17 Growth Hacking Tools Used By The Best Digital Marketing Startups in 2021

As a growth marketer and former founder in the startup world, I’ve constantly been on the hunt for and worked directly with some of the best growth hacking tools for the past decade.

Furthermore, none of the tools on this list haven’t been used repeatedly by either myself or close team members. So, I can guarantee you that all the tools on my list come highly recommended for entrepreneurs, startups, and companies ready for real growth.

Growth hacking tools are meant to save you time via automation and unique feature sets that provide engaging experiences for your audience. To qualify as a true growth marketing tool, you can’t be like everyone else.

So, I’ve broken down our absolute best growth hacking tools to use in 2021 across the following 16 use cases and categories:

1. Instagram Automated Messages
2. Facebook Messenger Bots
3. Running Growth Tests
4. Social Media Automation
5. LinkedIn Growth Hacking
6. Get More Social Shares
7. SMS Text Message Marketing
8. Landing Page Conversions
9. Site Traffic Lead Generation
10. Lead Form Generator
11. Email Finding Tools
12. Workflow Automation
13. Content Automation
14. Gathering Feedback
15. Influencer Marketing
16. Chatbot Marketing

Ready for explosive growth? Let’s go!

#1. Growth Hacking Tool of 2021: New Instagram Auto-Reply Tools

The #1 secret weapon for growth hackers in 2021 is the new suite of Instagram DM auto-reply tools by Customers.ai.

In fact, Customers.ai’s new tools for Instagram, which just dropped in February 2021, make the top of our list because there’s never been a chatbot that’s 100% Instagram-approved.

As far as using a chatbot to get instagram followers goes, Customers.ai is atop the leaderboard because there’s only one way to get the ‘right’ followers on Instagram: Organic engagement.

Not only will Customers.ai’s Instagram tools get you more of the followers that you actually want, Customers.ai has Instagram tools that allow marketers to:

• Finally! Manage your DMs like a pro with multi-user inbox management tools.
• Instantly reply to comments on your posts.
• Turn Instagram traffic into website traffic.
• Run a contest or do a giveaway on Instagram that incentivizes comments, shares, and mentions of your brand by your followers using auto-reply tools. 
• Automatically engage with the people who share your content in Instagram Stories.

Customers.ai Founder, Larry Kim, who is has been an influencer in the digital marketing space for over a decade now, can’t believe what he’s seeing: 

“It’s crazy, we have accounts that are doing nearly 100,000 messages per week and they are growing by tens of thousands more followers than normal!”

Larry Kim, Founder, Customers.ai

The results of using Larry’s own software has convinced him that Instagram is the place to be for influencers in 2021.

Want to start using Instagram Tools right away? To get started with Instagram bot automation tools, here’s what to do:

Get early access to Instagram messaging tools.

#2. Growth Hacking Tools for Facebook Messenger: Customers.ai

More than 1.5 billion people actively use Facebook Messenger chat. However, less than 1% of companies know how to use Facebook Messenger for business.

Customers.ai has more than 10 Facebook growth hacking tools that you can implement quickly for Messenger.

Therefore, Messenger presents an opportunity to engage with consumers on an untapped and highly engaging marketing channel.

Even better, Messenger is trending because it’s compatible with another proven marketing strategy – chatbots.

Customers.ai Facebook Messenger chatbots allow you to proactively engage with your audience via automation such as:

• Chat blasting: Just like email, but for chat
• One-time notifications: Invite users to get updates and promotional messages
• Drip campaigns: Sequenced messages across Facebook, SMS, and web chat
• Facebook post autoresponders: Capture leads and subscribers from organic Facebook posts

Best of all, all the Messenger contacts you capture from your Facebook marketing tactics can then be added to your other Customers.ai marketing channels. This includes SMS text messaging, native live chat for your website, and other web chat apps like Instagram and WhatsApp.

That way, if they visit your website, you’ll be able to view that data, send automated and targeted messages based on your previous interaction, and opt them into other campaigns. And you can do this all from one chat inbox, on one platform.

