Growth Loops: How to Build Marketing Into Your Product

Ask a marketer, “How does your product grow?”

They'll reply: “Ads, affiliates, sales, social, etc.”

They’re describing top-down growth. Your classic funnel. Pour more in. Get more out.

Here’s are the problems:

• Acquiring new customers from scratch is hard and costly

• Funnels flow in only one direction

• Growth is linear

The best marketers think less about funnels. More about loops.

Loops feed themselves. The actions of one user create an output that creates a new user.

Look at Peleton's loop for example:

Here are other examples:

1) Personal viral loop

Some products improve with more users. So there's a personal incentive to invite new users.

2) Financial viral loop

Some products have financial incentives to invite new users.

3) Social viral loop

Some products are so good, people just like talking about them.

4) User-generated content loop

Some products leverage users’ content to grow their own organic traffic.

5) Physical content loop

Some products attract new users simply by being noticeable. Lime's bright green is not a coincidence.

6) Supply-side content loop

Some products incentivize users to promote their content for them.

7) Embedded loop

Some products grow by embedding themselves on other platforms.

Credits

Brian Balfour + Casey Winters from Reforge, MarketingExamples, NoGood.io

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