10 Relatively Unused Growth Hacks

There are hundreds of ways you can grow your business, in this post, we look at a few unusual ways that worked for others.

One of the most underutilized yet powerful growth hacks is to spark curiosity at the point of conversion — and Canva did this masterfully. Canva’s original signup page obscured their UI and revealed it gradually as users moved their cursor around. It created an emotional pull, enticing users to explore further just to see what was behind the screen. It wasn’t just clever — it played directly into human curiosity and created an experience that stood out from traditional signup flows.

For marketers, this is a powerful reminder that even the smallest tweak in your customer journey — like on your landing page — can lift your conversion rate without adding any ad spend.

• Creates instant curiosity: It transforms a routine action into something intriguing.
• Improves user experience: By making signup feel like part of the product, users become engaged right away.
• Differentiates your brand: It breaks the mold of conventional signup flows that marketers and users alike tend to skip past.

• Try using interactive elements in your signup flow — reveal a feature, animate part of your UI, or preview gated content.
• Pair it with a relevant referral program or giveaway that rewards active users for signing up and inviting others.
• Make it part of a broader content marketing campaign: explain the psychology in a blog post, and invite readers to try it live.

This is the kind of small, intentional design decision that modern growth teams can test to find low-lift, high-impact improvements.

💡 Pro Tip: Want to test signup UX improvements quickly? Use tools like Hotjar or FullStory to watch how users interact with your forms — and A/B test variations to find the most effective path.

One of the most transparent and effective growth hacking strategies is showcasing real performance metrics to build trust — a strategy Baremetrics executed perfectly.

Baremetrics connects to your Stripe account to show real-time stats about your business, and their public dashboard displayed live MRR, churn, customer count, and more. This openness instantly established credibility and turned their own user base into a case study in progress. Even better? They convinced Buffer, another SaaS heavyweight, to do the same — amplifying reach through strategic co-branding.

• Increases transparency: People trust what they can verify. Real numbers feel more authentic than testimonials alone.
• Acts as a proof-of-concept: Visitors can see how the product or service actually performs.
• Amplifies content virality: Metrics make great fuel for sharing and discussion, especially on social networks.

• Use Gleam or similar platforms to power a dashboard-style public display of your most important metrics: email list growth, contest entries, or engagement.
• Include a section in your landing page or homepage that shows live campaign results or customer actions.
• Pair this strategy with targeted marketing campaigns that emphasize accountability and value.

This type of transparency not only enhances your brand’s authority, it also directly contributes to customer acquisition and retention. People are far more likely to engage with a brand that is open about how they’re performing. What better way to show off how your product works than to show the actual growth of your own metrics to the public. Not only that, Josh managed to convince another popular startup Buffer to do the same. And as you can see above, this has had a huge effect on his own growth.

📊 Data-driven marketers know: growth is easier when you remove friction and increase confidence. Showing progress is one of the most authentic forms of persuasion.

Slack is a relatively new competitor to HipChat. When you sign up, they instantly frame it as a tool not just for individuals — but for your entire team. That initial message is important: it positions Slack not as a tool, but as a platform for business growth.

They follow up that messaging perfectly. The interface makes it seamless to claim a domain and invite colleagues — encouraging you to build a shared workspace from day one.

• Accelerates product adoption: The faster people bring in teammates, the more embedded your product becomes in their daily workflow.
• Encourages network effects: Each new team member adds value, reinforcing retention and growing your active users.
• Simplifies the user journey: The flow feels natural and intuitive, reducing friction and improving the user experience.

• If your product or service supports teams, focus on making setup collaborative from the start.
• Use guided onboarding, prompts to invite teammates, and visual cues to build momentum.
• Include share prompts in your app and pair them with referral programs to reward team-based growth.

This strategy is especially relevant in today’s B2B SaaS world — where the first to win over the team often wins the deal. The key isn’t just onboarding a user; it’s onboarding their customer base.

This is possibly one of the most overlooked yet effective growth hacks still available today. With just a simple mailto: link, you can prefill referral emails for users — making it easier for them to share your product or service with friends or colleagues. This tactic is especially powerful when paired with a clear incentive. If there’s something valuable on the other side — like bonus contest entries or discounts — users are more motivated to take action. At Gleam, we use this in our viral share entry action, which allows users to earn bonus entries for referring others. The action auto-generates a pre-composed email, making it frictionless to send. Why does it work? People are more likely to join a campaign or enter your contest if the invite comes from a trusted contact, rather than a brand they don’t know. This technique can dramatically improve your conversion rate, especially when supported by a compelling landing page and clear contest rules.

• Pre-written referral emails reduce friction and increase send rates.
• Personalized invites outperform automated platform notifications.
• Ideal for smaller brands that don’t yet have massive reach on social networks.

Use this strategy as a complement to other growth hacking techniques, especially during time-sensitive campaigns where business growth depends on momentum and social proof.

One of the most powerful yet underused growth hacking strategies is aligning incentives directly with the content your readers are consuming. If someone reads a guide about social media contests, what’s the best time to ask for their email? Right after showing them how to run one — and offering a downloadable template or bonus checklist. This is what’s known as a “content upgrade.”

Brian Dean from Backlinko published data showing a 785% increase in subscriber conversion rates using this tactic. That’s the power of offering something specific and relevant at the moment when interest is highest.

These kinds of personalized incentives are incredibly effective for:

• Growing your email address list
• Improving conversion rate at the end of blog posts
• Turning content marketing into a lead engine
• Enhancing the user experience with something actionable and valuable

• Don’t bury your offer — use Gleam Capture to display it dynamically based on scroll depth or exit intent.
• Match each offer to the theme of the post to improve targeting and boost your customer acquisition funnel.
• Use data-driven testing (like A/B tests) to refine wording, timing, and format.

