Company X. There are two reasons that support this.

One, Coca-Cola can leverage its existing production and distribution capabilities to gain meaningful market share in these emerging drink beverage markets quickly. They could increase revenues by $600M over three years fairly easily.

Two, the acquisition of Company X would increase revenues by $500M, helping Coca-Cola achieve its revenue growth target. Additionally, there are many revenue synergies that Coca-Cola can take advantage of to grow revenues even more over the next few years.

For next steps, I’d like to look into Coca-Cola’s market entry strategy for entering these emerging markets. I’d also like to look into whether the acquisition price for Company X is fair and reasonable.

Interviewer: Great. Thank you for your recommendation.

Final Thoughts on Growth Strategy Cases

The most important part of solving growth strategy cases is to be structured and methodical in considering all of the different growth opportunities. If you lay out a comprehensive and organized framework, the rest of the case should be a simple process of elimination.

You should pay special attention to the context of the case and the company’s circumstances. The stage of the company, how much free cash it has on hand, and the level of urgency the company is facing will help you narrow down your options.

After practicing a few growth strategy cases, you’ll notice that these cases follow a predictable pattern and you’ll be able to solve any growth strategy case that comes your way.

In addition to growth strategy case interviews, we also have additional step-by-step guides to: profitability case interviews , market entry case interviews , M&A case interviews , pricing case interviews , operations case interviews , and marketing case interviews .

Recommended Growth Strategy Case Interview Resources

Here are the resources we recommend to learn the most robust, effective case interview strategies in the least time-consuming way:

• Comprehensive Case Interview Course (our #1 recommendation): The only resource you need. Whether you have no business background, rusty math skills, or are short on time, this step-by-step course will transform you into a top 1% caser that lands multiple consulting offers.
• Hacking the Case Interview Book   (available on Amazon): Perfect for beginners that are short on time. Transform yourself from a stressed-out case interview newbie to a confident intermediate in under a week. Some readers finish this book in a day and can already tackle tough cases.
• The Ultimate Case Interview Workbook (available on Amazon): Perfect for intermediates struggling with frameworks, case math, or generating business insights. No need to find a case partner – these drills, practice problems, and full-length cases can all be done by yourself.
• Case Interview Coaching : Personalized, one-on-one coaching with former consulting interviewers
• Behavioral & Fit Interview Course : Be prepared for 98% of behavioral and fit questions in just a few hours. We'll teach you exactly how to draft answers that will impress your interviewer
• Resume Review & Editing : Transform your resume into one that will get you multiple interviews

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How to Answer Growth Strategy Case Questions in Management Consulting Interviews?

Learn how to ace growth strategy case questions in management consulting interviews with our comprehensive guide.

Posted May 11, 2023

Consulting Week (Apr 15-18)

Monday, april 15.

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Table of Contents

If you are pursuing a career in management consulting, then it is important to be familiar with case interviews. Case interviews are a common part of the recruitment process and are used to evaluate a candidate's problem-solving skills and ability to think critically. Growth strategy cases are one type of case interview that you may encounter. In this article, we will provide you with a comprehensive guide on how to answer growth strategy case questions in management consulting interviews.

Understanding the Basics of Growth Strategy Case Questions

Growth strategy case questions require you to analyze a company's current situation and identify opportunities for growth. The case may involve a company that is looking to expand into new markets, launch new products, or increase revenue. Your job as a consultant is to help the company develop a growth strategy that is based on sound analysis and effective decision making.

When analyzing a company's current situation, it is important to consider both internal and external factors. Internal factors may include the company's financial health, organizational structure, and current product offerings. External factors may include market trends, competition, and regulatory changes. By taking a holistic approach to analysis, you can identify the most promising opportunities for growth and develop a strategy that is tailored to the company's unique situation.

Tips for Analyzing Growth Strategy Case Questions

One of the key skills required for growth strategy case questions is the ability to analyze complex business problems. You need to be able to break down the case into its component parts, identify the key drivers and barriers to growth, and develop a structured approach to solving the problem. Some tips for analyzing growth strategy case questions include:

• Understanding the company's business model, including its products, customers, and competitors
• Identifying trends in the industry, such as changes in consumer behavior or emerging technologies
• Assessing the company's internal capabilities, including its financial position, operations, and talent

Another important aspect of analyzing growth strategy case questions is to consider the external factors that may impact the company's growth potential. This includes factors such as government regulations, economic conditions, and market saturation. It is important to understand how these external factors may affect the company's ability to grow and develop a strategy that takes them into account.

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Identifying Key Growth Drivers and Barriers in Case Questions

Once you have analyzed the case, you need to identify the key drivers and barriers to growth. These may include factors such as market size, the competitive landscape, regulatory environment, and customer preferences. It is important to prioritize these factors based on their impact on the company's growth potential.

Additionally, it is important to consider external factors that may impact the company's growth potential, such as economic trends, technological advancements, and political instability. These factors can have a significant impact on the company's ability to grow and succeed in the long term. By taking a holistic approach to analyzing the case, you can identify both internal and external factors that may impact the company's growth potential and develop a comprehensive strategy to address them.

Breaking Down Complex Business Problems to Develop Growth Strategies

Developing a growth strategy requires you to develop a deep understanding of the company's current position and future potential. You need to be able to break down complex business problems into manageable parts and develop focused solutions based on analysis. Some frameworks that you may find helpful for developing growth strategies include Porter's Five Forces, SWOT analysis, and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) matrix.

One important aspect of developing growth strategies is to identify the key drivers of growth for the company. This involves analyzing the market trends, customer needs, and competitive landscape to determine where the company can differentiate itself and create value for its customers. By focusing on these key drivers, you can develop targeted growth strategies that align with the company's strengths and opportunities.

Another important consideration when developing growth strategies is to ensure that they are sustainable over the long term. This requires taking into account factors such as the company's financial resources, organizational capabilities, and risk tolerance. By developing growth strategies that are aligned with the company's overall vision and mission, and that take into account these key factors, you can create a roadmap for sustainable growth that will help the company achieve its goals over the long term.

Applying Frameworks to Solve Growth Strategy Case Questions

Frameworks such as Porter's Five Forces can help you evaluate the competitive dynamics of an industry, while the BCG matrix can help you analyze a company's product portfolio and make strategic decisions about investment. Applying these frameworks to the case will help you develop a structured approach to solving the problem and ensure that your recommendations are based on sound analysis.

Another useful framework to consider when solving growth strategy case questions is the Ansoff Matrix. This matrix helps you evaluate different growth strategies for a company, including market penetration, market development, product development, and diversification. By using the Ansoff Matrix, you can identify the best growth strategy for the company based on its current market position and growth objectives.

Using Data and Analytics to Support Your Growth Strategy Recommendations

An important part of developing a growth strategy is the use of data and analytics to support your recommendations. You need to be able to gather and analyze data on the market, customers, and competitors, and develop insights that support your strategy. Using analytics tools such as regression analysis and forecasting can help you make data-driven decisions and enhance the credibility of your recommendations.

Another important aspect of using data and analytics in your growth strategy is the ability to track and measure the success of your recommendations. By setting clear metrics and KPIs, you can monitor the impact of your strategy and make adjustments as needed. This allows you to continuously improve and optimize your growth strategy over time.

It's also important to consider the ethical implications of using data and analytics in your growth strategy. You need to ensure that you are collecting and using data in a responsible and transparent manner, and that you are respecting the privacy and rights of your customers. By prioritizing ethical considerations, you can build trust with your customers and stakeholders, and create a sustainable foundation for long-term growth.

Developing a Structured Approach to Answering Growth Strategy Case Questions

When answering growth strategy case questions, it is important to have a structured approach that helps you stay focused and organized. One effective approach is the MECE (Mutually Exclusive Collectively Exhaustive) framework, which involves breaking down a problem into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive parts. This approach can help you ensure that you are addressing all aspects of the case and not missing any critical insights.

Another important aspect of developing a structured approach to answering growth strategy case questions is to prioritize your analysis based on the most critical factors. This can be achieved by using a hypothesis-driven approach, where you start with a hypothesis about the most important factors driving growth and then test it through your analysis. By focusing on the most critical factors, you can avoid getting bogged down in irrelevant details and ensure that your analysis is focused and impactful.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Answering Growth Strategy Case Questions

Some common mistakes that candidates make when answering growth strategy case questions include:

• Ignoring key data or insights that are relevant to the case
• Rushing through the analysis phase and not taking the time to fully understand the problem
• Jumping to conclusions without considering the bigger picture
• Not engaging the interviewer or asking questions to clarify the problem
• Focusing too much on one aspect of the case to the exclusion of others

Another common mistake that candidates make when answering growth strategy case questions is failing to consider the potential risks and challenges associated with their proposed solution. It's important to not only identify opportunities for growth, but also to assess the feasibility and potential drawbacks of each option. Additionally, candidates may overlook the importance of effective communication and presentation skills when presenting their findings and recommendations to the interviewer. Clear and concise communication is key to effectively conveying your ideas and demonstrating your problem-solving abilities.

Practicing with Sample Case Questions to Improve Your Skills in Answering Growth Strategy Case Questions

The best way to improve your skills in answering growth strategy case questions is to practice with sample case questions. There are many resources online that provide free sample case questions, as well as books and courses that offer more in-depth practice. Remember to focus on developing your analytical and problem-solving skills, and to take a structured approach to answering the questions.

The Importance of Communication and Presentation Skills in Answering Growth Strategy Case Questions

Finally, it is important to remember that communication and presentation skills are also critical when answering growth strategy case questions. You need to be able to clearly articulate your ideas and recommendations, and to present your analysis in a way that is easy for others to understand. Some tips for improving your communication and presentation skills include:

• Practicing your presentation skills, including voice projection, eye contact, and body language
• Preparing visual aids, such as slides or diagrams, to help illustrate your point
• Developing a clear and concise message that summarizes your analysis and recommendations
• Engaging the audience by asking questions or soliciting feedback
• Maintaining a positive and confident attitude throughout the presentation

How to Prepare for Growth Strategy Case Questions Before an Interview

If you are preparing for a management consulting interview that includes growth strategy case questions, there are several things you can do to get ready:

• Research the company and its industry to gain a better understanding of the context that the case questions may relate to
• Practice with sample case questions to develop your analytical and problem-solving skills
• Review frameworks such as Porter's Five Forces and the BCG matrix to become familiar with the tools that are commonly used in growth strategy analysis
• Seek feedback from others, such as colleagues or mentors, on your problem-solving and communication skills

Differences Between Answering Growth Strategy Cases in First-Round vs Final-Round Interviews

Finally, it is important to note that there may be differences in the complexity and depth of growth strategy case questions between first-round and final-round interviews. In first-round interviews, the focus is typically on evaluating your problem-solving skills and ability to think critically, while in final-round interviews, the focus may shift to evaluating your communication and presentation skills, as well as your fit with the company culture.

In conclusion, answering growth strategy case questions in management consulting interviews requires a combination of analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills. By developing a structured approach, practicing with sample case questions, and seeking feedback from others, you can improve your chances of success in these types of interviews.

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Inside Amazon’s Growth Strategy

If the key to success is focus, why does Amazon work?

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Since Amazon started as an online retailer in 1994, it has expanded into streaming, cloud computing, content creation, and even groceries. But traditional business strategy tells us that the key to success is focus. So, why does Amazon work?

“I think in Amazon’s case, everything is very tightly connected. If you remove one part, the whole becomes less,” says Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta . “That’s the key question: are the pieces fitting together nicely, or they just happen to be another business because it’s profitable?”

Gupta has studied Amazon’s growth strategy and he tells Cold Call host Brian Kenny how Amazon looks beyond traditional industry boundaries to define their competitors and why connecting products and services with their customers is at the core of their strategy.

Key episode topics include: business models, growth strategy, operations and supply chain management, innovation, technology and analytics, online retail, customer-centricity, customer experience, competitive strategy.  

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

• Listen to the original HBR Cold Call episode: If the Key to Business Success Is Focus, Why Does Amazon Work? (May 2019)
• Find more episodes of Cold Call .
• Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org .

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Strategy , case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock new ways of doing business. Amazon started as an online retailer back in 1994. Since then, it has expanded into streaming, cloud computing, content creation, and even groceries. But if traditional business strategy tells us that the key to success is focus – why does Amazon work ? Today, we bring you a conversation with Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta – who has studied Amazon’s growth strategy. You’ll learn how Amazon builds its business around its customers — rather than its products and services. You’ll also learn how they look beyond traditional industry boundaries to define their competitors – and why connecting products and services with their customers is at the core of their strategy. This episode originally aired on Cold Call in May 2019. Here it is.

BRIAN KENNY: In the world of computer science, Jon Wainwright is kind of a big deal. A pioneer of computer languages, he was the principle architect of both Script 5 and Manuscript. What makes Jon a legend has nothing to do with programming. Let me explain. On April 3, 1995, Jon was in need of some work-related reading material. So, he fired up his T1 modem and navigated the fledgling internet to the beta version of a new online bookstore. With the click of a mouse, he became the very first customer to make a purchase on Amazon.com. Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies, the book he purchased, never became a best seller. But Amazon took off like a rocket ship and hasn’t slowed down since. With a market cap larger than all other retailers combined, including Walmart, Amazon owns 49% of all online sales. In the time it takes me to read this introduction, the company will earn over 300,000 dollars. Will we ever see the likes of it again? Today, we’ll hear from professor Sunil Gupta, about his case entitled, “Amazon in 2017.” I’m your host Brian Kenny. You’re listening to Cold Call, part of the HBR Presents network. Sunil Gupta is an expert in the area of digital technology and its impact on consumer behavior and firm strategy. He is the author of the recently published, Driving Digital Strategy, a guide to re-imagining your business. This case is the perfect stepping off point to cover some of the ideas in that book, Sunil. Thank you for joining me today.

SUNIL GUPTA: Thank you for having me.

BRIAN KENNY: This is your second spin I think on Cold Call. We appreciate you coming back.

SUNIL GUPTA: I enjoy doing this.

BRIAN KENNY: Good, as long as it’s not too painful for you. I like having you here. I’ve had an opportunity to read the book. The case I think is really kind of a great foundational piece to launch into some of the ideas. I’m going to assume anybody listening to this podcast has purchased something on Amazon or watched something on Amazon Prime. I had forgotten about their modest beginnings and just how much they’ve grown and expanded and changed. The case was a great reminder of that. We’ll get into some of that. Let me start by asking you, just to set it up for us. What led you to write the case?

SUNIL GUPTA: As you said, everybody knows Amazon. At the same time, Amazon has become quite complex. I mean, they have gone into businesses that defy imagination. That raises the question, is Amazon spreading itself too thin? Are they an online retailer? Are they video producers? Are they now making movies? In strategy, we learn, everybody should focus. Obviously Jeff Bezos missed that class.

BRIAN KENNY: He didn’t come to HBS by the way.

SUNIL GUPTA: You sort of start wondering as to, what is the magic behind this? What is the secret sauce that makes Amazon such a huge success? The market gap almost touched a trillion dollars a few months ago.

BRIAN KENNY: Insane.

SUNIL GUPTA: That was the reason why I thought A, everybody knows about it, and B, it’s hugely successful and C, his business model seems to defy logic.

BRIAN KENNY: The case we know by the title takes place in 2017. Maybe you can just start us off by setting it up. How does the case open up?

SUNIL GUPTA: At that point in time, Amazon had just bought Whole Foods, which was very counterintuitive because Amazon has been an online player. So why is it getting into offline business? That was against his grain as an online player. The second thing is food is a very low margin category. You sort of say, Amazon is a technology company, its stock is going to stratosphere. Why buy a low margin business that Amazon actually had been trying Amazon Fresh for 10 years and hasn’t succeeded? Why don’t they give up? That was a starting point. But of course, the case describes all the other 20 different things that they have done in the last 20 years and asked the question, what is Amazon up to?

BRIAN KENNY: Amazon and Jeff Bezos are sort of synonymous. He’s a cult of personality there, kind of like Steve Jobs was with Apple. Jeff’s been in the news a lot lately for other reasons, you know, personal reasons. He is still obviously, probably one of the best known CEOs in the world. What’s he like as a leader?

SUNIL GUPTA: I don’t know him personally. Based on the research that I’ve done, he certainly is very customer obsessed. He’s focused on customer. He always says, “You start with the customer and work backwards.” He still takes evidently calls on the call center. The culture is very entrepreneurial, but also very heart driven. I mean, the idea for example of Amazon Prime evidently didn’t come from Jeff Bezos, it came from a low person in the organization. He’s quick to adapt the ideas if he sees some merit in it. It’s almost a 25-year-old company that still works like a startup.

BRIAN KENNY: Was the original concept for Amazon … I mean, I know he sold books originally. Was it ever really a book company?

SUNIL GUPTA: I think it started more as an online retailer. Book was an easy thing because everybody knows exactly what you’re buying. It’s no concern about the quality. His premise in the online store was a very clear value proposition of three things. One was convenience that you can shop in your pajamas, so we don’t have to fight the traffic of Boston or Los Angeles. The second was infinite variety. I don’t have the constraint of a physical store. Even if I have Walmart, which is a huge store, I can only stock so many things. As a result, you only have the top sellers. In Amazon, I can have the long tail of any product if you will. The third was price. It was cheaper, simply because I don’t have fixed costs of the brick and mortar store. I can reduce the cost structure and therefore I can be cheaper. Those were the three key value propositions. That’s how it started. The idea was, I’ll start with books and then move on to electronics and other things. But then of course, it moved far beyond being an online retailer.

BRIAN KENNY: This gets into some of the ideas in your book. I was really intrigued in the book about the notion of what kind of business are we in? Just that question alone. At face value, it looked like Amazon was a retailer. They went in directions that nobody could have imagined. The case really goes into some of a litany of all the things they tried.

SUNIL GUPTA: Right. Again, the purpose of the case was to illustrate as to how these are all connected. From a distance they look completely disconnected and completely lack of focus. Let’s start with how the concept evolved. The first thing was, as I said was online retailer. Very soon it became a marketplace. Now, what is a marketplace? They basically allow third party sellers also to sell on the Amazon platform, which is distinct from a traditional retailer. Walmart doesn’t allow me to set up shop within Walmart, but Amazon allows me to do that. Now, why would they do that? Simply because it increases the variety that they can sell on the platform. Therefore, consumers are quite happy with the variety of the product they can get on Amazon. Amazon gets commission without having the inventory and the capital cost. Perhaps the most important thing of becoming a platform is it creates what we call the network effects. If there are lots of products, everything I can buy is available on Amazon. More consumers are likely to go there. Because there are more consumers, more sellers are likely to go there. It just feeds in itself. More consumers mean more sellers, more sellers mean more consumers, and it becomes a virtual cycle. That’s why there is only one Amazon. Even if I start an online retail, which is in many ways better than Amazon, nobody’s coming to gupta.com, because buyers and sellers are not there. That became the next phase, change from online retailer to marketplace. Then it went into AWS, and you sort of say, “Well, how can it go into a technology company and compete with IBM and Microsoft?” It was competing with Walmart before.

