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Buffer
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Researched profile.
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How Buffer Grew
Social media management software for businesses
How did Buffer grow?
Summary of the sourced claims below
Buffer initially grew after the founders joined an accelerator program, which helped the small team start gaining traction. The company focused on organic marketing and word of mouth, relying on a product that customers found useful and wanted to share. Content marketing was a key strategy in Buffer's early growth, helping to attract users without spreading resources too thin.
Channels
10 channels · grouped by how Buffer grows
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SEO
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“We decided to optimize our website and create content to try to compete for 'lawn care service Nashville,'—which we quickly realized was going to be incredibly hard with how little domain authority we had.”
highShow 1 more quote
“In the time since that original blog post, we’ve also rebuilt our codebase, refreshed the branding for the Buffer websites and products, and we’ve released several new features (like Shop Grid and Hashtag Manager) to continue to help our customers build their audiences and grow their brand on soc...”
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Word of mouth
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“Buffer is a product built to help our customers get off the ground and grow via organic marketing, and the Buffer team is an optimistic and gratitude-filled group of remote workers scattered around the world and dedicated to creating a product our customers will use and love.”
mediumShow 1 more quote
“Once you've got a good product that is delighting more people than not, you get what's called 'over-the-shoulder virality.' When people find something that makes their life a little bit easier, they want to talk about it.”
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Press
· 1 mention“We’ve expressly set Buffer up so that we can continue to expand in the future.”
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Product expansion
· 1 mention“This step has been monumental as we went from a company with just one product to having three fully built products.”
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Offline advertising
· 1 mention“We quickly learned that if you build it, they will not come. Our users weren’t just going to show up—we had to go find them. So, we set a goal of getting our first 100 customers so we could get feedback (and some initial revenue), and got to work pounding the pavement, passing out door hangers an...”
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Newsletter
· 1 mention“Early on, we started charging companies to place job postings in our weekly newsletter.”
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Content marketing
· 1 mention“At Buffer, we employed a single marketing strategy for the first year or so – which in our case was content marketing – and it’s been one of our best decisions in order not to spread ourselves too thin.”
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Events
· 1 mention“We’ve offered events, training, networking, and resources to women in tech and have had a huge impact in the industry.”
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SEO
· 1 mention“Buffer started as a Startup Sprint project in November 2010 to solve a problem our Founder and CEO Joel Gascoigne was experiencing — he wanted to space out when his tweets were sent. The idea gained hundreds of users within the first few months and eventually grew to add social networks, to go be...”
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Accelerator program
· 1 mention“The Buffer team was initially just a few people working on a project they believed in, and steadily started growing after the founders joined an accelerator in August 2011.”
medium
How 2,669 businesses grow
Of businesses with mapped growth channels, the share using each —
Buffer’s highlighted.
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Referral/Word-of-mouth68% ◀
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Social media58%
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Search/SEO57% ◀
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Email47% ◀
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Community33%
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Content/Inbound31% ◀
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Partnerships30%
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Paid ads24% ◀
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Events24% ◀
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Press/PR18% ◀
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Outbound/Sales16%
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Marketplaces/App stores8%
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Brand Authenticity2%
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Product expansion2% ◀