This technique isn’t just for bloggers — it’s a conversion lever for any business that relies on educating or nurturing an audience throughout the customer journey.

One often overlooked growth hack is using strong, opinion-driven content to create conversation. Earlier this week, we published an opinion piece on the challenges that Australian startups face — and the results were incredible.

That single blog post brought over 13,000 new visits, helped sign up 200+ new businesses to Gleam, and got us noticed by publications, agencies, VCs, and fellow entrepreneurs. These results weren’t just about traffic — they supported real business growth and opened new partnership doors.

• Passionate topics fuel sharing and discussion across social networks
• Opinion content can position your brand as a thought leader in a specific niche
• Emotional or challenging takes often outperform traditional SEO-led content in reach

• Use this strategy sparingly. It should be authentic, not clickbait.
• Be prepared to moderate discussion and accept differing viewpoints.
• Combine with referral programs or related incentives to capitalize on viral traffic.
• Close the post with a strong CTA — like a downloadable resource or invitation to join your list — to guide visitors further into the customer journey.

For brands looking to move beyond traditional marketing, this approach is a bold way to stand out and engage your audience on a deeper level — while fueling spikes in visibility, shares, and even customer acquisition.

We’re always exploring smarter ways to scale — and one of the most effective growth hacks for long-term success is retargeting and building lookalike audiences. Sometimes, it's not about finding totally new people — it's about reconnecting with those who already know you or finding more people like them. Retargeting through platforms like Perfect Audience lets you run highly targeted campaigns across Facebook, Twitter, and banner networks to people who’ve already visited your site or engaged with your brand. It’s one of the most cost-efficient ways to boost customer acquisition.

Even more powerful? Perfect Audience lets you partner with other businesses and retarget each other’s customers, expanding your user base through trusted overlap. Facebook offers similar capabilities. Upload your email address list or customer data and build a lookalike audience — people with similar traits to your highest-value users. These strategies are not only data-driven, but they also convert better: retargeting campaigns have brought us new signups at 80% lower cost compared to traditional channels like Google Ads.

• Targets users who’ve already shown interest (faster to convert)
• Reduces CAC (customer acquisition cost)
• Aligns with broader growth hacking strategies like lead nurturing, upselling, and win-back campaigns

This is where marketing becomes surgical — finding people who look like your best customers and re-engaging them with personalized landing pages, offers, or content. If you're not already retargeting, you're leaving opportunity on the table.

This might seem obvious, but one of the most fundamental growth hacking techniques is solving the right problem. It’s easy to focus on features, but real growth often comes from tackling the day-to-day pain points your customers deal with — things like manual reporting, complex integrations, or repetitive campaign setup. If your product makes something 5x faster or easier, that’s not just a UX win — that’s business value. For many startups and marketing teams, this is where the opportunity lies. Conduct interviews, look at support tickets, or map the customer journey to uncover what your users are struggling with most. Then use your team’s time and resources to build a simple, scalable solution.

• Solving real problems helps you achieve stronger product market fit
• It gives you an immediate differentiator against competitors
• It makes onboarding smoother, improving conversion rates and retention

This tactic also aligns closely with data-driven decision making. Don’t assume you know your audience — measure, validate, and iterate. Great growth teams aren’t just launching features — they’re removing friction that stops users from winning. Every pain point you eliminate unlocks a hidden path to scale — not just for your users, but for your own business too.

If you're regularly on Facebook or LinkedIn, you've likely seen viral headlines that dominate feeds. While some use sensationalism, the underlying principle is solid: visual optimization drives clicks. One of the most practical growth hacks for improving your content's shareability is setting up Open Graph (OG) meta tags properly. These tags determine how your landing page, blog post, or product appears when shared across social media platforms.

• og:image — This is crucial. Facebook recommends a 1200 x 630 px image for full compatibility across devices. That size ensures your content looks polished and trustworthy when shared.
• og:title — Keep it punchy, benefit-driven, and aligned with your article's SEO headline.
• og:description — This supports your hook. It should clarify what the user gains by clicking.

By optimizing these tags, you not only improve your conversion rate from shared links, but also gain better brand control across platforms. For marketers using content marketing as a major acquisition channel, this is low-effort, high-impact.

Set up a shareable post preview checker (like Facebook's Sharing Debugger) to test how your content renders. Don’t forget to A/B test preview formats over time and adapt for seasonal campaigns. In today’s attention economy, strong metadata can be the difference between a scroll-past and a click-through.

A lot of the growth hacks we highlight revolve around one key principle: offer the right incentive, and users will act. Contests are a timeless way to do this — and when executed correctly, they unlock exponential reach and customer acquisition.

Just look at the Dropbox referral example: users got bonus storage for inviting friends, and that referral program helped the company grow at record pace. It worked because it gave people real value in return for helping spread the word.

Gleam has powered over 7 million user actions across thousands of campaigns, boosting their marketing strategies. We’ve seen businesses:

• Quadruple their email address list
• Break previous sales records
• Deepen user engagement across platforms

And most of this success came from running focused, data-driven campaigns that align with each stage of the customer journey.

This demo shows just a fraction of what’s possible. Whether you’re looking to run viral giveaways, collect leads, or drive traffic, contests give you the flexibility and motivation levers to grow your user base. The right campaign, with the right incentive, at the right time — that’s how growth hacking works. You don’t need to guess. Just test, optimize, and repeat.