BRIAN KENNY: That’s the web services division.

SUNIL GUPTA: That’s the web services. In fact, at that point in time, Wall Street was very down on that. They said, “What is Bezos thinking?” The idea again, if you think about it, it was very simple. Amazon was building this technology for its own purpose. And then, they started giving this technology, using this technology for the third party sellers, who were selling on its platform.

BRIAN KENNY: Let me just interrupt for a second. That’s a marked, a marked change in direction. They had always been a consumer platform. Now they’re in a business-to-business play. I bet a lot of consumers don’t even know about Amazon Web Services.

SUNIL GUPTA: Correct. Again, not in a traditional sense saying, “This is my market.” That’s simply saying, “I have this capability. There’s a demand for this capability. Can I do it?” Part of that was opportunistic also. If you remember in 2001, the dot.com bubble crashed. If you’re a B2C company, you hedge your bets and get into B2B business. Part of that may have been luck. That was, again, a change of direction. And then, Amazon started producing hardware, Kindle, and now competing with Apple. You sort of say, why is an online retailer getting into hardware production? If you think a little bit about it, the answer is very easy. Kindle was designed to sell eBooks as people move from buying the hard copy books to downloading the eBooks. The Kindle is the classic razor and blade strategy. I sell razors cheap in order to make money on the blades. I’m not making that much money Kindle, but I’m making money on eBooks, which is very different from Apple’s strategy. Apple actually makes money on devices, but Amazon is not making money on devices, or at least not making huge money on devices. Similarly, it moved into online streaming of the video content and suddenly became a competition on Netflix. You sort of say, “Why is a retailer becoming a competition on Netflix?” Again, if you think a little about it, the answer becomes clear. As you and I moved on to not buying DVDs, but actually streaming the stuff, that’s what Netflix did. They used to send the DVDs to us.

BRIAN KENNY: I remember that. I still have a couple.

SUNIL GUPTA: Amazon is very good in sort of moving with the customer. If the customer moved from buying books to eBooks, I move in that direction. If customers move from buying DVDs to streaming, I move in that direction. Now, can Amazon do it? Of course, they can. They have AWS. Netflix is one of the largest customers.

BRIAN KENNY: Are they leading or following? Are they creating a market? In the beginning it seemed like they created something entirely new. Now, are they anticipating, or are they just sort of reacting to what’s happening?

SUNIL GUPTA: No, it’s a combination of both. In some ways they are actually following the consumer behavior and say consumers are moving to a streaming and move with that. They were not the first ones. Netflix actually started the streaming thing. Then, they sort of come up with it. If you think about it, Amazon became not only distributing third party content on videos, but now they have Amazon Studio. I mean, they are making movies, and the competition now becomes Hollywood instead of Walmart. You sort of say, “What has gone wrong with Jeff Bezos? Why is he making movies?” Movies are pretty expensive business and highly risky. The key to that is to understand the purpose of the movies. The purpose of the movies is to hook the consumers from Amazon Prime. If you remember, Amazon Prime started with 79 dollars per year. The benefit at that time was two-day free shipping. Now, you and I are smart enough to sort of do the math in our heads saying, how many shipments do we expect next year, and is 79 dollars worth it or not? Bezos does not want you to do that math. He basically says, “Oh, by the way, I’ll throw in some free content, some free music, some free unique movies.” Now you can’t do the calculation. Why does he care about Prime? Right now, Amazon has about one hundred million Prime customers globally. Let’s say I get an average 100 dollars per year, that’s 10 billion dollars in my pocket before I open the store.

BRIAN KENNY: Right.

SUNIL GUPTA: The research also shows that Amazon Prime customers buy three to four times more than non-Prime customers. I mean, if you’re a Prime customer, you don’t even price shop.

BRIAN KENNY: Once you’re Prime, you’ve got to justify being a member. You buy everything on Amazon.

SUNIL GUPTA: Exactly. Your purchase increases. You become price sensitive, which is fantastic. In fact Jeff Bezos has gone public and say that every time we win a Golden Globe award for our content, we sell more shoes. The purpose of creating their own content is not to make money on the content. This is another different razor to sell you more shoes. Once you understand that, what looks like disparate business is actually extremely tied together.

BRIAN KENNY: It all comes right back to the core. They haven’t always had good ideas. Have they had some misses along the way too?

SUNIL GUPTA: I think the biggest failure was Fire phone.

BRIAN KENNY: Remind us what that was?

SUNIL GUPTA: Amazon launched their own phone. They were obviously very late in the market. iPhone was already there. Samsung had done very good. You have two major players, if not many others, who are very well established. Consumers love their iPhones. The question of course was, why is Amazon launching the phone? What are the odds of success? Clearly the odds of success were low. The reason to launch it was they didn’t want to be beholden to the iPhone or the Googles of the world. They know that the world is moving towards mobile, in terms of shopping, certainly in emerging markets, everybody’s moving to mobile shopping. If tomorrow Apple or Google sort of restrict the Amazon use, or availability of Amazon, because they’re all competing with each other now. It becomes a challenge. To Amazon’s credit, I mean, it’s true for all innovations. Not all innovations succeed. You’ve got to take a shot. If you think about it, all the technology and thought process that got into Fire phone, was not completely a waste. That went into Echo. Now Alexa is a big hit.

BRIAN KENNY: They’re a market leader in that in that. Let’s talk a little bit about the ideas that underlie his Amazon case. I think it starts with knowing what business you’re in. Your book addresses this. I think I know we’re in the education space here at Harvard Business School. Should we be thinking about other businesses?

SUNIL GUPTA: You’re right. The bigger question that Amazon case raises is: how do you define what business you are in? Most of us tend to define business by the traditional industry boundaries. If I’m a bank, I’m in banking and other banks are my competition. I think industry boundaries are getting blurred today. Amazon can get into banking. I have lots of customers, I can start giving loans to small and medium enterprises.

BRIAN KENNY: They know a lot about those customers.

SUNIL GUPTA: They know a lot about customers. The key asset is now customers and data, and not the product and services that you offer. Once you know about customers, you can do lots of different things. One thing is, I would say is the industry boundaries are getting blurred. You need to think about not competition, but what do customers want. Do I have capabilities to serve that? The second thing is the traditional definition of where competitive advantage comes from is changing. What I learned, in doing my MBA class many years ago, we used to read Michael Porter’s competitive strategy stuff. If I were to simplify and summarize what I learned in competitive strategy was competitive advantage comes from making your product better or cheaper. Differentiation or cost leadership, which makes sense. If you think about it, it’s very much product-focused. I think in today’s world, competitive advantage comes from connecting products and connecting customers. The Kindle and eBooks is an example of connecting products, multiple products right? Making movies of Amazon and selling more shoes is connecting products. Razor and blade have been around forever. I think what is different today is razor and blade could be in completely different industries. Movies and shoes. The other side is connecting customers. We are in a network economy. That’s why there is only one Facebook, or one WhatsApp. If you are the only person on Facebook, what’s the value of Facebook? Not much, unless you love yourself. As more and more people get onto Facebook, the value of Facebook increases. It’s not about improving product. Without changing product, Facebook value increases. I think in this connected world that we live in, it’s about connecting products and connecting consumers.

BRIAN KENNY: We’ve got a lot of listeners out there. Many of whom are probably leading firms of one kind or another. How do they even go about exploring redefining their business?

SUNIL GUPTA: I think again, you need to think about what is your key asset? Everything starts with the consumer. In the Amazon case, you move with the consumer to some extent. I asked the same of a company for a medical device manufacturer. I said, “Who’s your competition?” The typical answer is: the other medical devices. Medical business is now becoming a lot about data. Google is getting into that. Apple. iPhone is becoming a medical device. Suddenly you have a very different kind of player getting into this thing. When I say, “What business are you in?” You need to think about who might actually get into that business and that changes the whole picture.

BRIAN KENNY: Why is Amazon so good at engaging customers?

SUNIL GUPTA: I think it comes from the culture of being customer obsessed, that no matter what the customer is right. They deliver on that promise. I mean, the level of convenience that customers expect from companies has changed. It used to be, if a company delivers a product within a week, that was considered good. Now, if you don’t deliver on the same day it just seems awful. They’ve raised the bar in everything. Of course, they’re using technology very effectively, whether it’s in their warehousing, whether now they’re investing in drones. I think they’re still a 25-year-old startup.

BRIAN KENNY: That’s another point that I wanted to touch upon. They’re able to adapt their supply chain it seems almost effortlessly to whatever business direction they move in. Is it possible for another entry to come into this space and scale in the same way that Amazon has? Is this a once-in-a-lifetime type thing?

SUNIL GUPTA: That’s a tough question. I think Amazon, it’s not that they’re adapting supply chain for everything, right? For example, I don’t think Amazon supply chain is ready for delivering frozen food yet. If I have a supply chain to ship you electronics, I can use the same supply chain to ship you prescription medication. That opens up another billion dollar, several billion dollar market. If I call myself an online retailer, I will never think of prescription drug delivery. If I think of my capabilities, I have the warehouse to deliver electronics and books. Why can’t I deliver your prescription medication? That opens up completely different businesses.

BRIAN KENNY: What are the kind of pitfalls that you need to be careful of, as you start to move into adjacent markets?

SUNIL GUPTA: I think definitely the big challenge is: how far do you go? On one hand it’s good to expand the business scope because the industry boundaries are getting blurred. The danger is do you lose focus? The classic challenge of losing focus. There’s a balance. I think in Amazon’s case, if you notice, everything is very tightly connected. If you remove one part, the whole becomes less. That’s the key question: are the pieces fitting together nicely, or they just happen to be another business because it’s profitable?

BRIAN KENNY: We’ve done a couple of cases on Cold Call that touch on the organizational impact of firms that move into new businesses. Some of them are examples of where it’s benefitted the employees. In other cases, it seems to have disrupted the culture in negative ways. How do you see this playing out at Amazon? Does it impact them in any way?

SUNIL GUPTA: If you look at Amazon, it has grown the top line 20, 25% every quarter without fail, except for one quarter in 2001. Right now, it’s in 2019, their sales are 232 billion. I don’t know that many companies, which grow at that rate, even when they’re over 200 billion. I think, if you’re on a winning team, that as an employee, it has to energize you. If you are in a culture which encourages experimentation and innovation, it has to excite you. At the same time, I’m sure it’s a very demanding culture, and there have been reports about how demanding the culture of Amazon is. It probably is not for everybody. For the people who are innovative, who are entrepreneurial, who want to be on a winning team, I’m sure it’s an exciting place.

BRIAN KENNY: There are sort of shades of Apple there. I mean, I think Apple had the same reputation. You’ve discussed this case in class with students.

SUNIL GUPTA: Oh, many students.

BRIAN KENNY: What are sort of the top line things that surprise you as you discuss it?

SUNIL GUPTA: The nice thing about this case is, everybody knows Amazon as a consumer. Everybody has shopped at Amazon. It’s very easy case. In fact, it’s a very short case that I give, at the opening of most sessions. People see it as very surface level. They sort of don’t realize the deep insights that comes out. As a three page case, you sort of say, I will be done in ten minutes, but then you peel the layers of the onion. That was a shocking thing to them, as to how you peel the layers of the onion and how you see the connection across different things. Why did Amazon buy Whole Foods? It makes no sense. Why did they get into AWS? It makes no sense. When you start un-peeling that layer, you see the connection as to why Amazon is doing all these different things. I think that’s the “A-ha” moment that comes across.

BRIAN KENNY: Much more on that in your book. How’s the book doing?

SUNIL GUPTA: Book is doing great.

BRIAN KENNY: Great.

SUNIL GUPTA: Fabulous. It was released in August. I’ve been going around on tour for many, different parts of the world.

BRIAN KENNY: I bet you can buy it on Amazon.

SUNIL GUPTA: You can certainly buy it on Amazon.

BRIAN KENNY: That’s great. Sunil, thanks for joining us today.

SUNIL GUPTA: Thank you very much Brian.

HANNAH BATES: That was Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta – in conversation with Brian Kenny on Cold Call . If you liked this episode and want to hear more of Harvard Business School’s legendary case studies in podcast form – search for Cold Call wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about business strategy from the Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review. We’re a production of the Harvard Business Review – if you want more articles, case studies, books, and videos like this, be sure to subscribe to HBR at HBR.org. This episode was produced by Anne Saini, Ian Fox, and me, Hannah Bates. Special thanks to Maureen Hoch, Adi Ignatius, Karen Player, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.

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• Growth strategy
• Operations and supply chain management

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Growth Strategy

Revenue growth is one of the most popular strategy cases in a case interview.

Usually, growth strategy cases are introduced by open-ended questions such as “A firm XYZ wants to increase their revenue. How should they go about it?”

Gather the necessary information about volume and price to determine the best growth lever

Case interviews  with revenue growth cases can be tackled by influencing two major parameters that determine growth figures. These are volume and unit price. In order to make suggestions, once again, you need to understand the client’s business and the industry. Growth strategies can focus on a product, a division, or the company as a whole. Areas you could investigate based on your hypothesis are:

• What is the client’s product mix? What is the lifecycle of each product ?
• What is the state of the respective industries? Are they growing?
• Which product segments have the biggest potential?
• What drives customer satisfaction?
• How does the client’s sales growth rate compare to that of the competitors in the market ( Benchmarking )?
• How are the client’s prices compared to that of competitors? For instance, if the product is a commodity, then prices should be similar.
• What is the customers’ price sensitivity? If the product is a commodity, then customers are likely to be  very   price sensitive .
• What are the client’s marketing and sales channel activities? Evaluate their effectiveness.
• What are competitors’ marketing and sales channel activities? Evaluate the effectiveness if they are better than the clients’ sales.
• What are the client’s available funds for growth (you can find it via balance sheet or cash flow statements )?
• What do the shareholders' demand/expect?

Choose a growth strategy and the growth vector you want to pursue

After having gathered this set of information, you will have got a feeling for the type of growth that is demanded. Based on this information, you can then decide which growth strategy to implement. Roughly, you can subdivide strategies into (1) organic growth and (2) inorganic growth. The categories can further be organized using an Ansoff matrix .

Find new customers by (Ansoff Matrix):

• Increase/switch distribution channels.
• Expand the product lines.
• Enter new markets .
• Perform a major marketing campaign.
• Increase your share of the wallet with your existing customers, e.g. by selling them add-on/bundled products.
• Lower customer churn rate by preventing unwanted customer attrition.
• Acquire other companies.

If you have thoroughly completed this BootCamp, you will notice that many case types overlap with each other. You will rarely find a case that fits only one type. Most of the strategic decisions intersect. After completing the BootCamp, you should get a feeling for those connections and be able to see the big picture. 

Related Cases

Oliver Wyman Case: Full Electrons Ahead

EY-Parthenon Case: Virtual Marketplace

Simon-Kucher Case: GST Cruise Company

FTI-Andersch AG Case: Krise im Ferkelstall

CTcon Case: Das beste Eis der Stadt!

Want to know how we think about growth strategy? Check out our insights articles and success stories below.

The Growth Academy alum network includes industry leading companies such as:

Join our free 3 day email course for preview lectures and insights

• Growth marketing

Impressive growth marketing case studies from Dashly clients [tactics, tools, results]

Ever wondered what it’s like to peek behind the growth hackers’ curtain? Well, buckle up! I’m the skipper at Dashly’s Growth Team and I’ve got some secrets to spill. Arm yourself with our most impressive growth marketing case studies straight from our playbook!

Cutting to the chase — these are tales of cunning tactics, cunning tools, and pretty darn good results. Sketches of how we’ve driven businesses from various sectors, SaaS companies included, to pump up their marketing game and reach those exhilarating milestones.

Through this breezy read, we’re letting you in on the nitty-gritty of how we collaborate with our customers. It’s about creating sterling strategies and celebrating stellar outcomes.

And guess what? We’re going to reveal our backstage magic — the strategies and stories of success. So get ready to dig deep into how we’ve woven growth into our clients’ stories. These bite-sized nuggets of wisdom could be the spark you need to level up your own game!

Yup, every business is its own beast, but when we face it together and learn from each other, that’s where you find the real growth. Let’s dive in!

Skyrocket marketing lead generation

+1,152 leads growth with a chatbot growth marketing case .

One of the customers’ case studies Dashly is working on is a school aimed at film production. When folks browse through their site investigating different courses, decision-making isn’t typically a rapid process.

And the fix for this?

The crew behind the digital academy figured out the preferences of the site visitors and assembled their contact details for the sales people. This opened the gateways for them to connect with the potential leads and offer guidance in selecting the most fitting course.

Qualifying leads emerge as a vital element in hacking growth as it lends you a meaningful understanding of your intended crowd.

So, they decided to integrate a Dashly chatbot on their online platform to:

👉 Kickstart chats with the guests; 👉 Put forward qualifying queries; 👉 Compile contact numbers.

This collected data is then transported to amoCRM, arming the sales folks with all the info they need to give potential students a ring and make a suitable course suggestion.

The payoff? They achieved 1,152 leads growth in a mere five months.

+12% target leads growth with pop-up quiz and chatbot

We’re weaving the saga of Seamus Bennett (CEO and co-founder of  KVR , a top-tier software development firm), who onboarded Dashly to turbocharge the lead qualification mechanics on his website, a strategic move to drive growth.

Sales heavyweights previously operated exclusively with those eager to swiftly fork out funds and dive headfirst into product deployment. But to amp up revenue and align with growth marketing strategies, the case required mastering techniques to engage with prospects requiring more nurturing time and not prepped for an instant buy. This marketing growth strategy is somewhat convoluted.

The mission of pushing for long-term sales may appear a tad alien to sales veterans whose monthly windfalls hinge on achieving preset sales targets. What’s the remedy?

1. Lead qualification pop-up quiz on product pages (since its visitors are more ready to buy.)

Thus, they can define leads that meet the ICP portrait and call them first. It’s one of the best growth marketing tips .

2. Chatbot to capture and qualify blog readers 

Each reader browsing the content within the blog articles was given the chance to interact with a chatbot following the initial 30 seconds of their session. The outcomes for the company:

👉 An increase of 12% in orders due to the integration of engaging pop-up quizzes and the chatbot into their strategy. 👉 A solid 60% of orders originating from the quizzes and the Dashly chatbot are specifically targeted.

Read the entire story

Thanks! Here’s your copy of  the growth strategy template

School for IT and Data specialists got +44% applications growth

This case study of Dashly client was grappling with an issue: An underwhelming number of applications on the course pages. A chunk of visitors bounce without sealing the deal, and inquiries of those who eventually do aren’t attended to speedily by the managing crew. Hence, the anticipated uptick in key growth marketing metrics for their business remained elusive.