Learn how to create a Facebook Messenger funnel that drives conversions.

#3. Growth Hacking Tools for Running Growth Tests: GrowthHackers Experiments

Before we get too carried away with our list of growth hacking tools, let’s make sure we have a system in place to manage our growth tests.

GrowthHackers tool called Experiments allows you to run tests across the entire customer journey and connect your growth KPIs with company strategy in a systemized way.

Experiments is specially made for growth marketing teams running high-tempo testing experiments across the whole customer journey.

Here’s how GrowthHackers Experiments works. It provides a number of capabilities that mirror the platform founder’s growth hacking strategy called ICE (Impact – Confidence – Ease) scoring. The features are also part of the process, which consists of the following:

• Document your strategy
• Define your objectives and KPIs
• Generate an idea backlog
• Prioritize your growth tests
• Run growth meetings
• Execute your tests
• Share progress and reports
• Build a growth hacking knowledge base

#4. Growth Hacking Tools for Social Media Automation: Phantombuster

With all the growth hacking strategies that have become popular in recent years, one tool emerged as a new favorite of mine. And that’s Phantombuster.

Phantombuster provides over 200 code-free automation and data extraction tools for LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Zapier, Medium, Quora, and others.

Each tool in Phantombuster can be used individually or combined with others to create full workflows.

For example, you can automate lead generation on LinkedIn, be noticed by Instagram users, hire developers from GitHub, receive follows from your competitor’s Twitter followers, or acquire the Instagram accounts of all the restaurants in a neighborhood.

Use Phantombuster on your social media channels to automate the following:

• Lead generation
• Audience building
• Increasing social reach and engagement

#5. Growth Hacking Tools for LinkedIn: Expandi.io

Expandi is a growth hacking tool built specifically to automate lead generation from LinkedIn.

The platform has a handful of key features that consist of targeted audience search tools, marketing automation tools, and campaign insights. With Expandi, you can also do the following:

• Integrate your CRM
• Send drip campaigns
• Schedule campaigns
• Personalize messages
• Import and export via CSV

Expandi.io is designed mostly for agencies and growth marketers running multiple accounts.

#6. Growth Hacking Tools for More Social Media Shares: Quuu 

Quuu has two fantastic tools for getting more social media shares on your posts:

1. QuuuPromote
2. QuuuPods

I’ve used Quuu multiple times to curate and promote content for social media accounts.

Quuu’s promotion tool gets real profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to click and share your content.

Recently, Quuu introduced a new feature called Pods, which is really interesting. 

It allows you to automate social media sharing of content between your accounts and your friends, colleagues, and business partners accounts.

Use Quuu to curate content that your social media audiences will find value in, and then promote your company’s best performing content to increase traffic to your blog.

#7. Growth Hacking Tools for SMS Text Message Marketing: Customers.ai

SMS/MMS marketing is rapidly growing in popularity in 2020. And that’s because it’s instant, convenient, and universal. Most importantly, it’s producing results that are hard to believe.

Take a look at the performance of SMS marketing vs other marketing channels to see for yourself.

Outdated mobile-targeting tactics are costing you conversions, clients, and revenue. Meanwhile, SMS marketing is lurking in the background, waiting for you to capitalize on it.

Using Customers.ai SMS marketing tools, digital marketers can set themselves apart from the competition by dramatically increasing open, response, and conversion rates.

Text message marketing empowers businesses to send customers both bulk and personalized text messages at scale.

And you can have your audience opt-in to text message marketing campaigns easily with Customers.ai because there are multiple opt-in tools, such as its website chat SMS opt-in widget, web page popup forms for desktop and mobile, as well as SMS keyword opt-in tools.

Some SMS marketing examples you can put into action with Customers.ai:

• Bulk text messaging
• SMS drip campaign automation
• Automated responses and proactive messaging
• Send GIFs, emojis, and images in text blasts
• Trigger workflows through Zapier and the Customers.ai API

If you’re still skeptical of SMS marketing, check out these 60 SMS marketing statistics, and you’ll quickly change your mind.

