Growth hacking
fromBusiness Matters
3 days agoWhy More UK Startups Are Exploring Gamified Customer Engagement
Gamification leverages game mechanics to increase user engagement, motivation, retention, and lifetime value for startups.
Probability and statistics affect every aspect of our lives. After all, statistics is simply taking the probability of any given event and putting it down in plain black and white. This means that the lessons businesses can learn from casino odds can easily be applied to every element of your operations. Hedging your bets is useful for more than just managing your betting bankroll; it can be essential for ensuring your business remains profitable even when you make a new investment or try a new approach.
Over the last couple of years, the most interesting thing I have noticed when studying the brands dominating in the digital era is that most of the successful new big market disruptors - those making millions of dollars a month from online ads alone - have risen to fame thanks to their own internal marketing teams. This is especially true for those in the e-commerce space, who have grown predominantly through Facebook advertising.
Here's what actually happened: A Microsoft employee working on Bing proposed a seemingly minor change to how the search engine displayed ad headlines. The idea required minimal effort-just a few days of engineering time-but it was buried among hundreds of other proposals. Program managers deemed it insignificant and let it languish. The breakthrough came when an engineer, recognizing the low development cost, decided to test the idea anyway.
Building authority through smart content placement People judge your brand by where they see your content. Publishing on well-respected industry sites does something powerful. You tap into their existing readership. You also borrow credibility from their reputation. Their audience already trusts them. That trust transfers to you when your content appears there. Working with professional guest posting services simplifies the whole process. They identify sites that match your niche. They create content that fits editorial guidelines. They land placements that bring actual visitors.
Three weeks ago, I tested something that completely changed how I think about organic traffic. I opened ChatGPT and asked a simple question: "What's the best course on building SaaS with WordPress?" The answer that appeared stopped me cold. My course showed up as the first result, recommended directly by the AI with specific reasons why it was valuable. I hadn't paid for advertising. I hadn't done any special promotion.
Britain's small business leaders are embracing a new ethos of marginal gains, with fresh research revealing how the so-called "1% mindset" is quietly shaping a new wave of SME growth. According to Adobe, which has launched its Adobe Express 'One Better' movement alongside entrepreneur Steven Bartlett, more than 90 per cent of SME owners familiar with the term believe that making small, continuous improvements delivers measurable benefits to productivity and profits.
You know, look, I'm uh I'm pretty active on launch day trying to understand what's working. I'm looking for feedback. Um both, you know, an example, I'm on X trying to understand like see if people, average users how they're experiencing the product. I probably ping people back saying, look, you know, this is a valid point, we should address it. So, in some sense, I'm looking at that trying to assess it.
Remember when stuffing keywords actually worked? Those days are dead. Today's on-page SEO serves one simple purpose. It tells Google what your page is about. That's it. Nothing more. You need a decent title tag. A meta description that makes sense. Headers that organize your content. Some relevant keywords sprinkled naturally throughout your text. But here's what nobody tells you. You can have perfect on-page optimization and still get buried on page 10 of Google.
Every sales leader faces the same tension. Close deals faster to hit revenue targets, but maintain high standards to avoid bad fits, legal issues, or deals that fall apart post-signature. Push too hard on speed, and you end up with buyer remorse, contract problems, and unhappy customers. Move too cautiously, and competitors snatch opportunities while your team is still scheduling discovery calls.
Meadow Lane, a gourmet grocer in New York City's Tribeca neighborhood, opened Friday at 11 a.m., attracting quite the line of hopeful and hungry shoppers. The brainchild of former venture capitalist Sammy Nussdorf, the store had a cult following before it had a physical retail space. He's been posting about the storesince June 2024, and some of his taste-tasting videos of the menu have gone viral.
Let's be real. The learning tech space is more competitive than ever, and achieving significant growth feels almost like a dream. One common issue for many companies is increased customer acquisition cost (CAC), which leads to long sales cycles and slow revenue. To reduce CAC, you have to align your marketing and sales efforts, focusing on various initiatives and daily activities. In fact, sales and marketing alignment is shown to boost close rates by 67% and revenue growth by 19%.
AI gave everyone speed - but that same speed flooded every distribution channel. Search traffic's down, inboxes are overrun, and even virality is harder when everyone's shipping quickly. In this episode, Emily Kramer reveals the strategy behind today's breakout companies: ecosystem. Instead of going direct, win through partners, creators, communities, and integrations that already have your audience's trust. If you're still relying on the old playbook in an AI-saturated world, this episode will help you rewire your strategy.