Chatbot on the “Data Science from scratch” course page

The chatbot, snugly fit within the Dashly platform, doesn’t suddenly prompt you to enroll for a course. Instead, it gently evolves into a lead qualifier, presenting itself as an assistant to help carve your education journey and manage personal career hurdles.

The impact made by this implementation in their product strategy: 

• 7.5% of users disclosed their emails,
• 5.3% parted with their phone numbers.

Chatbot on the “Data Science: Advanced course” page

This particular page is tailored for seasoned pros looking to carve a niche in this industry. Here, the chatbot’s objective is to reinforce the fact that they’ve stumbled upon the perfect hotspot to satisfy their ambitions and elevate their abilities, perfectly aligning with the company’s growth goals.

Leveraging creative marketing, the chatbot dangled the bait of a complimentary career guide, a savvy marketing tactic intended to coax leads into revealing their contact information.

The results:

👉 22,7% shared emails, 👉 15,5% shared phone numbers.

Marketing case studies on how to boost conversion into signup

+70% conversion onto sign-up with a chatbot .

Teaming up with Anthony, co-founder of an  online platform for Instagram account growth , we tackled a case focused on this hiccup: incoming users ducked out before reaching the payment section. So what was the panacea for this marketing problem with room for growth?

They already had an enticing deal in place — an automated message paired with a free audit.

However, the original format of the deal wasn’t exactly cutting it. To amplify the shift from mere browsing to actual signup, we proposed tailoring this offer around the distinct pain points of the customers, and rolling it out as an engaging dialogue with a chatbot. 

Using a chatbot, they got a 70% growth in conversion to users signups. As for the overall funnel performance, it added 5% to the conversion to sign-up.

Thanks! Here’s your copy of 100 growth ideas

How growth hackers engage users to complete registration

In Dashly, we work with Freedom24 — a fintech company. They have a registration issue. After registration in a website form, users should confirm their residential address with a utility bill or any other document. Some of them find this step rather difficult and abandon registration.

Freedom24 marketing team sends them three onboarding emails :

👉 The first one describes the benefits a client gets after opening an account. 👉 The second message highlights the opportunity to get support.  👉 The third email intrigues you with 30 days of the free-of-charge Promo account.

Freedom24 marketers use the same CTA at the beginning and end of each email message to highlight the main action.

At Dashly, we’re collaborating with Freedom24 — a fintech company . They are grappling with a registration snag. Upon registration via the website form, users must verify their residential address with a utility bill or some equivalent document. Some folks find this step rather cumbersome, leading them to ditch the registration process partway.

So, what’s the resolution?

The nifty Freedom24 marketing team sets into motion three onboarding emails for users: 

👉 The initial one elaborates on the perks awaiting a client following account activation.  👉 The subsequent email underscores the provision of assistance.  👉 The final email hooks you with a tantalizing offer of enjoying a free-for-any-charge Promo account for 30 days.

To strike home their focal point, Freedom24 marketers smartly lace the same call-to-action (CTA) at the commencement and termination of each content email to capture attention. This has proved beneficial to both users and the business.

Open Rate: 23.15% CTR: 2,59%

Open Rate: 43.55% CTR: 10,51%

Open Rate: 46.61% CTR: 1,60%

Since 50% of the website traffic goes to the Freedom24 app, its users receive relevant push notifications as well:

Open Rate: 30.47% CTR: 3.65%

Open Rate: 13.55% CTR: 0.57%

Open Rate: 18.18% CTR: 0.65%

Consequently, folks who’ve signed up at Freedom24, courtesy of this strategy incorporated into the email program: 

👉 Recall the importance of initiating an account to commence their investment journey through the platform,  👉 Understand the correct pathway to seek aid for account setup,  👉 Spark an inner urge to expedite the process.

Need more inspo for your growth strategy? We’re here to help 👇

Marketing case studies about conversion to payment 

+30% free-to-paid conversion rate growth with a chatbot on pricing page.

Switching gears to our following collaborator — LeadGen App . They come armed with a form-builder service that empowers SME enterprises, digital agencies, and marketers to craft forms primed for conversion, resulting in an uptick in feedback during lead generation campaigns. Amid a sea of  growth marketing tools , data driven CEO Christopher chose to enlist Dashly platform to tackle the ensuing challenge — boost the conversion rate from free to paid users. One of the solutions we made was launching a chatbot on their pricing page:

Opting for any of the given options, like “How does LeadGen App stand out from other growth marketing services ,” you are greeted with an in-depth response. This comes as linked case content that guides visitors straight to the free account registration step:

At the end of the message customers see a link leading them to the registration and LeadGen App Pro Tariff: 

When visitors look for a certain feature, the chatbot asks them to share an email. Thus, Christopher can contact them later about the chosen feature.

Chatbots truly are a force to reckon with in various B2B growth hacking strategies . Armed with chatbots, Christopher now has a steady inflow of registrations and quality leads to follow up, effectively aligning with his strategy.

The impact : 

A surge in the number of users who interacted with the chatbot on the pricing page significantly boosted sales. This steered the company towards a substantial 31% uptick in sales transactions following the first month of  chatbot implementation in their content.

Read also: 25 Growth Marketing Books to Skyrocket Success

+$2k revenue with video pop-ups growth marketing case 

Before collaboration with Dashly, this online platform for Instagram account growth saw merely 23% of total users invest in their features.

In tandem with the client, we brought to life an onboarding system using Dashly’s toolkit. This system was designed to steer B2B users through the sales funnel, inspiring them to spring for feature purchases. Subsequently, we integrated pop-ups into the business platform, utilizing them to underline the worth of premium features.

In our most triumphant growth marketing experiment, we slipped in a video guide from the company.

The result in a month after the implementation:

• revenue amounted to $2k (the minimum price for a feature is $3, and we got 653 transactions);
• conversion to purchasing a full audit was 8% of impressions.

Read also: Growth marketing vs performance marketing and RevOps vs Sales Ops .

+30% features sales with triggered email for bounced free users

Apart from pop-ups, for a former client, we rolled out email drives designed to reel in users who dropped off the platform without buying features. Each of these campaigns contained a pair of emails: 👉 Email one was promptly delivered right after a user jumped ship; 👉 Email two, crafted to avoid causing annoyance, was scheduled to be sent after a two-day gap. 

If a user snagged a feature post the first email, they were spared the receipt of the second one.

Here’s a glimpse at the top-performing email, boasting a 53% Open Rate. This marketing maneuver, as part of the case, enabled the growth marketing squad to rake in a revenue north of $1.5k.

Overall email performance a month after the implementation:

• revenue — $1.5k (ARPU— $2.5, 574 transactions);
• the Conversion Rate of each email was from 7% to 15%;
• emails generated 30% of all feature sales.

User activation into a product

+33% conversion to the first application among new users (cpa network) .

This firm operates as a  CPA network affiliating bank programs, microfinance entities, insurance, and law enterprises. The company’s income is tightly linked to the activity level at which webmasters spotlight their offers.

Picture this: a user signs up on the site but is left scratching their head about your product’s workings. Typically, they might try to crack the code independently but eventually lose steam and slip into a “dormant” client mode. You can dodge this scenario, though, by immediately encouraging your clients to delve deeper and read about your product’s details.

This activation into the product is a crucial leap on the growth hacking canvas .

The solution?

Chatbot for user onboarding 👉

• Greets the webmaster on the dashboard after the signup. Qualifies users.
• Sends case studies, tool guides, and creative ideas for ads.
• Informs about bonuses.
• 1580 users interacted with the onboarding chatbot;
• The conversion rate of users to the first application has increased by 33%.

Reactivate inactive users

Every enterprise encounters customers who refrain from using its product, bypass the website, and treat communication efforts on different channels with indifference. It’s an age-old truth.

To tackle this hurdle, Freedom24 (fintech project) marketers resort to putting varied hypotheses to the test. For instance, their recent brainwave to “rekindle” interaction with such clients revolved around a combo of  app push notifications plus bonus-centric emails .

Indeed, this growth marketing tactic continues to clock in rigidly for the business, maintaining interaction with customers:

20 euro offer interested 2.95% of users who read this message in the app and 18.58% of clients who read it in email.

Marketing campaigns on how to greet and assist potential customers 

Initiate interaction with a potential client by extending a warm welcome via live chat . Slice up the audience into segments and then craft bespoke triggered messages tailored to each group for this company.

A subtle “How can we help? We’re here for you 😊” might suffice for first-timers. This approach ensures customers know precisely where to turn if they encounter a snag.

For the repeat customers, such as our boomerang buddy Mr. Yakamoto, the style can be more relaxed and chummy. Referencing a customer’s past dealings is an ace up the sleeve in terms of an engagement strategy. It allows you to resume dialogue right where you left off last.

Divvy up the audience and shoot proactive messages across varying stages of the customer journey. It ranks as one of the premier customer engagement strategies in growth marketing! Dashly client OpenCRM got aboard this tactic and witnessed a dazzling 400% surge in the total number of conversations 👇

Pro tip: you can also set up a virtual assistant. In our reality, a chatbot comes in handy for this task. 

Here’s how Dashly’s chatbot became a game-changer in guiding those visiting digital schools towards the right course choice. It’s all about the strategic “Data Science from Scratch” course page. Here, growth marketing tactics kick in and marketers start casual chats with visitors. The goal? To clear up any confusion and highlight the real value of the school’s courses.

No hard sell here — the chatbot doesn’t just blurt out “Sign up for this course” — no sirree. Instead, it gently guides and supports potential students, turning them into hot leads.

The chatbot jumps into action 29 seconds after a customer lands on the “Data Science from Scratch” course page. Its job? To aid SkillFactory customers navigate the maze of education and career decisions. So, there’s no aimless wandering around the website. Customers get the advice they need, right on the get-go, on the same page.

And the results speak for themselves:

⭐ 7.5% of visitors who got the chat message left their emails, ⭐ 5.3% of these visitors even shared their phone numbers.

What is a growth marketing case study?

A growth marketing case study is a detailed narrative that focuses on a company’s strategic use of growth marketing tactics. It chronicles how the company solved a problem, overcame a challenge or seized an opportunity, to drive significant growth or increase conversions.

How are growth marketing case studies useful for my business?

Growth marketing case studies can provide you with valuable insights into effective strategies and tactics used by other businesses. This helps you learn from their successes (or failures), trigger fresh ideas for your own strategies, and improve your decision-making process.

What information can I typically find in a growth marketing case study?

A growth marketing case study usually provides details about the subject company, its marketing objectives, the strategies it implemented, the challenges it faced, and the results it achieved. It may also provide analyses of strategy effectiveness as well as lessons learned.

Where can I find growth marketing case studies?

You can typically find growth marketing case studies on business education websites, marketing blogs, market research sites, and websites of marketing agencies. They can also be found in eBooks, whitepapers, and reports published by software providers or marketing consultancies.

How can I create a growth marketing case study for my business?

Creating a growth marketing case study involves defining your objectives and key measurements, documenting your strategies and their implementations, monitoring and recording results, and analyzing outcomes. It’s crucial to remember that an ideal case study not only highlights successes, but also provides a thoughtful evaluation of what could have been done better.

• Deep dive into growth marketing analytics with Dashly experts
• 22 SaaS growth hack Facebook tactics to boost your business
• Skyrocket your company revenue with a complete guide to  RevOps Revenue Operations
• RevOps tech stack : Guide to the best tools
• Revenue operations metrics : 10 metrics and KPIs to track your performance
• RevOps best practices : 13 tactics to implement this year
• Top 10 product led growth software your competitors use in 2023
• 10 product led growth companies that boost their development right now
• Growth marketing framework : Battle-tested insights from Dashly experts

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29 Growth Marketing Case Studies

by Samuel J. Woods

More than anything else, I regularly come across people asking for growth marketing case studies .

It’s one thing to have a list of “growth hacks” and a general sense of growth marketing methodology and process.

But quite another to learn how other companies went from zero to traction, then scale and growth.

Everyone wants to discover what other companies have done successfully. And see what’s possible, across channels, growth processes , “growth hacking”, and growth teams .

But uncovering hidden growth opportunities takes time, effort, analysis, and constant testing.

So, I analyzed and studied how a number of companies did it.

What you’ll see in this article are a wide range of companies—SaaS, apps, marketplaces, e-commerce, platforms.

Many went from small to big, fast.

Here are 29 growth marketing case studies.

Growth Marketing Case Studies Reveal a Variety of Growth Paths

Given the spread in types of companies, you can expect to learn about various growth strategies, tactics, and the path they took toward exponential growth.

Some took years, others took months. But one way or another, they tapped into a market, a need, with a product or service that solved their problems.

Growth Marketing Case Study #1: Etsy

From June 2005 to 2022, craft super seller Etsy went from a concept to nearly 14 billion in sales (in 2021), including more than 4 million sellers and almost 40 million active buyers.

Now, Etsy is a publicly-traded Nasdaq company (ETSY) with a $13 billion market cap.

How did they do it? Here’s the snapshot.

A Needed Change: Craft sellers were aggravated that eBay was so cumbersome, stingy, and seemed to lack care for sellers. These factors created an environment that was supercharged for a platform like Etsy.

They Weren’t Lazy: A marketplace is unique because it requires both buyers and sellers to be successful.

Without awesome products, there would be no need for buyers.

The founders went to every artisan flea market and craft fair to introduce them to the craft-specific selling platform.

Finding Buyers: Etsy was able to tap into a rise in the craft industry fueled by a renaissance of handmade crafters.

Some of these early product creators had built an audience but hadn’t interconnected or listed their items through an eCommerce platform.

Growing Organically: Typically, Etsy only pays for around 2-7% of their traffic (which is insane). This “grassroots” growth comes from getting out of the way of their sellers.

With 150 third-party apps and sellers who are empowered to grow their own business as they see fit, getting out of the way has led to the exponential growth of both sellers and buyers.

Continued Growth: Since its IPO, Etsy has continued to grow rapidly. Now, growth comes primarily through experimentation and a growth marketing strategy handled by teams of people.

Split testing, coming up with experiments, breaking down features, and changing small elements to gauge usefulness and user response has fueled growth.

Key Takeaways from Etsy:

• Having a keen sense of market needs can lead to initial traction and validation.
• One of the best ways to see growth in a new online business is to promote it through physical events to the public.
• Provide the right tool(s) and network with key players (that have an audience that needs your stuff).
• Figuring out ways to empower users to become brand ambassadors is a key to long-term and sustainable growth.
• Large amounts of growth are possible at every level. Strategies may change, and teams may grow, but organized experimentation, failing fast, and setting up processes will help you succeed.

Growth Marketing Case Study #2: Nasty Gal

From 2006 until 2008, Nasty Gal was an eBay business that bought and sold vintage goods for its founder (Sophia Amoruso) to try and make a living.

In 2008, she opened a stand-alone e-Commerce site, and by 2011, it hit $28 million in sales.

The following year, Nasty Gal reported $100 million in revenue and began experimenting with physical locations.

Here’s the brief on how.

Consistent Persistence: Amoruso started an eBay store (called Nasty Gal Vintage) back in 2006 to pay rent. She realized a heavy desire among millennials to dress in vintage clothes due to the unique styles of previous eras.

When she hit what would be a detrimental blow to most (her eBay store was shut down), it didn’t stop her.

That persistence led to an independent site with $28 million in revenue by 2011 (all from vintage clothing arbitrage).

Leveraging Platforms: Using share-worthy style, high margin vintage finds, and a few local models, Nasty Gal built a large following using eBay and social platforms like Myspace (well before Facebook ads).

Her strategy was simple in the early days. She made her models not only look but feel awesome and set out to “…sell things for more than you bought them.”

Perceived Value: Without even knowing what it was, Sophia knew that if she positioned clothing a certain way, it would drive up the price of the early eBay auctions.

Taking decades-old clothing and styling it on the right college-aged model with thoughtful positioning and accessories meant large profits early on and continues today. The way you present can alter the way products are perceived.

Initial Testing: Early eBay was a split-testing ground for Nasty Gal. Testing everything, including the headlines on auctions, the images available, product styles, and putting one article of clothing on several different models to try what hit and missed.

This experimentation led to gains week after week and a store that constantly performed better.

Raising the Stakes: Once the eBay store was shut down, the site came to life with a hefty social following and loyal fans. Selling out of merchandise led to Amoruso seeking a Nasty Gal line.

Through continued experimentation, social presence, and sticking to its core audience, the company has seen incredible growth.

With $100 million in revenue (2015), $65 million in VC funds last year, and two physical locations, the growth is set to continue.

Growth Marketing Case Study #3: Growth Hackers

This look at Growth Hackers will speak strongly to the frustrated founder who has hit a growth plateau.

The company seemingly stalled at 90,000 users. Then, after a little focus and only 11 weeks, that number reached over 150,000.

Get ready for a straight dose of data as we look at how they did it.

High Tempo Time: Testing different growth strategies had slowed, and goals weren’t being met. These two factors led to a stagnant user growth chart and a company not living up to its name. Recognizing this was a huge first step to setting a goal of three experiments per week.

Defining Experiments: The types of things Growth Hackers identify as experiments aren’t just a simple split test (even though those are included). New initiatives, new/revamped product releases, and other things were included to test.

It Takes a Village: A team of people was gathered from around the company to be involved with generating the ideas for experimentation.

The Hackers cited that if one person is in charge of the idea process, the number of experiments to be tested will run out without seeing the type of growth that is desired.

Their efforts resulted in hundreds of ideas that had to be prioritized by potential benefit and ease/speed of implementation.

Pace Yourself (and Meet Often): Some of the experiments took more effort than others (which is normal). However, when these larger tests were run, it caused the crew not to hit their three-a-week goal.

This problem required that they set weekly meetings to identify problems and methodically sort through their experiment list.

The Process Works: Growth Hackers was able to grow the number of users (62,000) within 11 weeks. That same number of users took 32 weeks for the company to attain during launch.

Growth Marketing Case Study #4: Slack

If you love growth stories, you’ve heard of slack. This would-be game company that turned its focus to team communication has received an incredible amount of attention.

From 15,000 users at launch (February 2014) to over 10 million daily active users now, their story is nothing short of amazing.

Here are the highlights of their early traction.

Defining a New Tool: For slack, defining itself was an issue at first. It was when they defined an entire software category that existed(but really didn’t) that they found their focus.

Offices around the world were using dozens of different tools to communicate with other team members and colleagues which made slack a no-brainer to create.

Selling the Dream: Slack is a useful tool, but offices had to be convinced they really needed it (borderline couldn’t live without it).

Since they were able to identify a whole new market, they also had to deal with educating their ideal customers and convincing them it was a need.

Once they were able to get this across, traction came like a flood.

Focus is Key: Early on, the slack founders were influenced to pick out the software’s key features and just do those as well as they possibly could.

Winning big where they won instead of even focusing across the board.

Features weren’t wholeheartedly denied, but an incredible level of care was spent perfecting file sharing and search synchronization (incredibly important to highly connected teams).

