Typology of Growth Hacking Strategies along the Growth Hacking Funnel

Abstract

With the increasing significance of startups recently, practitioners and academicians have considered the growth hacking strategies by which these firms obtain competitive performance gains and bring into the world economy. So far, studies have mostly focused on the technical dimensions of these companies, while the business promotions they require and how they should be leveraged strategically have remained neglected. Thus, the current study attempts to present a qualitative study that could be helpful for explaining growth hacking strategies. We employed a multiple case study approach in this paper and investigated the growth strategies of 13 Iranian startups via semi-structured interviews with their founders. The deductive analyses with above 90% inter-rater reliability of the coders concluded in five groups of growth hacking strategies along the growth hacking funnel of acquisition, activation, revenue, retention, and referral. This study developed a deeper understanding of the significance of growth hacking strategies and the mechanisms by which they leveraged towards strengthening the business value.