ChannelApe Blog

200 Marketing Hacks & Tools to Ensure Your Startup Crushes It

Written by Jordan Stokes | Jun 26, 2016 10:07:56 AM

Are you getting ready for your startup to absolutely crush it? If you are, marketing should be one of your first concerns. Your ability to market your new creation will determine it’s success or failure. That’s why I’ve taken the time to find 200 marketing hacks, big and small, to help your startup dominate the market right out of the gate.

Because this list is so long, and marketing is such a massive subject, I’ve divided the individual hacks into segments:

Without further ado, let’s dive into these marketing hacks:

General Marketing Hacks

General marketing hacks that apply to any business.

1. Just Get Started

Many startups never even get started with their ideas and business. One of the best tips I can give you is to skip trying to perfect your idea and just get started!

2. Find Potential Partners

You should look around blogs and companies in your niche, and find some influencers to partner with. You scratch their back with a backlink, and they might scratch yours.

3. Understand that People Are Lazy

Yes, even I am lazy. You probably are too. It’s human nature. Make everything you want your visitors to do as easy as possible. Give them obvious signs of what to do next, and reduce the steps to complete the task as much as possible.

4. Forget What You Want – Think of What Your Customer Wants

No offense but your opinion doesn’t matter to most of the world. They care about what they want, not what you want. Think about everything you do from your customer’s point of view.

5. People Buy the Benefits, Not the Features

Additionally, people don’t care about the fancy features of your product or service. They want to know how it helps them. So tell them!

6. Do Your Homework

And by that, I mean do your market research. Find out who your ideal customers are, where they go every day, where they work, what social media sites they’re on, and even their birthday. The more you know about them the easier it will be to show them the benefits of your business.

7. Break Huge Tasks into Bite-Size Chunks

Some of the tasks in this list are quick and simple, and some are massive tasks that may take weeks or months. On the bigger ones, break them down into small manageable pieces to keep from feeling overwhelmed and to make daily progress.

8. Give Away Freebies

People love getting stuff for free. Think about the last time you got an unexpected free gift – did you appreciate the company that gave it to you more?

9. Launch on a Tuesday

Mondays suck because people are catching up with work, and by Wednesday people are in the groove of things. Tuesday is the perfect day to get people interested in something. In fact, many artists release their albums on Tuesday because of this fact.

10. Ensure Quality SEO

One of the best FREE ways to get tons of traffic to your site is by ranking high in Google’s search results. Ensure you’re using SEO best practices on all your pages.

11. Analytics, Analytics, Analytics

Marketing means nothing if you don’t track the results. How will you ever know what’s working and what isn’t? You’re leaving money on the table by ignoring the data.

12. Start Building Backlinks Early

Backlinks are a crucial piece to proper SEO. Start looking for influential partners, guest blog opportunities, and blogs to comment on to start building links to your website ASAP.

13. Discount for Beta Testers

If you’re not ready for a full launch (or are ready but aren’t sure how well your system will work), open a beta version and allow the early adopters a lifetime discount for hopping on board. Not only will this net you some early customers, but you’ll also get some crucial feedback on your system or product.

14. Create a Chrome Extension

If you can think of a way to build a chrome extension for your app or service, do it. It only costs $5, and having one allows you to get easy publicity and potential additional customers.

15. Get Featured in a Roundup

There are tons of bloggers who post weekly or monthly roundups of news, tools, and blogs in virtually every niche. To find those people who are hungry for content, go to Google and type “intitle: monthly roundup [your industry or niche]” (Of course, you can also try weekly instead of monthly). 

Simply reach out to the owners of these blogs and ask to be featured in their next roundup. For an idea of what to say, check out this guide for reaching out to influencers.

16. Give Stellar Customer Service

One of the best ways to make more sales and beat your competition is by providing incredible, over-the-top customer service. As Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, famously stated:

“Historically, our number-one growth driver has been from repeat customers and word of mouth.”

They’re a multi-million dollar company, and most of their money comes from great customer service.

