Growth hacking is a general term used to describe tactics and actions that either bring more traffic to your business, more revenue to the company, or both. These tactics are usually creative in nature and can be small or fairly large in scope.

One example of a small growth hack would be ask to investigate the dropoff point when users sign up for a website. Understand why users no longer use the system at that point and implement a UI hotfix. Analyze the cutoff percentages before and after — even an increased conversion rate of 2% has immense power.

One example of a large-scale, successful growth hack was the one deployed by Airbnb, in which they used Craigslist’s platform to their advantage. Using reverse engineering to delve into Craigslist’s posting, Airbnb delivered an email to users who wished to rent out a room in their house for a short amount of time. The email said that the users would make more money posting the listing directly from Airbnb, and all they had to do was click the link on the email to verify. Craigslist eventually removed this, but not before the platform had grown viral.

When executed correctly, growth hacking can immensely boost your company’s growth potential. Don’t be afraid to take that risk.