Here Are 5 Growth Marketing Case Studies From The Last Decade

Growth has been a term coined by Silicon Valley as a way for companies to scale at huge rates both organically and paid. Initially, it started with finding ‘hacks’ to find opportunities to scale quickly by experimenting quickly and efficiently.

Although experimentation is surely still a part of growth, it has moved more away from hacks and into more focused approaches and mentality than finding a quick, easy way to success.

From infamous examples like Dropbox’s free storage giveaway and Hotmail’s “Get Your Free Email At Hotmail,” we have since moved on to a new decade of growth marketing tactics. In this article, instead of exploring the older famous and popular case studies, I wanted to look at some more recent examples in the last decade from startups and businesses.

1. Robinhood

Robinhood has been the poster child for all retail investing during 2020. With many people confined at homes, many people, especially millennials, started paying more attention to the stock markets.

Robinhood was attractive, especially for millennials, with its “no commission fee” structure, which has generally put the younger audiences off trading.

2. Zapier

Zapier was founded in 2011, just hitting a decade of operating.

It helps web applications ‘talk’ to each other and creates automations between apps. With no-code/low code startups growing, Zapier has been on the top of the list people are giving attention to. Many clones are also coming into the market, with many similar startups popping up to compete with Zapier.

3. Tinder

Everyone knows Tinder.

It’s known as the application that pushed millennial online dating into an application that was easy to use and simple to understand.

No more long profiles, just simple right and left. Apart from its genius design and user experience, we also have to take a quick look at how Tinder grew.

Like Airbnb (host and guest), Tinder works when two distinct user groups are present on the platform and grows from this network effect.

In this case, it’s guys and girls, but obviously, to grow the application, they needed attractive girls already on the application for guys to come and sign up (as shallow as it sounds!).

4. Canva

As an Aussie, I had to include an Australian entry into the list.

What better startup to talk about than Canva, the design software with millions of users that took on Adobe.

I decided to include Canva because it’s an example of a startup that leveraged a multi-channel growth strategy rather than relying on one source.

What’s even more amazing is that in its first two years of operating (launched in 2012), it managed to get 3600 sign-ups every day and reached 2 million users.

Canva grew by leveraging all levers

To go through the entire strategy of Canva could take 100+ pages, so I wanted to summarize its growth by focusing on a few areas.

5. Aviation Gin

I wanted to include this one just because it shows how genius creative branding can be.

Before Ryan Reynold’s even took over the brand, Aviation Gin was a big brand but not growing at the rate that Reynold managed to help grow the spirit’s company.