Once offices saw the results, word of mouth caused growth to catch fire again.

Give it Away: Slack followed suit of some of the most popular organization apps and offered a free service that was incredibly useful. Teams who saw that value would get the better options to a tune of a 30% conversion rate (free to paid).

A freemium model was a huge factor in the early growth that brought all of the media and VC attention, but the app itself kept paying customers.

Smooth Onboarding: Since it is a useful tool, slack had to be careful not to create a cumbersome learning curve for users.

The development of a simple and intuitive interface that allows teams to be created seamlessly and communicate immediately helped more people hit the ground running.

Growth Marketing Case Study #5: New Relic

New Relic is an analytics company that reveals the deepest secrets of cloud software and apps.

From their start in 2008 until now, they’ve managed to gain 15,400 clients (as of 2020) and monitor over 1 million websites and 1 billion (with a b) apps.

Their customers range from startups to Fortune 500s and government agencies. Their growth is incredible.

So how’d they do it? Here’s how.

Solve a Problem: The basic rule of entrepreneurship is to solve a need, and New Relic knew that they would have to create something great for a market as picky as a development community.

Early traction can almost all be traced by the quality of their product and its usefulness, making their focus on providing an excellent tool worthwhile.

Create Salespeople: Early marketing efforts were heavily focused on not only selling to large development firms but specifically Ruby on Rails programmers.

This approach was different in the sense that New Relic went after people instead of agencies, leading to popularity among those who would actually use their product.

Things like t-shirts for users and meetups led to a sense of community all built around their excellent product.

Give It Away: A freemium model would give skittish developers a chance to view their program’s analytics, enticing them to upgrade to paid.

New Relic’s marketing was simple, convince prospects to sign up and deploy to get a t-shirt and let the product do the rest.

Spending Money: In addition to shirts, the company is spending money on social ads and traffic at a high rate to gain relevant traffic. The brand is also employing multiple tools and SaaS products to gather the data they need to grow even faster.

Addictive Personality: With the product just being so dang valuable, their customers actually get dependent on the insights gained from it.

This need for the data has led to an almost unheard of negative churn rate (meaning their customers spend more year over year).

This rare occurrence happens due to the amount of data created and the space taken up on servers. Talk about growth.

Growth Marketing Case Study #6: Tinder

Shrouded in scandal and misinformation, tinder has a truly fascinating story.

Their growth has come from a mix of newsworthy attention as well as innovation in a stale and competitive market.

From the start in late 2012 until now, they’ve garnered 75 million monthly active users.

All those people use the iconic “swipe” feature over 1 billion times per day.

How much they’re worth and how much trouble they’ve seen maybe cloudy, but the best story is in their growth.

Here’s the snapshot.

Ground Game: Online dating is a notoriously tough niche, but tinder knew what it needed to succeed.

A large number of females using the app would then entice guys to join, but the supply of potential dates had to be there first.

They met this problem from sorority houses, getting girls to sign up one dorm at a time. Next, you just had to tell the college guys there were girls.

Make It Fun: The need for loads of users in each town led to the gamification of the tinder app itself.

By creating the ability to keep “swiping,” you create a sense of wonder and hope that you’ll hit the jackpot with another flick or two. This feature has been a huge factor in the overall success.

Make It Better: Tinder was able to not only create an app in a crowded market, they were able to highlight some common issues with the giants and make them better. Ladies are less likely to get heckled by countless heathens with features built into the app, making more women use (and even enjoy) the app.

Keep Going: To keep people’s profiles fresh and used, tinder continues to add features and tweak them into a more social experience (without losing its core value).

Add-ons like ‘matchmaker’, which allows someone to introduce two friends through the app, or ‘moments’, which allows a user to share edited visuals with matches.

Growth Marketing Case Study #7: Stripe

If you want to create a company that attracts investors like a bug zapper on a front porch, listen to stripe’s story.

A couple of guys (with previous success) managed to create an online payment processor that attracted the attention of the guys who made one of the first (PayPal).

With a current market cap of more than $94 billion, Stripe processes billions more every year.

How’d it happen? Let’s see.

Addressing Elephants: While payment processors existed, they were incredibly cumbersome.

Connectivity and customers were growing at a far greater rate than the ability to take payments. This obvious problem led the three founders to have a simple goal, make it easy for ecommerce businesses to take payments.

Being Different: Figuring out the frustration of other popular processors (PayPal, Google), Stripe was able to develop a platform that was business friendly.

Features that set them apart included the ability for customers to stay on the seller’s site for the entire transaction, and reducing backend features that were confusing and difficult to navigate.

Close Customer Base: Stripe used its surroundings to find it’s first loyal customers. Since the company was part of a community of companies from an incubator, they were able to use that as leverage (most of them needed a payment processor).

Organic Growth: The product spoke well to online business owners and received incredible word of mouth exposure during it’s early days.

To accelerate this advocacy, stripe sent care packages, including shirts and stickers, to developers who used the product. There were also meetups and community events that fostered loyalty.

Constant Improvement: Stripe knows who their customers are and have continuously created new solutions for developers to keep them happy and talking.

From offering specialized support for all popular programming languages, to adding new features, there is always a better stripe in development. They’ve even begun to tackle mobile payments which almost ensures more growth in the coming months.

Growth Marketing Case Study #8: Spotify

Spotify. You’ve probably heard the name. You’re likely one of the 406 million users.

The company was valued at $10 billion in just six years on the market.

Now, it’s publicly traded with a more than $20 billion market cap.

This story is incredible. We’ll take a quick look at the key ingredients to this explosive growth.

Be Different: Music is a giant industry, and the competition couldn’t be tougher.

However, there was a gaping hole in the market. Spotify launched in the U.S. with the simple, yet powerful difference of all the music you want for a low monthly fee.

From a per album and track pricing method to unlimited is almost the definition of disruption. Growth was immediate.

Deliver the Goods: There were other services, but with no options. These early versions were more like radio and lacked to ability to create a soundtrack to your life.

Spotify allowed people to be in control of their music, a feature that many would pay for instead of being fed music.

Free Growth: The freemium model is one often used to help disrupt industries. Spotify does this by delicately placing ads and limiting features as not to upset users or be classified as pirating (70% of ad income goes to song rights holders).

Multiple Launches: Before launching in the U.S. in 2011 (partnering with Facebook which was another huge proponent to early growth), the company beta launched and then officially launched in multiple European countries. These tiered released allowed them to hone their message and buyer personas.

U.S. and Facebook: Launching in the U.S. (after finding their voice) caused Spotify to explode, increasing web traffic well over a million visitors a month within four months time.

Their partnership with Facebook and integrating with the social network garnered another exponential growth session gaining 1 million new users within one month.

Growth Marketing Case Study #9: Airbnb

Necessity may be the mother of all invention, but AirBnB almost didn’t succeed.

Sometimes it takes real tenacity to see growth and it worked out well for the lodging giant.

Now worth $100 billion and responsible for more stays than anyone else in the hospitality industry, this company has seen itself through tough times to sit on the top of an industry in record time.

We’ll give you the highlights.

Hustle Fund: Well before their 450 million in funding, the founders of AirBnB had to raise their own capital. Creating a couple of politically geared cereals (Obama-O’s and Cap’n MCcain’s) the team was able to raise 30k of crucial funds.

Using Your Skills: One of the most questionable factors to Airbnb’s growth is their pillaging of Craigslist.

These gifted developers engineered a solution that was able to pirate both visitors and rental listers from the popular community site.

This tactic isn’t easy and is borderline taboo, but was used to create the largest vacation property site on the internet.

Do What You Gotta: Early on, too many properties were struggling with revenue.

The problem was traced to bad pictures which created less interest. The solution was very hands on; renting an expensive camera and taking high quality photos of every property in New York.

The income doubled and eventually became an expensive (yet effective) program. AirBnB now employees 2000 freelance photographers and revenue has hit exponential growth since the program’s introduction.

Removing Fear: There are obvious concerns when renting your home to strangers (and vice versa).

The company realized that removing fears of those who were interested in using AirBnB (yet hadn’t rented or listed) was a crucial element of growth.

Introducing social integration allowed visitors to see connections and social proof of those who had stayed in a particular location.

Going WorldWide: With so many beautiful locations around the world, AirBnB has started to see another round of huge growth from international stays. This outlet will also be a focus for continued increase in the coming years.

Growth Marketing Case Study #10: WhatsApp

WhatsApp started as a company that stuck to its guns to do one thing (allowing people to message inexpensively) and do it without ads.

This initial goal helped them attract users for the messaging app quickly, but had them second guessing any funding.

After some tenacious VC’s the app now boasts over two billion users and 1 million more daily!

Here’s the brief story of how it happened.

Pivot Power: Most companies don’t reach success offering their service they way it started. WhatsApp started as an app to let others know you weren’t available by phone. This idea failed to catch fire, until push notifications were invented.

This new feature allowed WhatsApp users to alert friends of their status instantly across the world, giving life to the idea for a messaging app.

Principle Power: The app’s founder has a note taped to his desk professing “no ads” among other things. Their product doesn’t use ads and is free for the first year($0.99 cents/year thereafter).

These core principles are still alive and set WhatsApp apart from dozens of competitors aiming for ad revenue and other gimmicks.

Pricing Power: WhatsApp is such a low-cost alternative to many other carriers and services in other countries that international growth is faster than most other famous startups combined (Facebook included). Pricing to scale is a popular feature among startups.

Timing Power: WhatsApp had expenses for the free service that required a paid option. This problem led to the $1 price point it has today, but the timing of the paid option came with an ability to share pictures which meant growth stayed steady.

Facebook Power: The app has been purchased by Facebook, which has more than added to the growth (to the tune of 25 million users a month). However, the change does come with skepticism due to Facebook’s privacy concerns.

Growth Marketing Case Study #11: LinkedIn

Executives, middle class job seekers, and networking connectors love LinkedIn.

Within a year of going live (2003) the networking social platform had half a million users, and the growth didn’t slow down there.

It’s now a publicly traded company (LNKD) that boasts well over 810 million users and thousands of employees worldwide.

Here’s the quick look at their growth story.

Start With a Need: The need for quality prospects on both the employer and employee sides of the job coin warranted a solution.

While there were other options in the early 2000’s, none offered a place for executives and decision makers to find the connections they needed. The opportunity that LinkedIn capitalized on.

Niching Down: While the startup did find resistance in the beginning (tech bubble trouble), they were able to focus on Silicon Valley and find executives eager to fill their sparse staffs with qualified talent and connect with others.

This choice would eventually garner the acceptance of the professional community.

Not So Free: While LinkedIn did remain free, they weren’t making significant revenue from ads. When they added paid features like job listings, subscriptions, and more recently and ad platform, their revenue began to take shape.

Focus on Strength: Monitoring analytics allowed LinkedIn to notice that they were very good at engaging the initial traffic reaching their site, but not as good connecting with a cold email audience. This fact led them to focus on their homepage conversions rather than email, a difficult but effective solution that led to exponential growth.

Testing to Virality: Before the company would concentrate on revenue it had to secure its growth. To do this there was a heavy period of good old growth hacking experiments, tests, and analytics until they reached a planned viral loop.

Audience Before Business: Building a large and engaged community of users before concentrating on revenue gave LinkedIn the opportunity to build a business model around an audience they already knew (and had in their pocket).

This knowledge has led to acquisitions (Slideshare) and content platforms (Pulse) that are driving continued growth.

Growth Marketing Case Study #12: Yelp

If you love a good not-so-underdog story, then Yelp’s story is probably one you’ll enjoy.

In a world of social review sites, yelp managed to rise above some big branded names and boasts over 95 million reviews.

The site received an average of 85 million views in the fourth quarter of 2015 on mobile devices alone.

It started from humble San Fran beginnings and has gone on to become a publicly traded company worth around $5 billion.

Openly Different: Yelp decided early on that reviews wouldn’t be anonymous (like the other review sites). Instead, users have profiles and are empowered to share more reviews becoming a valued member of a community.

Fostering Quality: Other review sites are often full of overly negative and one time reviewers. Yelp has created a system to reward regular reviewers with titles, ranks and other goodies to encourage a constant and accurate stream of reliable reviewers.

Start Small: Starting in the local San Francisco scene, the Yelp team was able to fix issues and gather a tight knit community. Afterwards, it was easier to take on city after city which made growth naturally exponential.

Genuinely User Friendly: So many review sites have to cater to advertisers. The problem with this model is that most ads are for the companies being reviewed (an obvious conflict of interest). However, Yelp has managed to keep the focus on a democratic review system and is seemingly unbiased.

Natural Growth: When you can create a user generated environment that allows visitors to genuinely find the best place to spend their money, you will have the type of growth that Yelp has seen. This growth has in turn spread to the businesses that deserve it. Local places that have the reviews see a jump in revenue.

Growth Marketing Case Study #13: GitHub

Programmers and developers love the idea of open source, but had a cumbersome process to add value and create.

Seeing this need has led GitHub to an incredible amount of success.

From initial traction of 100,000 users in a year, to now having over 73 million active users with thousands more every day.

Here’s how it took shape.

Make Something Easier: The problem with using open source software was the process of downloading, making changes, and then actually seeing them used.

Essentially, it was the entire process that was broken. Creating a hub for git repositories that could easily be worked on and shared was the answer (namely GitHub).

Let It Ride: With developers loving the now easier (but not perfect) way to develop open source, it became a place that offered many new programs.

This supply led to those seeking (demand) and you had a rapid growth process that would eventually be a full audience of people developing solutions and others who needed them.

Making Money: Startups that offer a freemium model often times run into trouble getting users to pay for premium memberships. GitHub had a natural solution come to them. Businesses and other developers wanted a private repository and were willing to pay for it.

This structure created an entirely different membership that the company could charge to use.

Open Popularity: Since open source software is a huge deal, GitHub was in the perfect place to become the poster child of a movement. This position was in some ways deliberate, but in all ways has led to crazy user gains.

Fast Delivery: GitHub doesn’t linger on new features. The developers find a way to deliver things quickly and then work to improve it after feedback. This quality has led to continued growth and loyalty from existing users.

Growth Marketing Case Study #14: Upworthy

While Upworthy may not be a SaaS app, or other type of software tool, its story is just as grandiose.

Scrolling through your Facebook feed you’ve seen posts from this popular viral site (or others who are emulating their success).

Endearing stories, funny videos, or multitudes of other entertaining posts are created to influence social users to visit the site.

Shortly after their launch (in 2012), Upworthy was seeing traffic to the tune of almost 90 million visitors a month (by November 2013).

Here’s how they did it.

Fast Changes: Originally, Upworthy wanted to capitalize on an election year and cover mainly political topics.

The team quickly realized that this material wasn’t getting them the traction that they needed, and switched to other topics that were already popular.

Strictly Wants: Instead of providing a need, Upworthy provides the types of content that people seem to naturally gravitate toward. Instead of text based articles, they concentrate on visual content that speaks to human emotions and behaviors.

Solid Formula: While they can’t bottle virality, they sure are good at it. Their success has come from a solid formula of curating content from around the web as well as a proprietary system of editing and evaluating it.

It essentially comes down to using data to find the content, tweaking (again by using the data), and analyzing it after it’s published (creating more data to use).

Conversions: Without a steady base of social traffic, the site wouldn’t have nearly as many visitors. To gain a steady increase of likes and followers, the team has had to A/B test various methods. These experiments have led the site’s facebook page to nearly 5 million likes since launch.

Emotions Driven: Since the click is performed by a human and the content isn’t a need, emotions play a major role in getting a visitor to the site.

The need to compel leads to tests of material, but more importantly headlines.

The click is the most important aspect so those few words that are shown are the most vital aspect (along with the image).

Future Growth: With mobile being the future, the brand has made changes to make mobile users just as click happy. In addition to mobile, the international market is ripe, but needs different forms of content and more testing is needed to see the growth already achieved in the states.

Growth Marketing Case Study #15: HubSpot

Unless you’ve been under a rock over the past few years, you’ve heard the term “inbound marketing”.

You can thank HubSpot for that. On top of crafting a new term, they’ve become a billion dollar company.

Their story is great for those who have high dollar products, but still want to see rapid growth.

With each client bringing in an average of over $6000, they’ve managed to see incredible gains in a short time.

Here’s how.

Inbound Marketing: It’s no surprise that HubSpot practices what it preaches and uses inbound as an incredible source of growth.

Having multiple blogs (that provide intense levels of value) and a great overall compelling online presence, has given them a ton of success (and continues to do so).

Free Stuff: There are few other sources online (at least for marketing) where you can find so much value completely for free.

Guides, courses, templates, you name it and it’s there. One of their most successful drivers is the free website grader (it search 4 million sites in five years).

Tailored CTA: HubSpot offers multiple types of content (as mentioned), but if you read a blog post, your offer is going to be catered to that topic. Most B2B companies have one guide, whitepaper or resource for their ideal clients.

HubSpot continues their content marketing with content specific calls to action which increases conversions (and growth).

Webinars: Early adopters in the webinar game, HubSpot was able to tap into internet savvy companies and give them free tips in an online presentation.

Webinars are a key proponent of their social growth as well as the overall success of their brand.

Growth Marketing Case Study #16: Evernote

If your company is fledging or even on the brink of shutting down, maybe you can derive a little inspiration from Evernote.

After almost closing their virtual doors, they’ve went on to gain 75 million users and a lot of VC attention (now 225 million).

They had to start somewhere and so do you, so let’s see what factors led to their success.

Surviving Trouble: Evernote was born in the midst of a world of social and new websites (not apps). This early trouble led them to only have a few weeks worth of funds in their accounts at any one time.

Fortunately, a lone user loved the product and at the last available minute wired enough funds to keep them going.

Good and Bad Timing: Evernote launched in the modern app era (2008). There were millions of users ready to download, and not a whole lot of other apps which helped early growth.

The team would also work hard to be in the new app stores on the first day opened. The funding factor wasn’t as good with the economic situation being so awful.

Useful and Impressive: Evernote desired to create an app that could act as your memory, storing anything of any size from anywhere.

On top of that, they wanted an interface that was easy to use, functional and enjoyable. Making something useful and easy are always key metrics for growth.

Freemium: One of the early adopters of the freemium model, Evernote used a basic free version of the app to entice new users.

The genuine usefulness of the product has led to a financial success to the tune of a billion dollar valuation. The value of the product increases with use, and so can the revenue.

Brand Ambassadors: Many companies hope to create advocates for their brand, but Evernote does it. Naming a select few from prominent industries as ambassadors for the app has led to incredible word of mouth and user success.

Meetups are held where the ambassador answers questions and shares the usefulness of the product in that particular field.

Continuous Improvement: In an effort to keep growth levels, Evernote has continuously put out new features and entire apps that make their initial success more useful. Every new product or acquisition has the same goal: to be useful, and beautifully functional which in the end can sell itself (with a little testing).

Growth Marketing Case Study #17: SnapChat

Sometimes your products aren’t used the way you intended and it can lead to problems.

