When you’re looking to grow your company, one important priority is getting your company name in front of as many people as possible. Advertising is one way to do that, but consumers don’t trust it and it costs a significant amount of money. However, there is another way...
The “Powered By” growth hack is an ingenious option for deploying your company’s identity within any embedded content or widgets that your customers see on your site. If you’re a company whose business is embedded content, this is a hack you can’t afford to miss.
"Powered By" In Action
Companies like Gleam are absolutely crushing the “Powered By” growth hack. But what exactly is this technique? In this case, it’s best explained with an example. Gleam is a promotions company that allows customers to embed a Gleam sweepstakes widget into their sites in order to run campaigns and reward users. At the bottom, this widget includes a link to Gleam with the text, “Powered by Gleam.”
The “Powered By” link redirects curious parties to the company’s landing page and is, according to the site’s founders, seen by 1.3 million people a month and responsible for 30% of all new Gleam sign-ups. Recently, though, as part of a Growth Hackers challenge, the team’s marketing employees decided to see if they could improve this conversion rate - a test that was in-line with the company’s core value of focusing more of their effort on existing channels, rather than trying new avenues of advertising.
The team split tested a variety of other phrases and found that one phrase brought in a substantially higher number of conversions: “Not using Gleam Yet?” However, they found that, despite this 474% increase, the conversions accumulated were lower quality, as the new prospects captured were more curiosity-seekers than qualified users.
As a result of this and a site-wide language change, the team switched back to “Powered By” on their widgets. In doing so, they confirmed a major principle underpinning growth hacking - that taking the part of the product that gets the most views and optimizing it is a better way to drive growth than to run a series of seemingly-endless small tweaks. Why It Works
The “Powered By” hack works because it leverages your existing user base to get your company’s information in front of your users and customers. With embedded content and widgets, your customers are likely already engaged and interactive. And when they catch your “Powered By” message in that mindset, they’re a lot more likely to click through to find out more.
It’s also a low-key, non-invasive way of presenting your company. You’re essentially saying, “Oh, you like this? Well, we built it! Come check us out!” This invitation to a user that’s new to your product, but already engaged with the content, is a great way to bring in new users.
“Powered By” can be used in a variety of ways. Some common placements include your public pages, product widgets, shared documents, or in situations that call for transparency. Each one of these techniques has its own unique benefits:
Users' Public Pages
Placing “Powered By” on a public page makes the most sense if you allow customers to build pages they need, but don’t want to spend internal resources on. For example, you’ll find this type of hack on Workable’s applicant tracking system, Wistia’s webinars, and Instapage’s landing pages.
When you use this technique, your branding needs to be a bit subtle, so that it doesn’t detract from the main purpose of the page. In addition, you may want to offer your users higher-level paid plans that remove the branding, just in case they’d prefer to create public-facing pages without your logo or information.
On Widgets
As described by Gleam’s success above, widgets are a great way to get your company’s name in front of an engaged user who hasn’t heard of you before. For this to work, though, your widget must deliver a great value to your customers and their users. The more valuable it is, the more views it’ll receive. “Powered By” hack or not - if your widget doesn’t provide real value, it’s not going to be used or seen.
In this instance, most companies don’t offer higher-paid plans that include the removal of branding from widgets, as the views and clicks the widgets capture are a major part of their marketing model. That said, if you’re concerned the inclusion of your branding might be deterring prospective customers, either ask for their feedback directly or test different options on your site.
On Shared Documents
While you may not put your “Powered By” link directly on a customer document, brands like HelloSign include it on their confirmation receipts. Other companies include a light brand statement on mockups and prototypes, the way Marvelapp does. This means that as the mockup is sent to others for review, your brand is gaining visibility and clicks.
Again, it’s up to you to determine whether or not you’ll give users the option of paying extra to remove your link. Consider the opinions you hear expressed carefully, and weigh the potential loss of customers against the visibility this growth hack gives your brand.
The Transparency Trend
Interestingly, companies are beginning to share more and more of their metrics with their public audiences. Typically, they do this through online versions of a dashboard, located on the company’s site. Buffer's Baremetrics dashboard is one example of this, though there may be more to come if other software providers decide it’s a good idea to allow their clients to share public versions of their results in a similar manner.
The “Powered By” growth hack is a great way to stimulate growth in your company. It’s currently being used successfully by dozens of companies, and it’s worth some serious consideration as to whether your brand and its products will benefit. Whatever type of software you offer, including your branding on your user’s end-product is a great way to grow your visibility and hack your growth.
Do you use “Powered By” as a growth hack? Why or why not? Share your thoughts below in the comments!