17. Submit Your App to Daily Deal Sites (AppSumo, Rewardli, MightyDeals)

If you have an app, try submitting it to a daily deals site to get more publicity and downloads. Try:

18. Post Guides to SnapGuide and Guides.co

SnapGuide and Guides.co are communities in which people submit how-to guides for free, and in return, they can receive traffic back to their website. If you know how to do something helpful to your audience, teach them!

19. Sign Up for Triberr

Triberr is “a community where talented bloggers and influencers come together to share and read great content.” Basically, you can find awesome content, and also share your own content to get more views.

20. Hire a Virtual Assistant to Comment on Relative Blogs

Commenting on relative blog posts in your industry is an excellent way to get more traffic to your own site. Neil Patel made 249 comments and received 7 leads and 1 sale worth $25,000. How long do you think it took him to make those? Probably no more than one work day, and it net him a huge client. Commenting can be a pain to sit and do all day, so hiring a virtual assistant may make things easier. Just be sure they only make thoughtful comments or else you’ll get marked as spam.

21. Submit Your Blog to Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking site, like StumbleUpon or Reddit, can be a great way to get dofollow backlinks and more traffic to your website. Check out this list of 250+ dofollow social bookmarking sites.

22. Contact Blog Owners in Your Niche About Banner Ads

While you’re looking for influencers in your niche, try to find popular blogs. Contact the owners to ask about placing a banner ad on your website on their blog, in exchange for a per-click or per-purchase royalty.

23. Submit Guest Blog Posts

If a banner ad isn’t your style, or you care more about backlinks to get your own website ranked high on Google, try contacting those blogs about writing a guest post. This gives them free content and gives you a backlink; win-win.

24. If You Get a Guest Piece, Feature Them on Your Site

Return the favor and mention their site and your guest piece on your own site.

25. Feature Your App with LaunchBit

LaunchBit is a way to get your app on the newsletters of top sites like Lifehack and Startup Digest.

26. Use Izea to Get Sponsored Links

Izea is a way for content creators to sponsor their links on influential blogs, YouTube videos, Vines, Snapchats, and more.

27. Fiverr Promotion

You can pay someone $5 to have them promote your content on their social media profiles or email newsletters using Fiverr. Just do your homework and make sure the person you’re paying actually has a decent following or the right following for your niche.

28. Send Handwritten Thank You Cards

Nothing makes a customer more surprised or delighted than an unexpected hand-written note.

29. Give Referral Bonuses

Tell your customers they can save $X and give their friends $X by referring their friends to your product or service.

30. Affiliate Programs

Pay people every time they make you a sale. If you don’t make a sale, they don’t get paid, and it’s a win-win.

31. Onboard Customers

Send new customers an onboarding email series. 3-5 emails about how to use, and maximize the use of, your product or service. Maybe upsell them at the end?

32. Multiple Payment Options/Plans

If you have a rather expensive product or service, giving your customers multiple options to pay will increase your conversion rate. Create an annual, monthly, weekly, or even daily plan. Mix it up – you never know what might work!

33. Use Landing Pages

Landing pages are pages your potential customers land on which promote your product or service.

34. Optimize Your Landing Pages

Check out Neil Patel’s guide to a perfect landing page.

35. Become the #1 Result on Google for Specific Keywords

Reaching the top Google result isn’t as hard as it may sound. All you have to do is find the right long-tail keywords (meaning a string of keywords rather than single words, i.e. “discount baby shoes” vs. “shoes”).

36. Give Away Stickers

Yes, stickers. Buffer sent me a pack of stickers with a hand-written note thanking me for being involved in their weekly Twitter chat. I have to say, it was pretty awesome and unexpected getting them; and I use them too, which increases their brand awareness!

37. Logo

When designing your logo, make sure to make it in only 2-3 colors max, looks good in color or black and white, and can easily scale to any size.

38. Custom Labels

Custom labeling your products can make you stick out from the competition selling generic items.

39. Unique Product or Service

Instead of custom labeling an already made product, make an entirely unique one!

On-Site Hacks

A few startup marketing hacks for your website.

General Site Hacks

40. Site Speed

If your site is slow, you’re losing customers. It shouldn’t take any longer than 2-3 seconds to fully load; ideally less than 1 second.