The Snapchat founders understand that, but it didn’t lead to their growth stalling.

In fact, the popular picture/video sharing app has went from starting in 2011 to now having about 300 million users.

Provide Freedom: So often many young people feel the need for expression that can’t be obtained on most social channels. SnapChat offers users the ability to post a very expressive product that is live in real time with no lasting ramifications.

The freedom that comes from the ability to just hop on and share a moment (that won’t last) is a compelling feature that drives both engagement and growth.

Controversial Growth: Meant for colleges, the app found its start in high schools. It seems teenagers were attracted to the idea of messages that could be shared with friends and not be seen by anyone else (and no evidence).

However, the app received negative (potentially unwarranted) early press centered around the new “sexting” phenomenon. Growth continued.

Competitive Help: Facebook saw the popularity of Snapchat as a threat and created their own similar app (called Poke). The attention only gave more fuel to SnapChat’s popularity sending their growth even higher while Poke declined.

Natural Engagement: Due to the nature of the app, messages sent between users are rarely unopened. The wonder of what could be inside makes most open the messages they receive and compels them to send their own. This engagement also creates an excellent word of mouth.

Social Acceptance: More recently, heavy hitters in the online community (namely Gary Vaynerchuck among others) have begun to adopt the platform. This popularity has online audiences running to the platform and sure to equal growth.

Growth Marketing Case Study #18: Uber

Continued growth on an exponential level is a rare thing when it comes to billion dollar brands.

Uber continues to amaze, more than doubling growth year after year even after they boast a $63 billion market cap.

Not to mention they’ve done all of this since 2009 starting out as a small local service.

Let’s take a brief look at how they accomplished so much.

Monopoly Buster: Cabs are terrible. Uber fixes that problem. While it’s not perfect, this new transportation method has become the very face of modern business disruption.

The added bonus of shaking an industry is not only the joy of being useful, but the media attention (negative and positive) that further fuels growth.

Strategic Launch: If you’re going to provide a service, it’s best to give it to those with platforms. Choosing San Francisco to be the first Uber city was a strategic choice.

A place of notoriously bad taxis and people who loved new technology and had blogs and audiences of their own (people like Tim Ferris).

Driver Love: Obviously, the travel brings the revenue. However, Uber understands that they are a liaison service between two parties (one being the driver). With better pay and putting laid off drivers back to work they created instants advocates in each new city.

Focused Launches: Each city isn’t just an expansion for Uber, it’s a new place to dominate. Taking each new location seriously has led to continued growth.

This tactic doesn’t mean slow growth, they have expanded rapidly as well as meticulously across the globe.

Testimonials: Word of mouth is still one of the biggest growth drivers in the world, but Uber gets it from those who have used their service. By someone sharing their experience with someone else (a testimonial) it becomes even more compelling.

Uber also gives free rides to have more and more people telling their story.

Creating Wow: Uber loves testing different experiences for their customers. Trying to ever improve the ride has led to some great experiments and an almost guaranteed good time across town (which creates more testimonial situations).

Growth Marketing Case Study #19: Belly

Everyone hates it when customers leave. The average churn rate of a company can destroy growth.

Belly Card started out to help small and medium sized businesses increase the retention rate of clients.

A unique business model that isn’t well known, but has over 1 million users and 5000 business clients.

The neatest part about them, is that it all happened in about 15 months!

Market Research: A key driver to growth is starting with something valuable. A lot of times it’s a hunch from a founder, but not in the case of Belly. The team hit the pavement and talked with hundreds of merchants to figure out how to improve customer loyalty for local businesses.

Getting It In: After creating the product to help, they got to work. Selling in person, on the phone, and other “traditional” methods helped get them their early traction and user base. Belly worked Chicago until people and merchants were talking about their service.

City by City: With a few successful city launches under their belt, the Belly team was able to roll out that strategy in new cities with the same success. Soon after, the word of mouth took off as users and merchants loved the engaging elements (gamification) that the product provided.

Selling by Data: While national chains of independent owners are a lucrative market, selling the owners equals a slowed rate of growth and selling to the chain may not be as effective either.

However, Belly was able to take the data of the independent owners that were already using the programs (places like Subways and Chic-Fil-A’s) to entice the chains to use the service.

This process would increase sales for Belly and (in most cases) chains/franchisors as well as garner loyalty for the owners themselves (win-win-win).

Growth Marketing Case Study #20: Square

Software companies can be one of the most attractive-looking ventures, but Square was able to do something different.

The company applied a payment processing company behind an attractive and conversation-starting trend centered around their hardware.

The growth is amazing, from starting in 2009 to being one of the most popular small business payment processors with more than 8000 employees.

Here’s a quick look at how they gained traction.

Needed Change: Square makes it possible for anyone to take credit payments. With the hardware (see next point), it had never been easier for small businesses to take multiple forms of payments and sell more stuff.

Whether it would be at flea markets, or in their home office everyone could take credit. Something that was needed and wanted and that created an environment for growth.

Physical Hardware: One of the most revolutionary things about Square is the invention of it’s iconic credit card processing hardware. It’s simple, easy and opens up credit payments to a world of entrepreneurs and business owners.

The company is still doing this with iPad integrations and register POS systems today. The wow factor and talking points definitely helped them with early traction.

Happy Customers: In addition to small business owners getting an easy way to take multiple forms of payments, they like it for other reasons too. Not only is the product useful, but incredibly attractive and hip.

Business owners often know others like them, fueling the number of people who are using the new device (and the processor of course).

Founder Foundation: Jack Dorsey (also cofounded Twitter) was an obvious piece to the early growth of the platform. It wasn’t just his name, but his approach. He wrote a list of those who may be interested in funding the startup.

The list laid out 140 reasons why the company may fail as well as their counterpoints. The gimmick worked and it has garnered significant investment and popularity.

Growth Marketing Case Study #21: Canva

Back in the day, if you needed to come up with a flyer, a banner, or any design and you weren’t a designer, you had two options.

You could hire a designer or you could go through the painful process of doing it yourself on PowerPoint, or worse, use Word art.

Today you have Canva, which completely revolutionized basic graphic design for the average person.

Here’s how they’re growing.

Making it easy for everyone: There have always been other options for creating quick designs. But they had several shortcomings either in the way of UI, price, or ease of use. And these were the main things that Canva focused on since it launched.

The user interface was intuitive and had usable templates. It was web-based, so there was no need to download and install the software.

And most importantly, the free version was useful. So it was no surprise that Canva quickly became the de facto tool for anyone looking to do some quick design tasks.

Simple Pricing combined with a clear value proposition: An important aspect of Canva is that it made it easy for its users to choose to upgrade to the paid version.

The free version served the purpose of letting first-time users familiarize themselves with the platform until it became a part of their workflow. When that happened, it was a simple choice for users to upgrade to the paid version for additional features.

Also worth mentioning is that compared to their competition at the time, their pricing was in a goldilocks area for their key users.

From 0 to 15 million users: Canva’s first two years saw an impressive amount of growth. They went from 0 to 2 million monthly users.

And after seven years, they reached 15 million users, 300 thousand pro users, and are now a 3.2 billion-dollar company. To reach this massive amount of growth, they went about it with the tried and true formula of having a great product match for their audience and consistently investing in paid ads across the usual social media channels.

Growth Marketing Case Study #22: Airbnb

The word disruption is used fairly loosely nowadays. But in reality, very few businesses disrupt an industry.

Airbnb is one of the few which have. And in doing so, they grew from a three-person operation making a couple of hundred bucks a week to now reporting over 1 billion in quarterly revenue.

Today, Airbnb is a 35 billion dollar behemoth with hundreds of employees and a global presence.

Here are 6 takeaways on how Airbnb grew its business.

• Test your idea and iterate. Initially, the founders tried to make extra money by renting a spare air mattress. They took the same concept and iterated until they found the winning formula.
• They focused on finding what the bottleneck to their growth was. At first, it was about the images of the properties; later on, it became payment processing. As they kept on growing, new growth problems were solved.
• They bootstrapped and started small. Many new businesses want to immediately get funding to accelerate their growth. This is not necessarily wrong. However, AirBnb already was bringing in profits and had a working product by the time they took on venture capital. This made it significantly easier for them to raise capital and acquire investors.
• They took over the industry by being themselves. Airbnb didn’t set out to compete with hotels directly. In the beginning, they offered a more affordable option for travelers, but what really set them apart was the fact that they were selling the experience of living in the place you were visiting instead of being a tourist as you would be with a traditional hotel.
• They take care of their customers. One of the critical aspects of Airbnb is how the platform takes care of all its users. Airbnb offers a big insurance policy to their hosts so that they can have the confidence to rent out their properties.
• Upsells and cross-sells have become a major source of revenue. Instead of limiting themselves, they decided to listen to their customers and incentivize their hosts to offer additional services that would help them increase their income. A win, win, win type of deal.

Growth Marketing Case Study #23: Koala

In 2015, Koala made waves as one of the most successful businesses to launch in the recently created direct-to-consumer mattress space.

It quickly grew up to $13 million in sales in its first 12 months of operating.

During their first year, the team behind Koala did something that let them accelerate their growth. They had a laser focus on the digital marketing channels that brought them the most results.

Here’s a brief breakdown of how they went about strategizing their growth.

Have a great product and an amazing offer: To start off, Koala launched with a great product that was highly competitive compared with the traditional market. But what set them apart was the quality of the offer.

The offer was miles ahead of what their competition had at the moment. This is where free delivery, pickup, and a 120 free trial with no strings attached set them apart.

This amount of confidence in their product helped with making it easier for new customers to choose the new and innovative mattress company.

Laser-focus on what works: During their first year, Koala approached their marketing with a laser focus on one marketing channel: Facebook.

Instead of spreading themselves thin by diluting their budget across multiple channels, they decided to concentrate their efforts on dominating their chosen platform.

They did this by investing heavily in creating exciting and eye-catching ads and making the most out of Facebook’s retargeting capabilities.

This is why if you spent any amount of time browsing Facebook back in 2015, you probably came across an ad or two from Koala.

Make it easy for your customers to talk about you: The direct-to-consumer mattress business was still new and didn’t have widespread adoption back in 2015.

To address the novelty aspect of their business model, they relied heavily on having established processes that made it easy for their new customer to share their experiences.

Customer testimonials make a huge amount of difference for new businesses. They essentially shorten the amount of time needed for a new customer that is still on the fence about whether or not they want to try a new product.

Growth Marketing Case Study #24: Hip Kids

Hip Kids is a children’s toy company that carved out a niche for itself by offering a more high-quality and durable alternative to the primarily disposable toys that are commonplace in the market.

This singular attention to detail and alignment to their core values helped them take their company to the 7-figure mark in sales.

But they reached a point where, even though they had a healthy marketing budget, they just weren’t seeing the growth they expected.

This is what they did to triple the revenue and spur growth for their already well-established brand.

Define the root cause of the problem: To understand the root cause of the problem, a little context is necessary.

HipKids started as an eBay store about a decade ago. They started small, and as the demand for their products grew, they were able to open up their own website and even open up a few physical locations for their brand.

Due to their organic growth, they added additional pieces to their marketing one at a time, and often from different agencies.

First they did their website, then they added an in-house designer, then they went with a PPC agency to get targeted traffic, and finally, they also invested in their SEO.

As you can imagine, after investing in each new marketing channel, they saw an initial spur of growth that quickly stagnated. It was this fragmented approach to their marketing strategy that made it difficult for their campaigns to work in unison and build up the momentum they needed to reach their growth goals.

Efficiency and optimization are key: Once the problem was defined, it became a matter of restructuring their marketing team to make sure that it was all moving in the same direction.

With a brand new marketing structure set in place, then it was possible for the marketing team to work on optimizing their campaigns and iterating over time to attract new traffic and improve conversion rates. This is what ultimately let HipKids triple its revenue.

Growth Marketing Case Study #25: Dropbox

Dropbox has spent very little on advertising but has grown the company to $4 billion. This article shares some of Dropbox’s top techniques, specifically through word of mouth.

A decade ago, the internet was very different. To start off, it was much slower. The average download speed was only 5 Mbps.

Today, you’ll often find speeds 20x faster just about anywhere, even on mobile phones.

Due to these limitations, sharing and storing large files on the cloud was challenging and often expensive.

Cloud storage was mostly directed to businesses, and the consumer-level solutions available were clunky and unfriendly to the average user.

That is until Dropbox entered the market.

Tried and true old-school tactics: Even though Dropbox is a huge SAAS, it’s interesting to know that its initial growth did not rely on advertising of any form.

They went to the old school method of using word of mouth from their customers to reach the growth they were after.

The most valuable resource back then was storage space. So they gave out storage space to their existing customers so that they could motivate them to share their experiences with Dropbox.

This approach worked wonders, and Dropbox’s revenue quickly exceeded the $100 million mark.

Make it easy for your users: Dropbox wasn’t the first or only consumer-level cloud storage option in the market. But it was by far the easiest. Most of their competition, even those that were in the market before them, had cumbersome interfaces and poor customer support which made it difficult for users to sign up for their services.

Most of them had ads on their signup pages, so yes, it was ugly.

Dropbox, on the other hand, had a clean signup page that made it easy for users to sign up. Nothing unnecessary, and no ads were found on the signup page.

Incentivize sharing on social media: Back in 2011, social media reach was very effective in driving traffic. So to take advantage of this, Dropbox incentivized social media shares with free space. This worked out to be the perfect complement to their referral strategy. It decreased the friction in sharing and made it highly attractive for their existing users to become brand ambassadors.

Growth Marketing Case Study #26: Dollar Shave Club

The marketing behind razors, up until the launch of DSC, was pretty consistent. Every “new” razor offered the exact same thing, a better way to shave.

And it worked to some extent because razors are an everyday product for a lot of people.

They just ended up buying them the same way they had always done.

Dollar Shave Club didn’t innovate the product they sold. Their product is, albeit high quality, just about the same as everything else in the market.

So why did they become so popular? Because they innovated the experience.

Make your marketing fun and memorable: Dollar Shave Club’s initial marketing was nothing short of genius. It was fun, and it was memorable. It was a welcome departure from the idealized and mostly non-relatable approach that the traditional brands had embraced decades ago.

This more honest, down-to-earth, and witty approach gave them something that the other brands didn’t have. It gave them a relatable personality.

And the consistency of their personality across every aspect of their brand made them feel reassuringly consistent and was enough to help them differentiate themselves from the rest of their competitors.

Create an experience: Since innovation on the product side of things wasn’t much of an option, they decided to innovate on their customer’s experience.

The first hint of this is in their name. Dollar shave club is exactly what they are. They’re a club, something you can be a part of.

And this feeling of inclusion and community, paired with the direct-to-consumer model, made the experience of getting your razors from Dollar Shave Club highly attractive.

Get customers for life: One of the biggest drivers of growth behind DCS is that they have an incredibly long ratio of lifelong customers. Simply put, their business model makes it easy for their customers to want to keep on buying from them.

It’s a simple and straightforward subscription model that most users can get on board with.

This is what ultimately helped them reach a $615 million dollar valuation and ultimately be bought out by Unilever for $1 billion in 2015.

Growth Marketing Case Study #27: Casper

Casper is one of the best examples of how changing and improving the customer experience can revolutionize a segment.

Before Casper, if you were in the market for a new bed, you had to go to a physical location and well put up with being sold to.

That’s one of the reasons why so many people put up with an uncomfortable mattress.

The physical pain of a bad mattress wasn’t as bad as the pain of having to deal with the pain of going through all the hoops of buying a new mattress.

Casper changed this and led the way to a new trend of direct-to-consumer mattresses that revolutionized the entire sleep industry.

Understand your customer’s true pain: The traditional dealer-distributor model that has been in place for years made it so that buying a mattress was a less than pleasant experience for most customers.

It’s a model where salespeople were incentivized to sell but, unfortunately, got the reputation of using sleazy sales tactics.

Casper understood that this was the real reason why people wouldn’t buy a new mattress. They just didn’t want to go through that process, even though their old mattress was uncomfortable and even caused them health problems.

Casper gave its customers a much more viable alternative and had a high-quality product that their customers would be willing to try out.

Address all your customer’s concerns: One of the main challenges was to change the customer’s perception that they had to try-before-they-buy a mattress.

They tackled this head-on by offering an incredibly bold satisfaction guarantee and by providing plenty of educational content on their products so that customers could feel confident in their buying decision.

Then they followed up their product with SEO content centered around sleep and how it impacted health so that they could further establish themselves as sleep experts and gain their customer’s trust.

Leverage customer reviews: Casper did a great job at leveraging its customer reviews. They made it one of the central aspects of their retargeting and email marketing campaigns. Customer reviews are powerful tools since they provide a seemingly unbiased perspective of your product.

Growth Marketing Case Study #28: Groupon

Everyone loves a great deal. It’s a simple concept, and Groupon leveraged it to go from zero to having a $12.7 billion IPO.

Equally impressive as their valuation is the rate at which they were growing on a yearly basis. To reach this huge amount of sustainable growth, they relied on a few tried and true growth tactics.

These tactics are so effective that you’ll see that several other businesses in this article followed them to great success.

This means that you don’t necessarily need to reinvent the wheel but rather spend your energy on making it turn as fast as possible.

Make sharing easy: Groupon is, at its core, a social platform. And as such, it makes it very easy to be social. Groupon has always made it easy for its users to share the deals that they are interested in.

It incentivizes it because if not enough deals are taken, the deal won’t be available. So it adds an element of scarcity and perceived exclusivity.

So when FOMO kicks in, Groupon users become highly motivated to share on their social channels and increase the likelihood of their deals coming to fruition.

This, in turn, has the benefit of making sure the Groupon brand is consistently shared.

Email is still very powerful: For some reason, there’s always someone stating that email is dead. That inboxes are too cluttered and that no one pays attention to them anymore. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and Groupon knows this. This is why they have made email a key part of their marketing.

It’s important to understand that if someone voluntarily signs up for your emails, then they are giving permission to reach out to them.

Groupon makes the most out of this by sending daily emails with highly valuable content.

Copywriting makes a big difference: The quality of how you communicate with your customers makes a big difference in how effectively you can retain their attention. Groupon learned this early on and has characterized itself by sending interesting and fun-to-read emails.

It’s important to remember that nobody likes boring and bland content. Your customers will read what you have to say, but only if it’s well written and grabs their attention.

Growth Marketing Case Study #29: Porch.com

The home improvement market is enormous. It’s $500 billion and continues to grow at a steady rate.

So it was only a matter of time until a startup would try to revolutionize a market that had historically lacked innovation.

Enter the Seattle-based Porch.com. In 2013 porch set out to become the “Uber” of home improvement projects by helping connect construction professionals with homeowners that needed help in completing their tasks.

Amongst its achievements, Porch.com can mention:

• 300000 active professionals across the US.
• Nasdaq IPO in the year 2020.
• They reach approximately 66% of the homeowner market.

