The $27B Trojan Horse & emergency CMO playbook 🦄

Hey unicorns! 👋

Sick of burning cash on ads while competitors steal all the traffic?

This week, we are sharing one of our favorite sneaky growth strategies: The Trojan Horse Strategy.

It's how Hubspot went from a simple free SEO tool to a $27B beast.

And the best part? You can copy it today.

Plus, we'll answer the quiz we asked a few days ago:

What's the right move when your biggest client (60% of revenue) leaves?

(89% of you got it wrong 😈)

No fluff, just pure growth tactics. Let's get sneaky!

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Weekly Growth Strategy

🎁 The Trojan Horse Strategy: Conquer Markets with Free Tools

What is it?

The Trojan Horse Strategy is about entering markets by giving away free tools your target customers already need.

Like the ancient Greeks, you gain entry through an unexpected gift - but yours builds an email list of qualified prospects.

How it works?

Instead of interrupting with ads, you appear exactly when prospects are searching for solutions.

Your free tool solves an immediate problem, capturing emails while delivering value.

When users rely on your solution, upgrading to paid feels natural, not pushy.

Hubspot's success story

Before becoming a marketing giant, Hubspot launched a free tool called: Website Grader.

This free tool analyzed SEO, giving instant insights when businesses needed them most.

Every low grade created a perfect opportunity to introduce their paid platform.

Result? Millions of qualified leads for their core product.

How to use it:

1. Find tool ideas based on search data - look for "free tool" keywords in your niche

2. Build something significantly better than existing solutions

3. Make it dead simple to use with smooth email capture

4. Distribute through SEO, focusing on "free [tool name]" keywords

The Trojan Horse Growth Loop

1. Users find your free tool through search

2. They get value and share their email

3. Some upgrade to your paid product

4. You use that revenue to build more free tools

5. Repeat and watch your empire grow

   Read the Full Article 👈️

Brain Teaser Answer

📝 Answer to Last Week’s Quiz

In last week's quiz, we asked: You're the CMO of Pulse Analytics. Your biggest client (60% of revenue) just left. What's your next move? 

The expert-recommended move: B) Refocus on customer acquisition

Why?

Diversifying your customer base provides better stability than product changes.

SaaS companies that quickly pivot to acquiring multiple smaller customers after losing a major client show 2.5x faster recovery rates and better long-term sustainability.

See you next Thursday for another brain teaser!