41. Important Stuff “Above the Fold”

Keep all your important information (like call-to-action buttons) above the fold. In other words, keep them high enough on the page that a user doesn’t have to scroll down to see them.

42. Optimize for Mobile

Mobile is becoming the dominant contender in the B2C world. If you’re marketing to consumers, you need to ensure your mobile website is above average.

43. Simple Home Page

Too many times I see websites with crazy complicated homepages; buttons, images, and text are everywhere and you don’t know where to look. Remember KISS – Keep it simple stupid.

44. Enhance Boring Pages

Look at your about page, contact page, error page, etc… are they incredibly lackluster? If they leave a lot to be desired – spruce them up! Heck, leave an easter egg or some humor on them.

45. Upgrade a Top 10 List Post

Check Google for a “Top 10” post in your niche. Look at the top results, and see if you can make a better top 10 – or even a top 200! Use the search operator “allintitle:” for best results. 

46. Exit Intent

Use an app like Exit Monitor to create a popup window giving your visitors an offer when they move their mouse to leave the website.

47. Write Copy in the First Person

Instead of your button saying “Start Your Free Trial”, make it say “Start My Free Trial”. Use the first person in the rest of your copy, too!

48. Fixed Position Signup Form

Add a newsletter signup form in a fixed position on the sidebar of your page. Emails are like gold in today’s marketing world.

49. Create a Killer “Thank You” Page

One of the most overlooked, and paradoxically most important, pages on your website is the thank you page. You should use this page to wow the customer and get them to take the next step.

50. Use Unique CTA Text

Rather than simply writing “Get Started Now” on your call-to-action buttons, try something unique like “Improve Conversions by 50% Now!”

51. Contrast Your CTA Color

Notice how I showed you a big red “Start My Free Trial” button above? Instead of making it blue like the rest of our theme, I made it red to really stick out and capture attention.

52. Use “>>” in Your CTA

This point is minor, but some research has shown that adding “>>” to the end of your call-to-action button actually increases conversions. Who’da thunk it?

53. Make Buttons Look Like Buttons

Don’t get too fancy with your CTAs. Stick with buttons being buttons.

54. Tweet Embeds of Social Proof

Check out Hubspot’s guide to tweeting embeds.

55. Show Testimonials on Your Home Page

Testimonials and social proof are a major factor of any great website. Without them, your viewers have less trust in you.

56. Credit Card Expiration Reminders

This is great for subscription based companies. If you accept recurring credit card payments, a credit card expiration reminder like Churn Buster can save you a lot of potentially lost account. It will email them to update their payment information when their credit card is about to expire.

57. Leaderboards

If you’re able to, showing your customers on a leaderboard where they can compete with each other will raise their loyalty to your company.

Warning: This may cause some unhappy customers.

58. Gamify Everything

Gamification is becoming the new big thing in business and (hopefully soon) education. It’s so popular because it simply works. You can use an app like Smar7 Apps to gamify your store and increase your average order size.

59. Speaking of Gamify – Give Them a Task List When They Log In

By giving your users a task list, they will not only know exactly what they need to do, but they will also feel accomplished as they cross them off. Literally, show the item being crossed off and greyed out when they complete them; and when they complete certain ones, grant them achievements with badges they can show off on their profile!

60. Let Them Share These Achievements

Once they earn the achievements, allow them to share them via social media.

61. Add Messaging or General Social Elements

If you can find a way to make your platform social, you can increase customer loyalty exponentially. In fact, the more social elements you add, the more sticky your platform becomes.

62. Downsell at Cancellation

When a customer goes to cancel their service or order, try to keep them as a customer by downselling them. For example, when I went to cancel my audible subscription, they offered to give me 3 months at half price if I stayed. They suckered me into keeping my subscription, which I still have to this day.

63. Reach Out to “At Risk” Customers

You can use your analytics software (like KISSmetrics, MixPanel, or Trak.io) to tag a customer any time they are “at risk” of unsubscribing. You could use a simple tag like “hasn’t logged in for 2 weeks” or something similar; when they get tagged, re-engage them with emails or through social media.

64. Email Popups – Yes, They Still Work

Use a popup box to capture more emails.