However, back in 2018, before they went public, their growth had started to plateau. Something had to be done. So they made a concentrated effort to improve their search engine visibility so that they could get a more sustainable and cost-efficient source of traffic. To achieve this goal, they went with the tried and true strategy of increasing their backlinks.

Link building can be transformative for your traffic: The reason why link building was chosen is that since they had started to rely on paid advertising for their lead acquisition, their cost per lead had started to increase.

This rise in cost per lead was eating into their profit margins, so from an ROI perspective, investing in cultivating high-quality backlinks was a good strategy to follow.

Porch’s marketing was able to obtain over 931 backlinks from unique domains throughout the year. This helped them make a significant boost in their organic traffic and helped decrease the total cost of their lead acquisition.

Here are some of the growth strategies they followed:

• They didn’t limit themselves to home renovation topics but rather created content across a broad range of related topics to expand the number of high-quality websites they could be relevant to.
• This broad range of content helped them land mention on television and local radio across several major cities.
• Some of the results generated by the campaign were 257 mentions from relevant publishers, 180 regional media mentions, and over 38000 social shares.

[…] If you want real-life examples of what other companies have done, take a look at these growth marketing case studies. […]

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Netflix’s Competitive Strategy & Growth Strategies

Netflix’s competitive strategy and growth strategies define the operational activities and tactics for developing the business. The competitive advantages based on the company’s generic competitive strategy support competitiveness against many large firms in the entertainment industry. Netflix’s intensive growth strategies use these competitive advantages to grow the business, such as by competing to grow the company’s market share. The company’s strategic objectives indicate the importance of low costs and a large international subscriber base. The combination of Netflix’s competitive strategy and growth strategies ensures that the company improves its financial performance and finds new ways to generate more revenues.

The appropriateness of Netflix’s competitive strategy depends on the industry situation and the competitive environment. The company’s strategic prioritization of cost effectiveness for competitive advantage is based on the industry environment where many firms compete based on price. As a result, Netflix’s growth strategies prioritize market share growth to ensure profitability despite low-cost measures.

Netflix’s Competitive Strategy

Netflix’s competitive strategy is cost leadership , which functions as the primary strategy for the company’s competitive advantages. According to Porter’s model of generic strategies, cost leadership ensures competitive advantage based on low costs that can be used to offer competitive prices to the company’s target customers, e.g., subscribers. The cost-based nature of this competitive strategy has wide-ranging effects on Netflix’s strategic objectives. For example, competitive prices facilitate market reach maximization, which is a strategic goal based on Netflix’s mission statement and vision statement . Low costs enable profitable operations despite low prices, which attract more subscribers around the world. This means that Netflix’s competitive strategy of cost leadership facilitates endeavors for growing the company’s market share.

Netflix also uses differentiation as a secondary competitive strategy. The goal of this strategy is to develop competitive advantages based on factors that make the company stand out when compared to rivals. For example, as one of Netflix’s competitive strategies, differentiation is implemented in the production of original content (movies and series), which ensures the company’s competitive advantages by retaining subscribers who prefer to watch content that is not available from competing video streaming services. These competitors include the entertainment production and streaming services of Disney , NBCUniversal, and Sony , as well as Google’s (Alphabet’s) YouTube, Apple , Amazon , Microsoft , and Facebook (Meta) . The Five Forces analysis of Netflix demonstrates that these companies’ competitive strategies create a challenging industry environment. Netflix’s competitive strategy of differentiation helps address this competition and its strategic challenges.

Netflix’s Growth Strategies

Netflix’s growth strategy is market penetration , which is the primary driver of the company’s growth and expansion in the international market. In Ansoff’s matrix, this intensive growth strategy’s objective is to grow the business by selling more of current products to the company’s current market. For example, Netflix aims to gain more subscribers through its current operations in North America, Europe, and Asia. A bigger market share equates to higher revenues and a bigger market presence that can be used to launch new products. For this intensive growth strategy of market penetration, the competitive advantages enumerated in the SWOT analysis of Netflix are used to penetrate markets and gain market share despite competition. Also, the generic competitive strategies of cost leadership and differentiation enable attractive pricing and unique entertainment content, respectively, to attract more subscribers for this growth strategy of market penetration.

Netflix also uses product development as a secondary growth strategy. The Ansoff matrix states that this intensive growth strategy involves offering new products to the company’s current market. In this case of Netflix’s growth strategy, the company’s strategic objective is to produce new original movies and series, which are new products for current and new subscribers in current markets. New original content makes the company’s streaming service an attractive option for customers. The requirements of product development as an intensive growth strategy apply to Netflix’s operations management , such as in maximizing productivity in producing new movies and series. New entertainment content resulting from the application of this growth strategy contributes to uniqueness that enables the company’s generic competitive strategy of differentiation.

Netflix applies diversification as a minor growth strategy with a limited impact on the company’s current business growth. In Ansoff’s matrix, this intensive growth strategy’s objective is to produce new products for new markets. In this case of Netflix’s growth strategy, product development involves offering entirely new products other than the company’s initial core offerings. For example, the company now offers mobile games. The mobile gaming market can support new business growth by attracting gamers, especially those who do not yet have a Netflix account. As a growth strategy, diversification involves new teams, groups, or divisions in Netflix’s organizational structure (business structure) , which influences the availability of resources for implementing this growth strategy. The generic competitive strategy of differentiation ensures that these new products are unique. Also, Netflix’s competitive strategy of cost leadership determines the cost structure and limits for these new products’ competitive advantage based on low costs that translate to affordability.

• Gómez, R., & Munoz Larroa, A. (2023). Netflix in Mexico: An example of the tech giant’s transnational business strategies. Television & New Media, 24 (1), 88-105.
• Iordache, C., Raats, T., & Mombaerts, S. (2023). The Netflix Original documentary, explained: Global investment patterns in documentary films and series. Studies in Documentary Film, 17 (2), 151-171.
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• Netflix, Inc. – Form 10-K .
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Home » Management Case Studies » Case Study: Nestle’s Growth Strategy

Case Study: Nestle’s Growth Strategy

Nestle is one of the oldest of all multinational businesses. The company was founded in Switzerland in 1866 by Heinrich Nestle, who established Nestle to distribute “milk food,” a type of infant food he had invented that was made from powdered milk, baked food, and sugar. From its very early days, the company looked to other countries for growth opportunities, establishing its first foreign offices in London in 1868. In 1905, the company merged with the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk, thereby broadening the company’s product line to include both condensed milk and infant formulas. Forced by Switzer ­land’s small size to look outside’ its borders for growth opportunities, Nestle established condensed milk and infant food processing plants in the United States and Britain in the late 19th century and in Australia, South America, Africa, and Asia in the first three decades of the 20th century. In 1929, Nestle moved into the chocolate business when it acquired a Swiss chocolate maker. This was fol ­lowed in 1938 by the development of Nestle’s most rev ­olutionary product, Nescafe, the world’s first soluble coffee drink. After World War 11, Nestle continued to expand into other areas of the food business, primarily through a series of acquisitions that included Maggi (1947), Cross & Blackwell (1960), Findus (1962), Libby’s (1970), Stouffer’s (1973), Carnation (1985), Rowntree (1988), and Perrier (1992). By the late 1990s, Nestle had 500 factories in 76 countries and sold its products in a staggering 193 nations-almost every country in the world. In 1998, the company generated sales of close to SWF 72 billion ($51 billion), only 1 percent of which occurred in its home country. Similarly, only 3 percent of its- 210,000 employees were located in Switzerland. Nestle was the world’s biggest maker of infant formula, powdered milk, chocolates, instant coffee, soups, and mineral waters. It was number two in ice cream, breakfast cereals, and pet food. Roughly 38 percent of its food sales were made in Europe, 32 percent in the Americas, and 20 percent in Africa and Asia.

Management Structure

Nestle is a decentralized organization .   Responsibility for operating decisions is pushed down to local units, which typically enjoy a high degree of autonomy with regard to decisions involving pricing, distribution, marketing, human resources, and so on.   At the same time, the company is organized into seven worldwide strategic business units (SBUs) that have responsibility for high-level strategic decisions and business development.   For example, a strategic business unit focuses on coffee and beverages.   Another one focuses on confectionery and ice cream.   These SBUs engage in overall strategy development, including acquisitions and market entry strategy.   In recent years, two-thirds of Nestle’s growth has come from acquisitions, so this is a critical function.   Running in parallel to this structure is a regional organization that divides the world into five major geographical zones, such as Europe, North America and Asia.   The regional organizations assist in the overall strategy development process and are responsible for developing regional strategies (an example would be Nestle’s strategy in the Middle East, which was discussed earlier).   Neither the SBU nor regional managers, however, get involved in local operating or strategic decisions on anything other than an exceptional basis.

Although Nestle makes intensive use of local managers to knit its diverse worldwide operations together, the company relies on its “expatriate army.”   This consists of about 700 managers who spend the bulk of their careers on foreign assignments , moving from one country to the next.   Selected primarily on the basis of their ability, drive and willingness to live a quasi-nomadic lifestyle, these individuals often work in half-a-dozen nations during their careers.   Nestle also uses management development programs as a strategic tool for creating an esprit de corps among managers.   At Rive-Reine, the company’s international training center in Switzerland, the company brings together, managers from around the world, at different stages in their careers, for specially targetted development programs of two to three weeks’ duration.   The objective of these programs is to give the managers a better understanding of Nestle’s culture and strategy, and to give them access to the company’s top management.

The research and development operation has a special place within Nestle, which is not surprising for a company that was established to commercialize innovative food stuffs.   The R&D function comprises 18 different groups that operate in 11 countries throughout the world.   Nestle spends approximately 1 percent of its annual sales revenue on R&D and has 3,100 employees dedicated to the function.   Around 70 percent of the R&D budget is spent on development initiatives.   These initiatives focus on developing products and processes that fulfill market needs, as identified by the SBUs, in concert with regional and local managers.   For example, Nestle instant noodle products were originally developed by the R&D group in response to the perceived needs of local operating companies through the Asian region. The company also has longer-term development projects that focus on developing new technological platforms, such as non-animal protein sources or agricultural biotechnology products.

A Growth Strategy for the 21 st Century

Despite its undisputed success, Nestle realized by the early 1990s, that it faced significant challenges in maintaining its growth rate. The large Western European and North American markets were mature.   In several countries, population growth had stagnated and in some, there had been a small decline in food consumption. The retail environment in many Western nations had become increasingly challenging and the balance of power was shifting away from the large-scale manufacturers of branded foods and beverages, and toward nationwide supermarket and discount chains. Increasingly, retailers found themselves in the unfamiliar position of playing off against each other – manufacturers of branded foods, thus bargaining down prices. Particularly in Europe, this trend was enhanced by the successful introduction of private-label brands by several of Europe’s leading supermarket chains.   The results included increased price competition in several key segments of the food and beverage market, such as cereals, coffee and soft drinks.

At Nestle, one response has been to look toward emerging markets in Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America for growth possibilities.   The logic is simple and obvious – a combination of economic and population growth, when coupled with the widespread adoption of market-oriented economic policies by the governments of many developing nations, makes for attractive business opportunities.   Many of these countries are still relatively poor, but their economies are growing rapidly.   For example, if current economic growth forecasts occur, by 2010, there will be 700 million people in China and India that have income levels approaching those of Spain in the mid-1990s.   As income levels rise, it is increasingly likely that consumers in these nations will start to substitute branded food products for basic foodstuffs, creating a large market opportunity for companies such as Nestle.

In general,  Nestle’s growth strategy had been to enter emerging markets early – before competitors – and build a substantial position by selling basic food items that appeal to the local population base, such as infant formula, condensed milk, noodles and tofu. By narrowing its initial market focus to just a handful of strategic brands, Nestle claims it can simplify life, reduce risk, and concentrate its marketing resources and managerial effort on a limited number of key niches.   The goal is to build a commanding market position in each of these niches.   By pursuing such a strategy, Nestle has taken as much as 85 percent of the market for instant coffee in Mexico, 66 percent of the market for powdered milk in the Philippines, and 70 percent of the markets for soups in Chile.   As income levels rise, the company progressively moves out from these niches, introducing more upscale items, such as mineral water, chocolate, cookies, and prepared foodstuffs.

Although the company is known worldwide for several key brands, such as Nescafe, it uses local brands in many markets.   The company owns 8,500 brands, but only 750 of them are registered in more than one country, and only 80 are registered in more than 10 countries.   While the company will use the same “global brands” in multiple developed markets, in the developing world it focuses on trying to optimize ingredients and processing technology to local conditions and then using a brand name that resonates locally. Customization rather than globalization is the key to the Nestle’s growth strategy  in emerging markets.

Executing the Strategy

Successful execution of the strategy for developing markets requires a degree of flexibility, an ability to adapt in often unforeseen ways to local conditions, and a long-term perspective that puts building a sustainable business before short-term profitability.   In Nigeria, for example, a crumbling road system, aging trucks, and the danger of violence forced the company to re-think its traditional distribution methods.   Instead of operating a central warehouse, as is its preference in most nations, the country.   For safety reasons, trucks carrying Nestle goods are allowed to travel only during the day and frequently under-armed guard.   Marketing also poses challenges in Nigeria.   With little opportunity for typical Western-style advertising on television of billboards, the company hired local singers to go to towns and villages offering a mix of entertainment and product demonstrations.

China provides another interesting example of local adaptation and long-term focus.   After 13 years of talks, Nestle was formally invited into China in 1987, by the Government of Heilongjiang province.   Nestle opened a plant to produce powdered milk and infant formula there in 1990, but quickly realized that the local rail and road infrastructure was inadequate and inhibited the collection of milk and delivery of finished products.   Rather than make do with the local infrastructure, Nestle embarked on an ambitious plan to establish its own distribution network, known as milk roads, between 27 villages in the region and factory collection points, called chilling centres.   Farmers brought their milk – often on bicycles or carts – to the centres where it was weighed and analysed.   Unlike the government, Nestle paid the farmers promptly.   Suddenly the farmers had an incentive to produce milk and many bought a second cow, increasing the cow population in the district by 3,000 to 9,000 in 18 months.   Area managers then organized a delivery system that used dedicated vans to deliver the milk to Nestle’s factory.

Although at first glance this might seem to be a very costly solution, Nestle calculated that the long-term benefits would be substantial.   Nestle’s strategy is similar to that undertaken by many European and American companies during the first waves of industrialization in those countries.   Companies often had to invest in infrastructure that we now take for granted to get production off the ground.   Once the infrastructure was in place, in China, Nestle’s production took off.   In 1990, 316 tons of powdered milk and infant formula were produced.   By 1994, output exceeded 10,000 tons and the company decided to triple capacity.   Based on this experience, Nestle decided to build another two powdered milk factories in China and was aiming to generate sales of $700 million by 2000.

Nestle is pursuing a similar long-term bet in the Middle East, an area in which most multinational food companies have little presence.   Collectively, the Middle East accounts for only about 2 percent of Nestle’s worldwide sales and the individual markets are very small.   However, Nestle’s long-term strategy is based on the assumption that regional conflicts will subside and intra-regional trade will expand as trade barriers between countries in the region come down.   Once that happens, Nestle’s factories in the Middle East should be able to sell throughout the region, thereby realizing scale economies.   In anticipation of this development, Nestle has established a network of factories in five countries, in the hope that each will, someday, supply the entire region with different products.   The company, currently makes ice-cream in Dubai, soups and cereals in Saudi Arabia, yogurt and bouillon in Egypt, chocolate in Turkey, and ketchup and instant noodles in Syria.   For the present, Nestle can survive in these markets by using local materials and focusing on local demand.   The Syrian factory, for example, relies on products that use tomatoes, a major local agricultural product.   Syria also produces wheat, which is the main ingredient in instant noodles. Even if trade barriers don’t come down soon, Nestle has indicated it will remain committed to the region. By using local inputs and focussing on local consumer needs, it has earned a good rate of return in the region, even though the individual markets are small.

Despite its successes in places such as China and parts of the Middle East, not all of Nestle’s moves have worked out so well.   Like several other Western companies, Nestle has had its problems in Japan, where a failure to adapt its coffee brand to local conditions meant the loss of a significant market opportunity to another Western company, Coca Cola.   For years, Nestle’s instant coffee brand was the dominant coffee product in Japan.   In the 1960s, cold canned coffee (which can be purchased from soda vending machines) started to gain a following in Japan. Nestle dismissed the product as just a coffee-flavoured drink rather than the real thing and declined to enter the market.   Nestle’s local partner at the time, Kirin Beer, was so incensed at Nestle’s refusal to enter the canned coffee market that it broke off its relationship with the company. In contrast, Coca Cola entered the market with Georgia, a product developed specifically for this segment of the Japanese market.   By leveraging its existing distribution channel, Coca Cola captured a 40 percent share of the $4 billion a year, market for canned coffee in Japan.   Nestle, which failed to enter the market until the 1980s, has only a 4 percent share.

While Nestle has built businesses from the ground up, in many emerging markets, such as Nigeria and China, in others it will purchase local companies if suitable candidates can be found.   The company pursued such a strategy in Poland, which it entered in 1994, by purchasing Goplana, the country’s second largest chocolate manufacturer. With the collapse of communism and the opening of the Polish market, income levels in Poland have started to rise and so has chocolate consumption.   Once a scarce item, the market grew by 8 percent a year, throughout the 1990s.   To take advantage of this opportunity, Nestle has pursued a strategy of evolution, rather than revolution.   It has kept the top management of the company staffed with locals – as it does in most of its operations around the world – and carefully adjusted Goplana’s product line to better match local opportunities.   At the same time, it has pumped money into Goplana’s marketing, which has enabled the unit to gain share from several other chocolate makers in the country.   Still, competition in the market is intense.   Eight companies, including several foreign-owned enterprises, such as the market leader, Wedel, which is owned by PepsiCo , are vying for market share, and this has depressed prices and profit margins, despite the healthy volume growth.

Discussions:

• Does it make sense for Nestle to focus its growth efforts on emerging markets? Why?
• What is the company’s strategy with regard to business development in emerging markets? Does this strategy make sense? From an organizational perspective, what is required for this strategy to work effectively?
• Through your own research on NESTLE, identify appropriate performance indicators. Once you have gathered relevant data on these, undertake a performance analysis of the company over the last five years. What does the analysis tell you about the success or otherwise of the strategy adopted by the company?
• How would you describe Nestle’s strategic posture at the corporate level; is it pursuing a global strategy, a multidomestic strategy an international strategy or a transnational strategy?
• Does this overall strategic posture make sense given the markets and countries that Nestle participates in? Why?
• Is Nestle’s management structure and philosophy aligned with its overall strategic posture?

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Growth Strategy Case Study: Driscoll’s Berries

Berry Big Growth: Can You Believe this Berry Company Has Grown 15% Annually for 30 Years?

