How did Spotify use growth hacks in their brand strategy?
Spotify Technology SA is a Swedish entertainment company founded by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. They launched their music, podcast, and video streaming service on 7 October 2008. The company’s title is a combination of “spot” and “identify”.
image source: spotify.com
Spotify by numbers
Spotify is currently available in 65 countries all over the world and provides access to more than 35 million songs.
Spotify is a freemium service: it offers free basic features with advertisements or limitations, while additional features, such as improved streaming quality and music downloads, are offered via paid subscriptions.
On February 2018, the Swedish program went public on the New York Stock Exchange and its shares began trading on April 2018.
As of 2018, Spotify has 170 million active users, including over 75 million paying subscribers.
image source: techcrunch.com
Main reason for success – a disruptive product
On the music market, at the moment Spotify was launched, there were other products but they didn’t cater to market’s needs for music streaming services.
Spotify’s Unique Value Proposition was to give users complete control and access to any song, on demand, for just $10/month, along with a free option that offered more than simple radio-style streaming—not to mention the fact that it was totally legal.
It was an instant success because it filled a market gap.
Spotify revolutionized the way people listened to music. It became popular with music streaming services consumers because it puts the control firmly in the user’s hands, allowing them to select specific songs and create playlists.
Spotify is interactive
One of its features decreased the friction of adoption: it allowed users to upload local tracks so they don’t have to leave their own libraries and playlists behind in order to make the switch to Spotify.
Spotify filled the need for consumers but was able to control its growth.
Rolled-out with an invite-only system which helped the company generate buzz and increase demand through perceived scarcity.
Spotify attracted the tech-loving early adopters.
It integrates with today’s shareable world: it’s easy to share because each track, album and playlist has a unique URL. And it also caters to users’ need to share the music with his/her friends on social platforms.
Here are 3 growth hacks Spotify uses in brand strategy
Partner Up – Spotify & Starbucks
image source: news.starbucks.com
In 2016 Starbucks and Spotify became partners.
The goal of this partnership was to drive listenership to the streaming service and allow the chain coffee shops’ customers to easily engage with music played at its 7,500 locations.
Through the Starbucks app, via location sharing, customers were able to favorite and add the music playing during a visit to a store. They were also able to influence Starbucks’ future in-store playlists. Spotify’s streaming became integrated with the beverage brand’s popular mobile loyalty program, My Starbucks Rewards. My Starbucks Rewards and Spotify users earned “stars as currency” for subscribing to Spotify Premium. Customers who purchased Spotify’s streaming packages were also eligible to earn more rewards points, which could have been redeemed for free beverages.
Piggyback on a thriving network – Spotify & Facebook Messenger
image source: techcrunch.com
In 2016, Spotify integrated with Facebook Messenger allowing people to share their Spotify songs or playlists directly within a chat box. Because each track, album and playlist has a unique URL, Spotify is sharing-friendly.
This integration accelerated Spotify’s growth through referral traffic. Ultimately, millions of Facebook users also became advocates of the music platform because it filled the users’ desire to share their music socially.
Data driven & User-Generated Content
‘Thanks 2016, it’s been weird”
Using their data insights about users’ listening habits, Spotify put together their best ad campaign so far.
The campaign is called Thanks 2016, it’s been weird, it was released on October 2016 and featured outdoor billboards containing funny messages based on the weird, wonderful and emotional playlists Spotify users had created.
During the course of the campaign’s run, Spotify subscription growth easily broke all company records. The increase in monthly active users exceeded targets, with over 1 billion streams directly attributed to the campaign, and over half a million reactivated users.
The central focus of the campaign was customisation: Spotify wanted to re-state the freedom users have to mix up their playlists and get creative.
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