65. Stop Them From Exiting the Popup

I don’t mean force them to enter their email; definitely keep a way for them to close the popup. To stop them, make them click a text saying something like, “No thanks, I don’t want to grow my business” or “No thanks, I don’t want to be healthy”. You can trigger a psychological reaction in some people who don’t want to click that button because it goes against their beliefs; and thus, they’ll sign up.

66. Have a Blog Subscription Form

Simple, but often overlooked.

67. Create an F.A.Q. Page

If you get a lot of questions, create a page with their answers.

68. Exit Survey

Instead of offering your visitors a discount when they try to leave your website, why not ask them to complete a quick survey of why they decided not to buy?

eCommerce Specific Hacks

These marketing hacks are specifically for eCommerce stores.

69. Social Proof

Include social proof, like product reviews, on your product pages.

70. Security Badge

Include a security badge on your product pages, like PayPal secure or McAfee secure, to increase trust.

71. Product Titles

Optimize your product titles to play on emotions; for example, instead of saying “Necklace”, say “Dazzling Sterling Silver & Rhinestone Necklace”.

72. Product Images

Ensure your product images are only high-quality 1080p with no pixelation, and you show it from every angle. For more info on taking great product pictures, check out this article.

73. Product Descriptions

Your description should focus on the benefits of your product, not the features. Make it easy to read and touch on emotions.

74. Product Variants

Include product variants, like color or style, to increase your average order size.

75. Limiting # Per Customer

Limit the number of items per customer to give them an extra sense of scarcity. For example, if you say “Limit 3 Per Customer”, there is a chance people will want to buy 3 instead of 1 because it makes the item seem like a better deal.

76. Use a Countdown Timer

Scarcity increases conversions. Use a countdown timer like POWr.

77. Be Up Front with Shipping Costs and Times

If your shipping cost is free and arrives in 3-5 days, say so. If it costs $10 and takes 2 weeks to arrive, still say so. Keep surprises to a minimum to increase conversions.

Content/Inbound Marketing Hacks

Content marketing hacks and inbound marketing hacks for any business.

78. Create a Content Calendar

No amount of marketing hacks makes up for planning. Check out Hubspot’s Content Calendar guide.

79. Generate Tons of Headlines to Choose From

Never run dry on headlines by always keeping a list to choose from.

80. Tell a Great Story

People listen to and engage with stories more than any kind of article. Tell them a story they’ll never forget, and you’ll be rewarded with more shares, comments, and likes.

81. Tap Into the Top Emotions

According to BuzzSumo: Awe, Laughter, and Amusement are the emotions contained in the most shared articles across the web. Share more content that captures these emotions.

82. Write In-Depth Articles

The majority of top search results in Google are 2,000+ words. Make sure you’re writing in-depth, long form articles. 

83. Make Sure Your Content is Actually Useful

That said, don’t just write crap. Make sure the stuff you’re creating is actually useful.

84. Create More “How To”/”Tips & Tricks” Articles

The vast majority of people in this poll stated they prefer to read “how to” articles above all else. 

85. Follow the 10x Rule

Provide 10x more value than you charge. If someone pays $10 for your subscription, give them $100 of value. Not literally; but give them the content and help to make it worth $100. Give 200 marketing hacks instead of 20. 😉

86. Write More Headlines

According to Upworthy, you should write 25 headlines (yes, 25 headlines!) before you pick your headlines. Then, pick two and test them.

87. Require Shares for Your Best Content

If you have some content that is just incredibly, over-the-top valuable, require the viewer to share it in order to see it. If you don’t like this idea, then let them access a chunk of it without sharing; once you feel you’ve captured their interest, ask them to share it to continue reading.

88. Make (Some) of Your Best Content Evergreen

The great content that you don’t require sharing to view, but consistently gets views and is relevant even as it ages should be posted on your website to its own page as evergreen content.

89. Make Your Content More Shareable

As in, literally include more share buttons. Make buttons that float with the viewer as they scroll down the page, that sit fixed at the end of the article, and that pop up in the bottom left corner.

90. Stay on Top of Trends

Using sites like Mashable & Techcrunch, you can stay on top of the latest trends. Capitalize on them by being one of the first to write about them.