#8. Growth Hacking Tools for Landing Page Conversions: Unbounce

Unbounce is one of the most popular landing page builders for digital marketers because there are no coding skills required, and they have some of the best tools for lead generation.

The platform’s ‘Conversion Intelligence’ and ‘Smart Traffic’ features help to set Unbounce apart from the competition.

When you’re running highly-targeted campaigns, such as account-based marketing campaigns, you need your entire funnel to be tailored to its audience. This is why custom-built landing pages are so important.

Think about it…

If you click on an ad that’s promoting chatbots for marketing agencies and you landed on a homepage that isn’t marketing agency-specific, the chances of converting that traffic drops. However, if you were redirected to a landing page that says in big bold letters, “The Best Chatbot Platform For Marketing Agencies”, you’ve found exactly what you were looking for.

So, when you build your marketing funnels, use a tool like Unbounce to quickly create multiple, campaigns specific landing pages. Conversion rates are guaranteed to go up, and search engines will reward you for it.

With Unbounce, you can duplicate your most successful landing pages to save time and build high converting pages in bulk. Furthermore, you can A/B test variations of landing pages to see which messaging and designs perform best.

#9. Growth Hacking Tools for Site Traffic Leads: GetEmails

Did you know you can get the email addresses of people that visit your website without a lead form?

GetEmails can identify up to 35% of your anonymous site traffic, and all you need to do is install a snippet of code on your site.

You can use the data you capture from GetEmails for:

• Email marketing and retargeting
• Creating Facebook ad lookalike audiences
• Triggering direct mail to be sent

#10. Growth Hacking Tools for Lead Form Generator: Leadformly

With Leadformly you can embed lead forms just about anywhere. Its lead forms work on almost any CMS, including WordPress, Squarespace, and Magento.

Leadformly has many lead generation tools and features, such as:

• 58+ lead form templates
• Customize the look and feel to match your branding
• Multi-step forms and conditional logic to create conversational lead forms 
• Data segmentation to qualify, and convert leads into customers

Lead forms can be embedded on your website and linked to your CRM. Then, you can use Leadformly’s analytics & A/B testing tools to increase your conversion rates.

#11. Growth Hacking Tools for Finding Emails: Dropcontact.io

Dropcontact finds emails, enriches, deduplicates, and updates your contacts automatically in popular CRM platforms. The tool is meant to save your marketing and sales teams time by automating its key features while working seamlessly with your CRM.

Dropcontact is known mostly for its ability to find and verify emails at a higher success rate than most other email finding tools.

Additionally, if your growth marketing team doesn’t have the budget for a tool like Clearbit, Dropcontact is your next best option and is easier to use.

#12. Growth Hacking Tools for Workflow Automation: Zapier

Zapier is a great tool for marketers on a low budget because you can create automated workflows across tools in your mar-tech stack. And it’s compatible with thousands of tools, which you can easily chain commands together with an “If X happens, do Y” structure. 

For example, the Customers.ai Zapier integration allows you to easily send information that’s stored to customer profiles in Customers.ai to other applications. 

Here are just some of the most popular “Zaps” for Customers.ai users: 

• Add all new leads to your CRM, such as Salesforce
• Send SMS messages or Slack notifications to new contacts
• Subscribe new Customers.ai contacts to MailChimp
• Register Customers.ai contacts to Zoom Webinars

Automation allows you to combine multiple actions and apps together in a single Zap.

Zapier will save you lots of time by automating repetitive tasks and please your clients when you’re able to work with their tech stack.

#13. Growth Hacking Tools for Content Automation: MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar is a content recycler that can be used to automate the sharing of all your evergreen content across Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.

The time MeetEdgar will save you, along with the results it delivers, makes it one of my personal favorite social media marketing tools.