Emily Kramer has identified a pattern in how top AI (and non-AI) startups are able to break through the noise and grow unlike at any other time in history. Once you see it, you immediately rethink your growth strategy. I did! After reading the first draft of this post, I got a whole new level of understanding for why my product pass has been
You're getting traffic but nobody's buying. Your competitors seem to convert effortlessly while you watch potential customers slip away. The problem isn't your product. It's your funnel. Most founders build sales funnels backwards, starting with tech stack instead of buyer psychology. Building a sales funnel feels overwhelming because most advice focuses on tools, not thinking. You need clarity before complexity. You need psychology before platforms. Most importantly, you need to understand why people buy before you can build systems that help them do it.
No marketing strategy can save a bad product, especially in the long run. "It starts with a great product," Houston said at Stanford. "You're not going to push a rock above a hill." Houston said that having a great product comes down to quickly solving a customer's problem. The sooner a new visitor can recognize that your product or service can solve a problem, the better.
Airlines seem to have all the power algorithms, timing, and secret pricing strategies while travelers are left guessing. But what if there was a loophole hidden in plain sight? One that frequent flyers, expats, and even travel agents have quietly used for years to beat airline pricing systems at their own game? It's called the Reverse Booking Trick, and if you learn how to use it right, it could save you hundreds even thousands on long-haul flights, especially across Europe, Asia, and North America.
Strategic marketing for CEOs means aligning content, data, and distribution to drive measurable growth, including leads and revenue. Content is a huge part of any company's marketing initiatives, as it helps establish your brand voice and thought leadership. Think of content as any other type of media you're using to promote your business. You're probably focusing a lot on social media and online ads, right?
Relying on one gig is like putting all your eggs in one very fragile basket. The most successful gig workers I know have multiple income streams flowing at once. Think about it this way: If you're driving for Uber, you're already in your car. Why not deliver food between rides? If you're freelance writing, why not offer social media management to the same clients? The key is finding gigs that complement each other instead of competing for your time.
Social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram have made it easier than ever to get noticed by the world. How does it feel when your business is at the centre of a viral trend? Spend any time on social media and it won't be long before you see footage of some holiday mishap accompanied by the ironic voiceover, "Nothing beats a Jet2 Holiday." The travel firm's upbeat theme music and tagline has become an internet meme unit.
Costco holds a unique place in American culture. With its famous rotisserie chickens, famous food court items, bulk products sold on pallets, affordable prices, eccentric product offerings, and warehouse design, Costco has captured the imagination, wallets, and hyper-fixation of Americans for years. Unlike typical grocery shopping, the sheer volume and variety of products available at Costco leave room for creative shopping styles.
Across the UK, digital businesses are racing to reduce acquisition costs, lift lifetime value, and build trustworthy brands in tighter regulatory climates. Few sectors have had to tackle all three with such intensity-and visibility-as online casinos. Study the mechanics behind today's top iGaming platforms and you'll find a masterclass in pricing discipline, real-time personalisation, and retention design that any growth-minded company can adapt.
Jumping into digital gaming as an entrepreneur? It's... crowded, to say the least, with the rules shifting beneath your feet. Something like 4,300 active online casino licenses popped up worldwide in 2023 (so says H2 Gambling Capital, anyway). The folks who seem to be doing okay-or pulling ahead, actually-might be those focusing on smarter tech and mixing up their strategy, not just sticking to the old playbook.
In 2023, Duolingo generated over $500 million in revenue with a deceptively simple feature at its core: a streak counter. This wasn't just any counter - it was the result of over 600 experiments conducted across four years, each one peeling back layers of human psychology to understand what truly motivates daily engagement. The numbers tell a compelling story: users who reach just a 7-day streak are 3.6 times more likely to complete their language course,
Pack your laptop and cancel your office lease. Some seriously successful entrepreneurs I know run their empires from Lisbon cafes, Bali co-working spaces, and Tokyo hotel rooms. They're not playing small. They're building bigger businesses than their desk-bound counterparts while living exactly how they want. Maybe you've been told you need stability to scale. Maybe you think serious businesses require serious offices. You're being lied to.
Business development is often framed as a numbers game: more dials, more emails, more sequences. But sheer activity without depth rarely builds trust, let alone a pipeline. That's why we stopped calling our entry-level salespeople "BDRs." In our organization, they are junior consultants. This change in title isn't cosmetic; it reflects a completely different approach to how we engage prospects and build meaningful conversations.
For almost 20 years, Google's search engine has been the go-to source for researching anything. But with the rise of generative AI, its stronghold is slipping. Consumers are increasingly turning to AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity when they have questions. According to a 2024 Ignite Visibility study, 62% of people now use ChatGPT or Google Gemini to explore products and services, showing that AI answers are quickly becoming the starting point for decisions.
Getting ready for a new business year is a crucial time. It presents the opportunity to reflect and make a list of a strategic changes to the way your company works. Small and simple tweaks in your approach can set your business up for sustainable growth and success. With so much in the pipeline and a lot to play for, it's worth getting the early preparations off to a strong start.