91. Use Memes and Humor to get More Shares

Because, memes. People share them.

92. Link To Your Posts, From Your Posts

Not only will this help Google crawl your site, it will also keep your visitors there.

93. Use Infographics

A picture is worth a thousand words. An infographic, then, is worth ten thousand. But seriously… they get more shares and engagement.

94. Offer a Free Course

Offering a free course is an easy way to grow a newsletter. You could make it as simple as a 3 part email series leading to blog posts you’ve already written alongside some extra commentary.

95. Use a CTA at the End of Your Content

If someone read your whole article, chances are they’re at least a little interested in your content. Offer them a next step.

96. Give Away Free Templates in Exchange for an Email

Hubspot does this really well.

97. Send Discounts to Influencers

If you’ve found some influential people in your niche, send them discounted or free products/services to try out and, hopefully, review/spread the word.

98. Ask if You Can Repost Influencer’s Blog Posts

The use of influencers goes on and on. Ask them if you can repost their blog post to your blog for easy, free content. As long as they approve and you link to them, you should be fine.

99. Look for Broken or Outdated Links or Spelling Errors on Other Blogs

Find broken or outdated links, then content the blog owner about them. Maybe even point out some spelling or grammar errors. They’re certain to thank you… and maybe provide you with a small return favor. Like sharing your content or writing a guest post.

100. Write New Content for Them

To make their lives even easier, rewrite the outdated or broken content and make it better. Then tell them, “Hey this link is broken. I wrote that content too; why not link to mine?” Then they barely need to do any work to replace the link, and you get a backlink and some traffic.

101. Repurpose Your Content

Marketing hacks are great, but you need content! You can repurpose your content over and over. Turn your best content into a video, a podcast, an infographic or a slideshare. Then share it as new content.

102. Interview Key Influencers in Your Niche

Those same influencers you’re after? Ask to interview them! Interviews make for interesting content, and the person you’re interviewing will probably share it as well. They’ll likely feel flattered you asked, so it’s a win-win!

103. Partner with Non-Competing Companies in Your Niche

Look for products or services that would complement your product or service well, then try to partner with them. You don’t have to actually become business partners, but help each other out.

104. Write Case Studies of Your Users

Have some of your customers done extremely well using your service? Write about it! Tell their story – they’ll be flattered and share it, and you’ll have a great story like we talked about.

ChannelApe Case Studies

105. Improve Top Content Based on Keywords

This is a well known, but still highly important marketing hack. Search for top keywords in your niche. Read the top results. Can you write something better? Do it, and try to beat them in the search results.

106. Encourage User-Generated Content

Ask your users to uploads pictures of your product, write testimonials, or even write guest posts on your blog!

107. Don’t Forget to Promote!

The fatal mistake of many business owners and content marketers is that they spend more time creating their content than they do promoting it; promotion is just as important, if not more important, than creating the content in the first place. All the marketing hacks in the world won’t help if you don’t take action on them!

108. Markerly

Markerly is a way to advertise with the top influencers in your niche; for a price, of course.

109. Click to Tweet

Click to Tweet is a free tool that allows you to see detailed analytics on your tweets.

110. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a tool to search for top articles based on backlinks and virality, as well as top influencers.

111. Infusion Soft

Infusion Soft is an all-in-one marketing and sales software built for small businesses. The software automatically follows up with customers via email and social media and tracks your customers via their CRM.

112. Hubspot

HubSpot is an inbound marketing software and CRM.

113. Marketo

Marketo is a suite of tools covering email marketing automation and analytics.

Email Marketing Hacks

Email marketing hacks to crush it.

114. Create an Email Content Calendar

No amount of marketing hacks will help you if you don’t write a plan. Of course, Hubspot strikes again with their awesome guide to creating an email content calendar. They also have tons of their own marketing hacks and guides.

115. Use the “Rule of 7”

The rule of 7 states you should wait at least 7 days before promoting your product or service to your leads. During those 7 days, instead send them valuable content; be it yours or someone else’s. If you’re not sure what content to send, check out these next few marketing hacks:

116. Don’t Create Content – “Curate” it

Curating means compiling or organizing the best information in one place. This list isn’t a mere creation of content. It’s a curation of all the greatest marketing hacks I could find around the internet.