Unlike other content schedulers such as Hootsuite or Buffer, you can load MeetEdgar up with your most important content once, and then have that evergreen content shared as many times as you wish.

You can use MeetEdgar across your social media channels to do the following:

• Promote your best content, on repeat.
• Save time scheduling the same content over and over again.
• Auto-generate and test variations of posts linking to the same content.
• Schedule how many times per day you want your content posted to each channel.

#14. Growth Hacking Tools for Gathering Feedback: Feedier

Feedier is a unique survey and feedback gathering tool that growth marketers can use to measure real-time satisfaction, get visual data-insights, and engage different audiences with cool experiences.

Most notably, Feedier has engagement forms that use gamification. Gamification is an amazing viral marketing tool and mechanism, so I always appreciate marketing platforms that include it.

Above all, Feedier allows you to create highly interactive forms and digital experiences quickly. From there, you can measure satisfaction, ask interactive questions, create loyalty with rewards, and push an action to close the loop.

The goal of using Feedier is to get more responses, turn those responses into insights, and provide tools that make it easy for you and your team to take action.

#15. Growth Hacking Tools for Influencer Marketing: Traackr

While influencer marketing has received a lot of criticism in recent years, marketers that target the right influencers to push their products continue to realize superstar ROIs.

In a recent study by MediaKix, it was shown that every 89% of marketers said their ROI from influencer marketing was either comparable to or better than other marketing channels.

Traackr is one of the top influencer marketing tools available. It’s a data-driven platform that marketers can use to optimize investments, streamline campaigns, and scale programs.

Traackr provides rich insights for more than 6 million vetted influencer profiles including audience demographics, fraud detection, brand affinity, and historical performance indicators.

Use Tracker’s platform to find influencers and filter out the best for your company. It includes:

• Search bios, captions, and content on 13 social platforms
• Discover influencers in 43 countries and 19 languages
• Top-performing influencers by tiers
• 22 different audience and influencer criteria

Lastly, Traackr allows you to run impactful campaigns with customizable workflows and influencer insights for organic advocacy, events, product gifting, and paid partnerships.

#16. Growth Hacking Tool for Social Monitoring: Syften

Syften will let you know when someone mentions you or a keyword you’re interested in on Reddit, Twitter, Hacker News, Indie Hackers, Slack and other communities.

This allows you to thank people for sharing your stuff, establish yourself as an expert in a given area, or pitch your product when someone asks for recommendations.

Unlike other social monitoring tools, Syften is optimized for people who want to participate in online conversations as they happen, by automatically and quickly identifying promising opportunities.

#17. Growth Hacking Tools for Chatbot Marketing: Customers.ai

The top trending growth hacking tool since 2018 has been chatbots. In 2020, chatbots have reached a new level with omnichannel capabilities.

What is omnichannel marketing? In short, omnichannel marketing is a cross-channel marketing strategy that allows you to deliver content across multiple marketing channels from one platform. In doing so, you provide a seamless and consistent brand experience throughout the customer journey.

Customers.ai is an omnichannel chatbot that enables companies to proactively engage with audiences on their website, Facebook Messenger, SMS text messaging, and other popular web chat applications. 

Using OmniChatⓇ technology and chatbot marketing automation, Customers.ai instantly connects customers and prospects to businesses in order to generate leads, re-engage customers, and offer real-time support.

This enables you to create campaigns such as chat blasts, conversational drip campaigns, as well as website chat dialogues one time, and then execute them across multiple marketing channels.

Need More Marketing Tools?

If you’re looking for even more marketing tools, look no further. Browse through hundreds of more marketing tools in the following lists:

• Free marketing software
• Tools for digital marketing agencies,
• Marketing automation tools
• Trending digital marketing tools
• Social media marketing tools
• Ecommerce marketing tools
• Instagram marketing tools
• B2B marketing tools
• Viral marketing tools
• Marketing tools for small business
• Lead generation tools

Growth Hacking Tools: Important Next Steps