Driscoll’s berries are an intriguing growth strategy case study. In our family, we’re big berry eaters year-round, and are partial to strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries.  Driscoll’s berries are part of our daily breakfast and occasional dessert routine, as in last night’s strawberry shortcake. 

The company’s growth results placed them in the top performers in the 2020 CPG Growth Leaders from IRI and BCG. The brand grew 19% from 2019 to 2020 to sales of $2.6 billion. And, Driscoll’s has been consistently growing, ranking in the top growth leaders in 2018 and 2019 (prior to COVID impact).  According to Driscoll’s CEO Miles Reiter, Driscoll’s has grown roughly 15% annually for more than 30 years.

Growth Strategy Case Study: Packaging and New Premium Varieties

This week, I was intrigued to find a package of Driscoll’s Berry Big Strawberries that my fiancé brought home. These berries are a lot larger than the typical, and each berry is carefully placed and displayed through the package window, similar to a box of fine chocolates. The packaging is also different, a rectangular box that’s light brown. Overall, it’s a premium look and sets up an expectation before even tasting that these will be delicious, and of course, large, berries. 

Berry Big is premium-priced. A price check at Kroger.com shows that an 18-ounce package of Berry Big retails for $3.99, compared with $2.99 everyday pricing and two-for-$5.00 promoted pricing for 16-ounce regular-sized strawberries sold in traditional clamshell packages (not Driscoll’s branded). Instacart also shows $3.99 for Berry Big. 

To support the premium pricing, Berry Big marketing also suggests more premium occasions, “Share ‘em, Dip ‘em, Slice em!” with situations like dipping in chocolate, and/or decorating the Berry Big. The packaging is also touted as 100% recyclable. Driscoll’s has made a number of sustainability pledges, focusing on water and plastics. 

Using packaging for the growth strategy makes good sense. Packaging plays a meaningful role in consumer’s perceptions of how premium and high quality a product is. In packaged supermarket cookies, the definition of a premium cookie is a higher priced cookie in a smaller, premium package. For example, Pepperidge Farm’s signature Milano in their white, standup “bakery” bag priced at $3.99 for 7.5 ounces vs. mainstream-priced Chips Ahoy! at $3.71 for 18.2 ounces in a plastic tray with overwrap package.

Berry Big strawberry met our family’s expectation for a premium strawberry. Driscoll’s created a Consumer Advisory Panel with research that asked panelist consumers to rate each package on “taste/flavor, appearance, condition, and texture” on a 10-point satisfaction scale, with scores below six flagging issues. According to a recent interview, the company continues to work on this area, but the initial effort didn’t provide a sufficiently robust quantity of feedback. 

Driscoll’s indicates that Berry Big is typically available only early in the summer season, and that they deliver against the organization’s high-quality standards of sweetness and visual appeal. 

Along with Berry Big strawberries, Driscoll’s strawberry product portfolio also includes Sweetest Batch , along with the “classic yellow-label” and “organic green-label” varieties.    

Recent trademark applications from Driscoll’s suggest other products. They include:

• BERRY BIG (fresh berries) 4/21/20
• SWEETNESS WORTH SHARING (fresh berries) 7/31/20
• ROSA% BERRIES 6/10/19

We can expect to see more examples of premium packaging and berries from Driscoll’s in the future. 

Growth Strategy Case Study: Year-Round Supply of Berry Portfolio

Strategically, Driscoll’s prioritized year-round supply of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries as essential to drive its growth. Winning with advantaged, quality year-round product supply has been a driving long-term growth strategy.

According to one source , Driscoll’s has about a third of the U.S. berry market. While the majority of their berries are grown by outsourced farmers, around one third of their fruit is grown by Driscoll’s family-related parties, in addition to over 750 independent growers in 20 countries, including Mexico, US, Chile and Peru. Of note, another recent interview mentioned over 1,000 independent growers.

Berry types other than strawberries have been important growth contributors. Soren Bjorn, President of Driscoll’s of the America shared in a December 2017 video interview that berry types beyond strawberries are also meaningful growth drivers.

“At Driscoll’s, our really big growth is coming from blackberries and blueberries, in particular, and we have some great new varieties that really have outstanding flavor.  That together with our organic offer- which is growing much faster than conventional.”

Growth Strategy Case Study: Vertical Indoor Farming and Geographic Expansion

Driscoll’s is also actively exploring producing strawberries indoors , in a controlled environment.  They are partnering with Plenty, with initial indoor Driscoll’s strawberries grown in Laramie, Wyoming.

Outside of the US, Driscoll’s has shared a goal to triple its berry business in China , specifically from 10,000 metric tons in 2020 to 30,000 metric tons in 2025.

“Over time, China potentially can be as big as, if not bigger than, the biggest fresh berry market in the world, which currently is the United States.  The typical customer profile for Driscoll’s is female aged between 25 and 40 years old, who is keen on wholesome foods that have health benefits and taste good.” Jae Moon Chun, Driscoll’s VP and GM China

Growth Strategy Case Study: Success of Independent Growers

The success of independent farmer growers is also an important growth strategy.  For instance, in May 2020 , when foodservice demand for berries dropped, driven by schools, hotels, corporate catering and restaurants, Driscoll’s shifted as much product to retail as possible to avoid plowing fields under.

In a recent Food Tank interview,

“(CEO Miles) Reiter attributes this success to the company’s focus on elevating its workers and partners… Our mission is to continually delight consumers through alignment with customers and growers.” 

Driscoll’s Director of Blackberry Leadership, Brie Reiter Smith explains the organization’s quality rewards system.

“You can get huge disparity in grower performance from a quality standpoint…quality rewards system…we look at samples of 85 to 100 percent of fruit, and assign a grade to it…the guys who delivered better quality throughout the week get a little bit more money than those who didn’t…For the past decade and a half…high score or low score was typically product being devoid of condition or defect, regardless of how ripe it was…Now with supply chain we can move product so fast, we realized a real shift in the marketplace, grapes and stone fruit…we decided to reprioritize flavor in our flavor program five years ago…in our reward system we also prioritized flavor. Those who meet condition and appearance criteria and deliver the ripest fruit get the most money every week.”

Driscoll’s Growth Strategy Case Study Summary

This growth strategy case study can be boiled down to a few key success factors. The growth strategies that result in Driscoll’s delivering 15% growth year after year are as follows:

• Growth through packaging and new premium varieties
• Growth through year-round supply of berry portfolio
• Growth through success of independent growers
• Relentless focus on product quality and delivery to end customer (e.g., Consumer Advisory Panel, rewards for product quality)
• Investment in breeding and genetics , Joy Makers
• Growth through vertical indoor farming and geographic expansion

One strategy we haven’t seen articulated, but may be in place, is a grower counsel or benchmark system. With a philosophy of letting growers do what they do best, this may not be comfortable. 

At first, Driscoll’s may seem a surprising choice for a growth strategy case study. But this berry company is very strategic, and it’s interesting to see the product and packaging innovation in the produce category.

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Identifying growth opportunities in construction services

Market mapping and growth opportunities for a PE-owned construction services enterprise

A nationwide specialty construction company was recently acquired by a private equity firm. The revenue growth target for the acquisition was 3-5x, and the private equity firm engaged WP&C to determine the best market opportunities for this business. Fortunately, the company was well situated with a strong brand, diverse capabilities, and a leading market position. To set the growth strategy, the owners needed to know:

• The service line growth opportunities in the market
• Existing core capabilities that could be leveraged to gain market share and areas where service line expansion were warranted
• Areas of weaknesses that need to be addressed

The company was composed of multiple business units (BUs) acquired over the years by the previous owner. Each BU was allowed to operate with relative autonomy and distinct strategies, competitive advantages, processes, and systems. Complicating matters, the executives were used to managing smaller companies but were now tasked with managing the federated whole and developing a cohesive growth strategy.

To determine the best path forward, these leaders needed to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of each BU, why they won or lost bids, who were their ideal customers, which were the best services to offer, whether geographic expansion was warranted, and what is the right operating model to achieve the growth targets.

1. Build a fact base

WP&C collected and analyzed all sales data from the BUs, interviewed all customer-facing staff, spoke with over 100 customers or potential buyers, interviewed 14 industry experts, and studied industry reports, competitors, and relevant regional growth trends. In doing so, we developed a robust understanding of the business around the key dimensions of geography, service line, industry sector, and customer type. We also developed a deep understanding of existing business processes and employee strengths. 2: Develop market sizes and revenue

WP&C determined the national market sizes by current service line, and by new services the business was considering bringing to market. We assessed each market’s “service potential” and the client’s “ability to win.” Market potential was based on factors that included expected growth rates, competitive landscape, opportunities to generate repeat business, among others. Ability to win was based on factors such as alignment with current business strengths, investment required to enter, and their credibility to operate in the area. The results of the analysis were presented in a bubble chart where each bubble represents a different service line (labels have been removed) and the Total Addressable Market (TAM) size.

This analysis enabled in-depth conversations with the client about the most attractive adjacencies to enter, and where further investment in existing services lines was warranted. Having now identified and prioritized the target markets, we sized these markets in each region where the client operates and developed 3-year revenue projections for each service line. 3. Assess client capability gaps, barriers to growth, and evaluate BU strengths to overcome the challenges

During the fact-building phase, WP&C interviewed every customer-facing employee, analyzed all existing sales and accounting data, interviewed clients and potential clients, and spoke with industry experts. We also calculated the proposal win-loss rates for each BU along the dimensions such as customer industry, service line, geography, new versus repeat customer, tenure of the proposing staff member, and opportunity size to identify where the client was strongest at winning business and where they were struggling.

These exercises led to deep insights and helped reveal insights that management had previously been unaware of, such as the fact that each BU was operating as a near standalone entity with drastically different competitive strategies, many of their proposals failed to include essential information that customers used in awarding a contract, and the existence of dramatically different pricing strategies across—and even within—the BUs. We also revealed areas of strength within each BU that could be adapted across the entire company. The win-loss analysis WP&C performed allowed us to create a framework for client executives to use to develop a coherent go-to-market strategy and create the necessary sales operations processes and management approaches needed to meet the revenue growth targets.

We also provided the client an overview of each BU’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, market niche they were most aligned to, dominant sources of revenue, and a detailed analysis of how sales staff spent their time. These insights were novel to company management and helped inform later strategies and implementation decisions.

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• Steps to formalize and strengthen sales management capabilities
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Growth Hacking Strategy: Examples, Case Study, B2B

What is growth hacking ?

Growth hacking is a marketing technique or strategy focused on finding creative, unconventional, data-driven ways to grow a business or product rapidly. Growth hacking aims to identify the most effective and efficient ways to acquire and retain customers while minimizing costs and maximizing growth.

Growth hacking typically involves a highly iterative process of testing and experimentation, using various marketing channels and tactics to identify what works and what doesn’t quickly. This can include techniques such as A/B testing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, influencer marketing, viral marketing, and referral programs.

Growth hackers are typically highly skilled in data analysis, marketing, and product development and often work closely with engineers and other technical experts to develop and implement growth strategies.

The term “growth hacker” was first popularized by entrepreneur Sean Ellis in 2010. It has since become a popular approach for startups and established businesses looking to quickly and efficiently scale their operations.

Growth hacking strategies

Growth hacking is a process of rapid experimentation to identify the most effective and efficient ways to grow a business. Here are some growth hacking strategies:

• A/B testing: A/B testing involves testing two websites or landing page versions to see which performs better. This can help businesses optimize their website for higher conversion rates.
• Referral programs: Referral programs can effectively grow your business by incentivizing existing customers to refer their friends and family to your product or service.
• Social media marketing: Social media platforms can be used to build brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, and engage with customers.
• Influencer marketing: Partnering with influencers can be a powerful way to reach a wider audience and build credibility for your brand.
• Content marketing: Creating high-quality content that provides value to your audience can help attract new customers and keep them engaged with your brand.
• Search engine optimization (SEO): Optimizing your website for search engines can help improve your visibility in search results and drive organic traffic to your site.
• Email marketing: Email marketing can be a highly effective way to nurture leads, convert them into customers, and retain existing customers.
• Viral marketing: Creating a viral campaign or content can generate massive traffic and buzz around your brand.

These are just a few examples of growth hacking strategies. The key is experimenting with different tactics and constantly iterating to find what works best for your business.

Examples of growth hacking

Here are some examples of growth hacking:

• Dropbox: In its early days, Dropbox used a referral program to drive rapid growth. They offered existing users extra storage space if they referred friends to the service. This helped Dropbox acquire millions of users quickly and establish itself as a leader in the cloud storage market. How does Dropbox work and make money – Business Model
• Hotmail: In 1996, Hotmail became one of the first web-based email services. To drive growth, they added a simple but effective signature to the bottom of every outgoing email that said, “PS: I love you. Get your free email at Hotmail.” This helped spread awareness of the service and rapidly grew its user base.
• Dollar Shave Club: Dollar Shave Club used a humorous viral video to drive rapid growth. The video featured the company’s founder explaining the benefits of its subscription razor service in a comedic way. The video quickly went viral, generating millions of views and helping the company acquire tens of thousands of new customers. Dollar Shave Club Business Model: Pioneering the D2C industry
• Instagram: Instagram used influencer marketing to drive early growth. The company identified popular social media influencers in its target market and worked with them to promote the app to their followers. This helped Instagram quickly establish a large and engaged user base, eventually leading to its acquisition by Facebook for $1 billion.

These are just a few examples of growth hacking. The key to effective growth hacking is to be creative, data-driven and focused on identifying the most effective and efficient ways to drive growth.

Case study of successful growth hacking

One case study of a successful growth hacking campaign is that of Airbnb. In its early days, the company struggled to attract users and get people to trust the idea of staying in a stranger’s home. To drive growth, they developed several innovative growth hacking strategies that helped them rapidly scale their business.

One of Airbnb’s most successful growth hacking campaigns was its use of Craigslist. In 2010, Craigslist was one of the most popular online marketplaces for renting apartments and vacation homes. Airbnb identified this as an opportunity to reach a large audience of potential hosts and guests.

To take advantage of this opportunity, Airbnb developed a tool allowing hosts to post their Airbnb listings to Craigslist automatically. This made it easy for hosts to reach a wider audience and attract more bookings. Airbnb also encouraged hosts to post their listings on Craigslist by offering them a $100 travel voucher if they did so.

The Craigslist campaign was highly successful for Airbnb. By leveraging Craigslist’s existing user base and popular platform, Airbnb was able to rapidly scale its business and attract a large number of new users. Airbnb’s user base had tripled within a few months, and the company established a strong vacation rental market presence.

Another successful growth hacking strategy used by Airbnb was its referral program. Airbnb offered users a $25 travel credit for every friend they referred to the service. This incentivized existing users to refer their friends and family to Airbnb, which helped the company rapidly acquire new users and establish itself as a leader in the vacation rental market.

Through these and other innovative growth hacking strategies, Airbnb was able to rapidly scale its business and establish itself as a major player in the travel industry. As of March’23, Airbnb has over 6+ million listings worldwide and a over $75 billion valuation.

B2B growth hacking

B2B (business-to-business) growth hacking is a marketing strategy that focuses on rapidly growing a B2B business through innovative, data-driven, and cost-effective marketing tactics. B2B growth hacking is particularly important for startups and small businesses that must grow quickly and compete with larger, more established competitors.

Here are some B2B growth hacking strategies that have proven to be effective:

• Referral Marketing: Referral marketing is a powerful B2B growth hacking strategy. You can quickly acquire new customers and grow your business by incentivizing your existing customers to refer their friends and colleagues to your business. To implement a successful referral marketing campaign, you must offer a compelling incentive to your existing customers and make it easy for them to refer others.
• Content Marketing: Content marketing is a cost-effective way to drive traffic and leads to your B2B business. By creating high-quality, informative content that addresses your target audience’s pain points, you can attract new leads to your website and establish your business as an industry thought leader. To succeed in your content marketing strategy, you need to identify the right topics, use the right keywords, and distribute your content on the right channels.
• LinkedIn Marketing: LinkedIn is a powerful B2B marketing channel that can help you reach your target audience and generate leads. By optimizing your LinkedIn profile, publishing content on the platform, and engaging with your target audience, you can establish your business as an industry leader and attract new leads to your business.
• Email Marketing: Email marketing is a highly effective B2B growth hacking strategy. You can nurture leads and convert them into paying customers by building a high-quality email list and sending targeted, personalized emails to your subscribers. To succeed in your email marketing strategy, you need to segment your list, use targeted messaging, and track your results.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO is a crucial B2B growth hacking strategy that can help you attract more organic traffic to your website. Optimizing your website for relevant keywords, building high-quality backlinks, and creating informative content can improve your search engine rankings and attract more leads to your business.

5 B2B Marketing Strategies that are Guaranteed to Work

These are just a few examples of B2B growth hacking strategies. The key to successful B2B growth hacking is to be innovative, data-driven and focused on finding the most effective and efficient ways to grow your business.

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The case for compliance as a competitive advantage for banks

Consider this short tale of two banks: Acme Bank’s top-notch compliance function kept the bank within its risk appetite, but the bank did not perform well. Its strategy team blamed compliance for slow growth, weak market share, and failed digital initiatives. At Apex Bank, the strategy team bypassed compliance to release new products quickly, expand into new customer segments, and ramp up acquisitions, all while keeping costs low. Soon, though, its main regulator brought a significant enforcement action. The stock price fell, key employees quit, the bank had to exit several important businesses, and compliance costs skyrocketed.

While these descriptions are caricatures, they’re not far from reality. Strategy and compliance often operate as antagonists or as ships passing in the night. This is a missed opportunity. Done well, communication and collaboration between the two parties can create competitive advantage. The stakes are particularly high now: technology offers promise, but new risks are rising on uncertain economic and geopolitical landscapes.

This article explains the benefits available when compliance and strategy leaders work together, the quick wins that are possible, and the structural solutions that can sustain and scale the change. In this article, we use the word “strategy” as a metonym for the broader set of decision makers (not just the strategy organization) who influence and shape banks’ strategic direction; these include business unit leaders, leaders in marketing and sales organizations, and product managers.

Finding competitive advantage

Banks’ compliance functions have typically focused on defense: preventing violations of policy, rules, regulation, and laws. The more complicated the regulatory, business, and technological environment, the more complex the defense.

But in complex environments, collaboration with the business  can deliver greater strategic value . In our experience, five objectives that define strategic posture  are ripe for collaboration: differentiating client experience, investing in fast-evolving areas, securing resilience against geopolitical disruptions, improving productivity, and acquiring programmatically. In each, when compliance and business stakeholders responsible for strategic decisions work side by side, institutions benefit by protecting against the downside, capturing more of the upside, or both (exhibit) .

In working with banks around the world, we have seen examples of compliance and strategy collaborating on these five objectives, with varying degrees of success. Here we describe how the successful collaborations were achieved for each objective.