117. Send Someone Else’s Content

In your emails, send links other people’s content, as long as it’s relevant and you’re not competing directly with them. Then, tell them you shared it; they might return the favor.

118. Write a Shocking Headline

Your email headlines should evoke some emotions, just like your blog post headlines. For example, try leaving people hanging with a good title like “This One Easy Trick Destroyed My Stress”.

119. Keep Your Headline Short

Try to keep the headline short enough that it doesn’t get cut off. Of course, you could always use the cut off on purpose, like “I lost twenty pounds by…”

120. Use FWD: and RE:

Email messages you receive with the subject “FWD:” or “RE:” are seen as more important and are more likely to be clicked on.

Warning! Don’t overuse these marketing hacks, and don’t use them for just any email. Live up to people’s expectations of it being an important message or this strategy will backfire on you.

121. Use Fewer Images

High-quality images are amazing. Unfortunately, having a lot of images increase your emails chance of ending up in the spam folder. All-text emails are not unheard of in the marketing world; or just one or two high impact images.

122. Provide Social Proof

Embed real tweets from your customers or include testimonials in your emails.

123. Send Better Email Receipts

Use a tool like Receiptful to enhance your email receipts and increase repeat customers.

124. Use Buttons in Your Email

One of your high impact images could be a CTA button.

125. Make it Personal

Marketing hacks alone won’t get you customers. You need to show empathy and become personable. Use their first name in the email if you have it; most email marketing platforms do this automatically now.

126. Promote Replying – And Actually Respond

Ask people to reply directly to your emails. Keep an eye on your inbox, and respond to everyone ASAP.

127. Send Fewer Emails – But Make Them Count

This marketing hack is important – No one wants to be spammed by emails. One or two a week is even pushing it. Try to find a number that works for you.

128. Have a Great Signature

Your signature is a great place for quotes and links to important pages on your website.

129. Email Drip Campaigns

An email drip campaign is a set of automatically sent emails which “drip” down to your customer one at a time over the course of the campaign. Send drip campaigns to increase engagement and conversions.

130. Email Autoresponders

Set up autoresponders if you can’t reply to your email right away, to ensure your customer their email was sent and will be responded to shortly.

131. Resend Emails to People Who Don’t Open Them

Every time you send an email, create a list of all the people who didn’t open it. A week later, resend the same email to that list.

132. Proofread!

There’s nothing worse than getting an email with tons of spelling and grammar errors. Please, for the love of all that is great, proofread your emails.

133. A/B Split Test

Testing, tweaking, and testing some more is what a marketer is all about. You can easily split test landing pages, emails, headlines and more if you have the right tools (like LeadPages, MailChimp, etc.)

134. Wavelength by MailChimp

Speaking of MailChimp – they have this awesome new tool called Wavelength which allows you to send your emails to other people’s lists.

135. Revue

The next few marketing hacks are really email marketing tools to get the most of your customer’s email addresses. Revue is a place for email newsletters. You can add your newsletter there to be seen by their visitors.

136. Listbuilder

ListBuilder is a free email popup tool.

137. Vero

Vero is an email marketing platform in case you don’t like the others.

138. MailChimp

MailChimp; another, easy-to-use email marketing platform.

139. Aweber

AWeber, a third email marketing platform option.

140. Active Campaign

Active Campaign is the fourth email marketing automation tool on the list; I like them a lot because they have some cool workflows the others don’t have.

141. SendGrid

SendGrid is great for transactional emails.

142. sendwithus

sendwithus is a different email marketing platform in that they have a very modern design.

143. Customer.io

Customer.io is a messaging platform for your website.

144. Klaviyo

One of the best features of Klaviyo is the built in abandoned cart recovery.

Social Media Marketing Hacks

Social media marketing hacks to gain followers and customers.

145. SellHack for LinkedIn

Find hidden email addresses on LinkedIn with the SellHack browser extension prospecting tool.

146. Optimize Your Content for Social Media

If you’re not previewing how your website and blog posts look when shared on social media, you’re losing a lot of traffic. Start optimizing your title, image, and URL.

147. Share Often & Consistently

Regardless your chosen social platforms, you should be posting at a minimum of once a day. On Twitter, you could even post as much as 10 or even 100 times per day if done properly.

148. Respond to Comments & DM’s

You shouldn’t need to hear this marketing hack, but so few people do it. Responding to your social comments and direct messages is easy money. People want to know they can trust your business; responding to them gives them that trust.

149. Pick 1 or 2 Main Social Platforms to Start

Overwhelming yourself with every social channel is bound to make you burn out and feel useless. Stick to one or two, master them, and build from there.

150. Use AdEspresso to Check the Competition

You can use AdEspresso to see the ads other people have been using for some insight. Just check their examples page.

151. Share More Media

Facebook has been optimized for images. Instagram and Pinterest are two of the most popular social sites. Media is the way to go. Of course, test this hypothesis to see what works for your business!

152. Promote Your Content on Social Media More Than Once

Post it on FB once today, once in a week, and once in a month. Post it on Twitter twice today, once tomorrow, once next week, etc.! No reason you’re limited to one share – you’ll miss a ton of people if you only share it once.

153. Also, Promote Other People’s Content

Marketing hacks are useless without a little tact. Don’t be stingy. Other people make great stuff your followers would appreciate, too.

154. …Then Tell Them About It

They might even share your stuff in return!

155. Make Offers to LinkedIn Group Owners

Offer the owners of LinkedIn groups in your niche a discount or freebie of your product or service, in exchange for an honest review in the group.

156. Automated Webinars

Use a tool like StealthSeminar to record a webinar and play it over and over to your visitors. Just try not to make it obvious – you might piss them off if they find out.

157. Tweet New Customers

When you get a new customer – tweet them! Say thanks, and welcome to the team!

158. Host Your Videos on Wistia (Instead of YouTube)

Wistia, unlike YouTube, gives you the link and SEO advantages when someone embeds your video on their site.

159. Join LinkedIn Groups in Your Niche

Just as you market to the LinkedIn group owners, join the groups! Answer some of their questions, and maybe you’ll be able to offer your product as a solution.

160. Join Facebook Groups in Your Niche

Facebook groups, like LI groups, are a great way to connect with your audience in your niche.

161. Start Your Own Facebook Group

What better way to start a community around your niche than by making one yourself? You can also answer people’s questions and get them around like-minded people who will help each other.

162. Use Facebook Ads

The next few marketing hacks are all about paid social media. Facebook is becoming pay-to-win. You don’t have to spend a lot, but you do have to spend something. Start brushing up on your FB ad skills.

163. Pinterest Ads

Pinterest is not pay-to-win, but running an ad might help you get more traffic.

164. Twitter Ads

Like Pinterest, Twitter isn’t pay-to-win. However, knowing how to run a Twitter ad effectively will help your business.

165. Social Contests and Giveaways

Everybody loves getting free stuff. Run a contest or a giveaway to capture emails, increase your following, or gain UGC (User Generated Content)!

166. Ask Customers to Post Images with Your Product

Another under-used marketing hack: Asking your customers to post images of themselves with your product can net you some valuable social proof.

167. Get Influencers to Post Your Stuff

Reach out to social influencers to repost your blog or products.

168. Find the Accounts with the Most Retweets

The best influencers are those not with the highest following, but with the highest % of retweets! You can get this information from BuzzSumo.

169. Create a List of Highly Influential Accounts

Here’s one of the best marketing hacks out there. Now that you’ve found some influencers that you could work with, start creating a large list (1,000+) of influencers. Then…

170. Market Directly to Those Influencers

Turn that list into an audience on your FB or Twitter ads, and market your content directly to them. If your content is genuinely good and useful, they’ll share it without you even asking!

Growth Hacking Tools

A list of some of the best marketing hacks and growth hacking tools on the web.

Traffic Acquisition

Marketing hacks and growth hack tools to help you gain more website traffic.

171. Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is a great way to find new keywords to target your content to. Just type in a word and you’ll see similar keywords and how often they’re searched for. Additionally, you can search a competitor’s URL and find the keywords they’re using.