Differentiated client experience

In the increasingly digital world, customer experience is king , and products and services are scrutinized in the court of public opinion—online ratings and social media. Already in 2018, of the 50 largest global banks, three out of four were publicly pledging to initiate some form of customer-experience transformation . We have seen banks’ customer-experience transformations boost the lifetime profitability of satisfied customers—those willing to recommend the bank to friends—to levels five to eight times those of customers with a negative perception.

Banks need processes that deliver a good customer experience in the moment, treat customers fairly, protect against fraud, and comply with laws and other regulations. Poorly designed compliance processes can compromise the experience, but insufficient checks can open the door to fraud or other abuses. Deep collaboration by compliance and business teams can capture opportunities as well as protect the downside.

Poorly designed compliance processes can compromise the experience, but insufficient checks can open the door to fraud or other abuses. Deep collaboration by compliance and business teams can capture opportunities as well as protect the downside.

For example, in retail banking and payments, some consumers have negative experiences with identity verification; it can be confusing and take a long time. Frustrated consumers may even walk away from their bank. Strategy teams with expertise in identifying customer needs, meeting those needs, and differentiating value propositions by bringing together viewpoints from across the organization can work with compliance teams to identify the most critical needs and embed compliance requirements seamlessly into customer journeys.

In institutional banking, some customers experience similar frustrations from the intense and sometimes overlapping queries for information aimed at meeting the complex know-your-customer (KYC) requirements straddling jurisdictions. Certain KYC queries may add operational cost and could even deter large multinational clients from starting new banking relationships. Closer collaboration between compliance and strategy teams helps banks simplify the process in a client-centric and risk-informed way. Our research has found  10 to 30 percent improvement in customer satisfaction scores and 20 to 40 percent reductions of administrative touchpoints.

Compliance and strategy teams can also work together on continual improvement. Customer complaints can indicate compliance issues—for example, problematic sales practices—but also opportunities to improve customer experience. Thus, input on customer experience can serve as an early warning about possible compliance issues.

How to start

Compliance and business operations can together initiate a review of priority client-facing processes. The effort may identify opportunities for improving user experience through simplification or rationalization of controls—for example, by removing redundant or overlapping controls.

Banks that aspire to offer a standout client experience typically form cross-functional teams focused on rapid, agile execution. Practically, this would involve including compliance experts in the core of the agile approach and team configuration from the start. For processes related to customer onboarding, teams can include experts in compliance, technology, operations, strategy, and other functions. This equips the team to incorporate guidance on compliance requirements in the most client-friendly way.

One North American institution created a task force of senior banking executives, including the chief compliance officer, to design a smooth customer onboarding process across its capital markets businesses. The team first established clarity around regulatory requirements and then reengineered customer journeys and built a consistent experience across regions. The resulting process minimized requests for client information and decreased the risk of inconsistencies and conflicts in client data.

Investment in fast-evolving areas

Growth into adjacent or secondary industries offers financial services institutions strong opportunity, yet some of the most alluring domains are fraught with uncertainty related to compliance. 1 Our recent research finds that in financial services, 35 percent of growth comes from secondary industries or expansion into new ones. Companies that grow into adjacent industries generated, on average, an extra 1.5 percentage points per year of shareholder returns above their industry peers. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/managing-a-customer-experience-transformation-in-banking This is especially true of areas in which some combination of technology, products and services, business dynamics, and customer expectations are evolving quicky. Strategists weigh the opportunity from potential investments against costs of competition or regulation. Compliance can shape ideas for coping with the regulatory uncertainty and suggest implications for various investment options.

New business opportunities linked to data and analytics exemplify an area that shows promise but presents new and sometimes uncertain compliance expectations. Some institutions are considering investing in or partnering with data and analytics players that provide credit decisioning tools. When decisions about credit extension are informed by or fully based on AI algorithms, banks will need to demonstrate the fairness of such decisions and their compliance with customer protection rules. Compliance teams can inform assessments of these requirements, such as required investments in controls and the AI talent required to interpret algorithms’ output.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) offerings are another area of potential opportunity for collaboration. Institutions that aspire to bring attractive ESG offerings to market need well-designed processes for product creation and maintenance. Basic criteria include factors (and underlying data) used to construct ESG investment products that are transparent and reflective of the investment objectives described in the prospectuses. Strategy teams play a key role in defining ESG product initiatives based on market dynamics and client needs. Compliance teams working with strategy teams can provide insights on alignment of ESG factors with the declared investment objectives and regulatory guidance, as well as the processes for monitoring product performance and informing customers.

Compliance and strategy could collaborate to articulate the largest regulatory risks associated with products or segments that are new to the industry, growing in importance, or being considered as a new focus. Examples could include analytics or digital payments.

Compliance officers could regularly share with colleagues the latest regulatory developments in this space, including potential implications for a bank’s planned investment actions, if relevant. In addition, banks should consider explicitly designating compliance team members who will be on point to provide strategically informed compliance insights on fast-evolving areas that the institution has prioritized for potential investment. These people would have the dual mandate of being compliance officers while advising strategists in areas where the bank is exploring the potential for growth or an inorganic investment thesis. Banks can even consider forming a small compliance advisory team to provide such input as needed in areas of strategic significance. This team might sit either within the strategy or compliance functions, with a dotted-line relationship to the other group.

Resilience against geopolitical disruption

For global institutions, geopolitical forces up the ante, particularly when laws or regulations shift quickly in response to countries’ foreign-policy stances. Institutions with an international footprint have complicated links between countries. Rarely can such organizations disconnect rapidly from any given country, not least because of compliance requirements. The strategy function may lack routines for systematically analyzing and understanding geopolitical scenarios.

For example, companies doing business in Russia or with Russian entities when it invaded Ukraine in early 2022 had to quickly translate the implications of the sanctions that many other countries imposed on Russia. Predefined playbooks for handling similar geopolitical shocks would accelerate response and reduce the probability of any outsize operational losses or regulatory fines that might create opportunities in the defensive quadrant of the values matrix.

Given recent geopolitical shifts, strategy teams may be well advised to start building a planning capacity, with compliance teams included. Those engaged with strategy at the senior level, with participation from the senior level of the compliance function, can systematically develop and analyze a set of geopolitical scenarios. For example, scenarios might include imposition of sanctions or quickly exiting a country.

Improved productivity

Collaboration to improve process productivity delivers impact primarily on the value capture axis of the matrix. For example, the compliance team can suggest the productivity initiatives (e.g., streamlining compliance controls, suggesting process simplification ideas based on compliance risk assessments) that could lead to significant impact on margin or revenue growth, given that prioritization of productivity initiatives is key for value capture.

When strategy teams design operational productivity programs, they balance effectiveness and efficiency levers across thousands of individual processes. Compliance organizations are uniquely positioned to support these efforts based on their observation of issues and challenges across the organization. In addition, the compliance team can help structure companywide communication flows on process and control streamlining opportunities. For example, they may have data and insights from security breaches, fraud, suspicious activity, and anti-money-laundering (AML) flags, as well as insights from control testing. These insights can inform where to eliminate, establish, or maintain manual checks; eliminate overlaps in the scope of reviews; or reengineer processes more holistically.

At the start of any productivity improvement effort, banks have an opportunity to include compliance as part of the core team. Similarly, when deploying the agile approach to identify opportunities, compliance officers can be core to the team structure from the start. This collaboration enables the team to review prioritized processes for opportunities to streamline compliance risk assessments and identified overlapping controls.

As the productivity program establishes baselines—for example, collecting data to prioritize the highest-impact products, businesses, and processes to start with—compliance experts can help with specifying data types and inputs needed, especially in areas such as control performance, key risk indicators, or customer complaint themes. For prioritizing productivity initiatives, compliance experts can contribute insights related to control testing or compliance risk assessment.

Stronger programmatic M&A

The compliance team can also help the strategy and M&A teams generate differentiated insights on mergers and acquisitions. In particular, collaboration can help strengthen programmatic M&A strategies , which generate excess returns relative to peers because serial acquirers tend to grow faster and more profitably. 2 Among companies with revenue CAGR over 5 percent, our research has shown, those with programmatic M&A strategies generate shareholder returns 3.5 percentage points higher than for those growing organically.

Collaboration on acquisition-related themes enables both offensive and optimizing strategies. Organizations can generate differentiated insights for upside capture, such as compliance criteria integrated in M&A sourcing filters. They also can pursue the dual benefits of upside capture and downside protection, such as collaboration on postmerger decisioning and planning.

Successful execution requires strong M&A capabilities, and the compliance function has a key role to play in each capability, including M&A sourcing, due diligence, and integration planning and execution. To enable programmatic M&A, compliance can help design filtering criteria so target identification excludes companies with suspicious clients or that operate in jurisdictions with weak regulatory infrastructure. Strategy and compliance teams should also collaborate to ensure the filters stay calibrated to existing market conditions.

Collaboration on due diligence can include pressure-testing strategic and financial assumptions linked to compliance. Key questions to consider for accurate valuation and assessment of targets’ business models are whether the market sizing assumes no new restrictive regulation of the target’s core product and what it will cost to bring a target’s financial-crime controls in line with those of the acquiring bank.

During postmerger integration and planning, the compliance team can be a partner in deciding the nature and level of integration. In our experience, companies do make compliance part of premerger planning but frequently as a stand-alone workstream. However, the maturity of a target’s control infrastructure often has direct bearing on the right approach to business, process, and system integration. For example, limited control infrastructure and a history of regulatory relationship challenges may prompt the organization to pursue greater integration across functions in order to migrate the target’s businesses to the acquirer’s more controlled and mature environment.

Consider integrating the compliance team into the entire M&A deal workflow. Bringing compliance into the M&A deal workflow can be a simple change. For example, compliance officers can become permanent members of the deal team across the full deal life cycle, including deal identification (refining investment filters with compliance factors), due diligence (leading compliance-specific deep dives), and integration (using control performance to generate insights on the integration strategy).

Structural solutions to sustain and amplify collaboration impact

Walk a day in my shoes.

Strategists and compliance officers have not been natural bedfellows. Strategists may not fully grasp compliance-related risks, while compliance officers may not understand in detail competitor moves or friction that spurs clients to reduce their business. But in the world that lies ahead, mutual understanding will likely be foundational for gaining a competitive edge.

Life as a compliance officer

The compliance role has grown as regulatory frameworks and compliance requirements proliferate. Since 2010, more rules have been issued by the four regulatory agencies (Federal Reserve, OCC, FDIC and CFPB) than in the entire period since the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 to 2010. Compliance officers must translate every new requirement into digestible obligations, alter policies and procedures accordingly (often individually for each product, business, and geography), and help the business side understand these obligations in the context of their processes. Failure to do so can result in large fines to the company, restrictions on business, and even liability of individuals including senior executives and board members.

Compliance officers view their core mission as protectors, so the business’s goals of serving clients better, growing, or improving productivity can easily be perceived as resistance to the compliance function’s mission.

Life as a strategist

Unaddressed market forces continually deplete profits , so strategists try to create and capture economic and social value sustainably in the face of uncertainty. As the pace of innovation and disruption accelerates, strategists’ role becomes ever more intense. They rely on insights into key driving factors to formulate powerful strategy, deep interpersonal engagement and debate from senior executives, and a mutual understanding that the business is prepared and willing to act on a strategy once adopted.

While strategists could benefit greatly from the insights supplied by the compliance function, they often struggle to see past the technical language of rules and regulations. They will likely be better able to appreciate the larger meaning behind compliance if they have information synthesized into terms they can apply to their process of strategy formulation.

Three main obstacles tend to hinder systematic collaboration between compliance and business. First, the compliance function is sometimes seen as lacking full understanding of the business, so the idea of collaboratively finding creative solutions never arises (see sidebar, “Walk a day in my shoes”). Second, the operating model, organizational structure, and talent often are not set up to support meaningful engagement that would allow working together. Third, processes and technology generally have not been designed to unlock and sustain such collaboration. Acting systematically in these three areas, banks can sustain and magnify the impact of the initial actions previously described.

Culture of collaboration

Culture is a key determinant of shifts in the collaboration model, but it is arguably the hardest structural dimension to change in a sustainable way. Banks can prepare the ground for larger change by introducing microhabits that start with understanding each other’s vantage point. As with many other aspects of cultural change, building such understanding is a top-down process. Two microhabits are essentials for cultivating mutual understanding:

• The right tone from the top . Senior executives, including heads of the business and functional leadership, should be fully aligned on the principle behind the operating model and reinforce its importance in their communications, decisions, and actions.
• Collaboration at the C-level . An alliance between the chief compliance officer and the chief strategy officer enable their teams to meet the goals of collaboration. Without the chemistry and meeting of minds at the top, simple process interventions won’t deliver meaningful results.

Talent and operating model

Meeting the need for compliance talent skilled in collaboration and strategy requires the right approach to recruiting and upskilling (such as learning pathways and job rotations). From the recruiting perspective, compliance functions may need to reassess their usual criteria for senior compliance hires, such as a legal background, in favor of more diversification and cross-pollination on the team. Recruitment of compliance leaders should leverage the full diversity of the risk and compliance professionals in the industry. Our recent research  indicates that 90 percent of the risk and compliance professionals in our data set did not start in risk roles.

In addition, given that value creation primarily happens within business units, compliance and strategy activities should reflect the needs of business units. Strategy and compliance teams can explicitly align on how to jointly serve relevant business units where needed. Such upfront alignment can then be translated into tactics for collaboration.

Underlying technology

More modular and integrated tech and data infrastructure can enable connectivity between the strategy and compliance systems. More specifically, investments in workflow capabilities would allow both compliance and strategy counterparts to collaborate in real time, assign tasks to each other, and leverage common data sources. Ideally, such systems are capable of ingesting compliance-related input such as data regarding future regulatory scenarios, the potential impact of geopolitical events, and the impact of control failures on M&A integration. The systems then can incorporate this knowledge into major scenario-planning or business valuation tools.

For example, a bank may design a platform for risk assessments where strategy and compliance have access to the same modules and analyses. Such a platform would source the data from business unit systems and allow the compliance officers to see the compliance assessments carried out in real time. This would have an additional benefit: minimizing the time spent on low-value tasks (reconciling data or replicating the analyses, for example). Instead, the teams could focus on jointly prioritizing key risks and on collaborating to select and implement mitigating actions.

Banks have a strong opportunity to realize impact through collaboration between their compliance and business strategists. Quick wins are possible, but banks wanting to unlock the full potential of such collaboration must consider how to build systems, processes, and foundational capabilities that will enable them to scale up their collaboration.

Irakli Gabruashvili is an associate partner in McKinsey’s New York office, where Ishaan Seth is a senior partner; Olivia White is a senior partner in the Bay Area office; and Alexis Yumeng Yang is a consultant in the Seattle office.

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Driving Growth in 2024: Essential Content Marketing Strategies for Tech Businesses

Content marketing stands as an important tool for businesses, enabling them to engage users, foster trust, and drive growth. However, with user behavior constantly evolving, marketers must adopt innovative and data-driven marketing strategies to effectively unleash the true potential of content marketing. This article explores seven essential content marketing strategies to help you optimize performance and grow your tech business in 2024.

Develop Engaging Narratives with Data-Driven Insights

Elevate your content marketing efforts with engaging narratives that resonate with your audience. Leverage data analytics to gain a deep understanding of consumer behavior, needs, and preferences. Use sentiment analysis tools to identify insights and develop relevant narratives that lead to valuable connections with your target audience.

Target Diverse Audiences with Relevant Content Formats

Embrace a variety of content formats to engage your audience effectively. Consider options such as infographics, podcasts, case studies, and live streams to capture the attention of potential users across various channels. Moreover, optimize content for SEO to ensure enhanced discoverability and visibility on search engines, ultimately driving traffic and user acquisition.

Personalize Content through Advanced Segmentation Techniques

Scale your marketing efforts with personalized content strategies tailored to each segment. Leverage data-driven insights to customize the content, including product recommendations, email communications, social media ads, landing pages, promotions, and calls-to-action (CTAs). This practice will help maximize engagement while driving conversion rates.

Take Advantage of Big Data

Leverage big data analytics to optimize content based on user behavior and needs. Identify content gaps, refine your strategy, and enhance content delivery to drive significant revenue impact and long-term growth.

Leverage the Potential of AI Tools

Utilize AI tools to expand your content marketing efforts with options such as personalized recommendations, automated workflows, and performance optimizations. Do embrace transparency and ethical practices to demonstrate your commitment to responsible business conduct.

Amplify Visibility Across Relevant Channels

Identify and leverage the most effective channels for your audience based on data-driven insights. For example, social media platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram offer diverse opportunities for content distribution and user engagement. Additionally, partnerships with influencers and industry leaders can help you enhance content visibility and credibility.

Optimize Performance through Ongoing Testing and Analysis

Monitor key performance indicators such as traffic sources, engagement rates, conversion rates, among others. A/B test as needed to help you identify high-value content variations, and refine strategies accordingly, while driving continued growth and success for your tech business.

With the increasing demand for personalized experiences, tech businesses must innovate and adapt in order to succeed in the industry. By leveraging data analytics, advanced segmentation techniques, and cutting-edge technologies such as AI, marketers can develop engaging content programs that effectively propel the business forward in the ever-evolving technological landscape.

Article Written by:

Andrea Mercado , Growth and Performance Marketing Expert

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Laggards go beyond catching up to become niche champions: a longitudinal case study in China

• Published: 11 April 2024

Cite this article

• Xinmin Peng 1 ,
• Abby Jingzi Zhou   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1052-5842 2 ,
• Xiaomeng Liu 2 &
• Dianguang Liu 1  

Using a longitudinal case study on Cixing, which is a leading Chinese player in the flat knitting machine industry, this paper explores the process in which laggard firms catch up and exceed catching up to become niche champions in China. We propose a theoretical framework that illustrates the significance of contexts and response strategies for niche champions at different stages, focusing on the market and technology perspectives. In particular, the context is formed by the market ladder and technology modularization, requiring laggard firms to adopt appropriate market development and technology learning strategies in order to respond to the environment and achieve growth. During the catch-up stage, these companies should employ a market leveraging strategy and a technology deconstruction strategy to match the incumbents in the context of a pyramidal market ladder with low technology modularization. In the beyond-catch-up stage, as incumbents, they should adopt a market repositioning strategy and a technology reconstruction strategy to evolve into niche champions in the context of an upgraded market ladder with high technology modularization. Our research contributes to the literature on catch-up and niche champions by elucidating the process, contexts, and strategies of laggards in catching up and becoming niche champions in the global market. Practical insights are also offered to firms and policy makers in emerging economies.

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Data availability

The data used in this study are available upon request. Please contact the first author for access, subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations.

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This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC 72202111; 72172068; 71772097) and the Ministry of Education in China (22YJC630084).

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Peng, X., Zhou, A.J., Liu, X. et al. Laggards go beyond catching up to become niche champions: a longitudinal case study in China. Asia Pac J Manag (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-024-09961-5

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-024-09961-5

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