172. Ahrefs.com

Ahrefs.com is a fancy little tool that tells you how many backlinks a URL has, and much more. You can use it to find easy-to-rank-for article ideas.

173. Colibrio.io

Colibri.io is an alternative to Buzzsumo.

174. SumoMe

SumoMe is an email popup, heat map, and social sharing tool you can use to increase your traffic and split test your site.

175. HotJar

HotJar is also a heat map; however they don’t offer the additional features of SumoMe.

176. Branch.io

Branch.io allows you to easily link users to your mobile website or app, and also provides detailed analytics.

177. Pay With a Tweet

Pay With A Tweet lets you give discounts to people if and only if they share your content, or “pay with a Tweet”.

178. Canva

Canva is a free image editing software that allows you to quickly and easily create social media profile pictures, cover photos, ad photos, and other things like marketing materials, fliers, etc. It’s amazing – you have to try this one. (I don’t get paid for promoting them, I just truly believe they’re awesome.)

179. Nimble

Nimble is a social monitoring app, and much more. You can see details on your customer like where they live and work, and what their hobbies are.

180. MixRank

MixRank allows you to tap into other people’s email lists to market to highly targeted customers.

181. Twilighter

Twilighter gives your visitors the ability to highlight any text on your page and instantly tweet it.

Customer Acquisition

Marketing hacks and growth hacking tools to help you convert that traffic into customers.

182. Hello Bar

Hello Bar allows you to create a bar at the top of your page to advertise a sale or get more email signups.

183. Bounce Exchange

Bounce Exchange views your visitor’s digital behavior sort of like a salesman views body language, and tailors their web experience to their unique behaviors to increase conversions.

184. SessionCam

SessionCam lets you record the screen of your visitors live on your website.

185. KISSmetrics

KISSmetrics is the king of analytics and ensuring quality data.

186. CrazyEgg

CrazyEgg shows you a heat map of what your customers are clicking on specific pages.

187. Totango

Totango analyzes your customers to tell you when they’re at risk of leaving, when they need more product training, and more.

188. Unbounce

Unbounce allows you to easily create and split test beautiful landing pages.

189. Optimizely

Optimizely allows you to test and personalize your desktop and mobile site.

190. Visual Website Optimizer

If you want to easily A/B split test, including analytics and heat maps, try Visual Website Optimizer.

191. Clicktale

Clicktale is another possible heatmap platform with analytics..

192. Receiptful

Receiptful is a simple way to send high-converting receipts to your customers.

193. Zapier

You can use Zapier to link multiple web apps together automatically. For example, you can link your gmail with dropbox to save important files.

194. Shopify

Set up an eCommerce store in minutes with Shopify.

195. Qualaroo

Use Qualaroo to have little “nudge” surveys pop up on your screen. Ask customers what they think of your website, products, pricing, and more.

196. Consumer Barometer

Consumer Baromoter is a tool by Google to help you understand trends and the things people are searching for around the world.

197. Typeform

Typeform helps you create beautiful and simple forms your customers can quickly and easily fill out.

198. Polldaddy

Use Polldaddy to create surveys or polls for your audience.

199. Olark

With Olark, you can have a chat box pop up on your website for our visitors to contact you. Eventually you can send automated responses when you start seeing the same questions asked many times.

200. Be Persistent!

OK, you got me; this isn’t a marketing hack so much as a piece of advice. I’ve learned through the years that the saying “half the battle is showing up” is actually true. By being persistent in attaining your goals and consistently show up, it’s almost impossible not to succeed! Good luck, and I hope you’ve found these marketing hacks, tips, and tools helpful!

Bonus Marketing Hack: Use ChannelApe.

ChannelApe is an inventory management platform. We can automatically add your products to your online store, Amazon, eBay, or Jet.com. Whenever a purchase is made, your supplier is notified and your inventory quantity changes to match the new amount; automatically. Automation is the key to business growth.

Know of a marketing hack not on this list? Let us know of your favorite marketing hacks or tools in the comments below! Don’t forget to share the article if you found it helpful; I worked hard to curate this list, and want to help as many people as possible! Thanks!