Anyone have experience in growth hacking?

Philip J. Fry

Philip J. Fry

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Hey Entrepreneurs. I'm switching from entrepreneurship to a career and from SEO to growth hacking. It seems a hell lot more fun and rewarding than tinkering with links all day. Does anyone have some first hand experience? I'd love to pick your brain.
 
No one has been able to explain to me what the difference between a growth hacker and a marketer is - I mean real marketing online not fucking SEO and social. I can't understand why all these hipsters have ridiculous names for traditional titles. Content marketer... the newest one I heard today was "copyhacker":

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wtf. I guess I'm getting too old for this...

nah I'm not, That shit sounds retarded.
 
It's marketers being marketed. And it's hilarious.

My favorite one was AOL's Digital Prophet:

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Everyone's trying to turn everything into an episode of WWF wrestling. Even Kanye is doing it with music. Now we've got digital prophets and word ploppers and tooty floopers and growth hackers.
 
Ryuzaki said:
It's marketers being marketed. And it's hilarious.

My favorite one was AOL's Digital Prophet:

020914_David_Shing_600.jpg


huh.png


Everyone's trying to turn everything into an episode of WWF wrestling. Even Kanye is doing it with music. Now we've got digital prophets and word ploppers and tooty floopers and growth hackers.
Click to expand...

Thought he looked familiar

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CCarter said:
No one has been able to explain to me what the difference between a growth hacker and a marketer is.
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"Marketing is about communicating the value of a product, service or brand to customers or consumers for the purpose of promoting or selling that product, service, or brand" (Wikipedia). It revolves around the 4 P's of marketing: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion Strategy.

"Growth hacking is a marketing technique developed by technology startups which use creativity, analytical thinking, and social metrics to sell products and gain exposure" (Wikipedia).

So yes, a growth hacker is a marketer. Is a marketer a growth hacker? No, unless they have a mindset geared towards acquiring and keeping customers.
 
Philip J. Fry said:
"Growth hacking is a marketing technique developed by technology startups which use creativity, analytical thinking, and social metrics to sell products and gain exposure" (Wikipedia).
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The second sentence from your article

"in many cases growth hackers are using techniques such as search engine optimization, website analytics, content marketing and A/B testing"

So... basically a small portion of online marketing? I'm confused about why the need to break things down this far.

Yeah I'm a professional meta tag optimizer. Links? Nah I don't wanna tinker with links all day.

I can't help but feel that by looking at such a narrow focus you're disregarding so many proven methods. Why?

It's like trying to change a tyre with a screwdriver. Just use your whole toolbox. Every method has it's place in any campaign, that doesn't matter whether you're chasing a career or a business.
 
Philip J. Fry said:
So yes, a growth hacker is a marketer. Is a marketer a growth hacker? No, unless they have a mindset geared towards acquiring and keeping customers.
Click to expand...

If the marketer doesn't have that mentality, then it's not a marketer.

Too many new stupid names for what traditional marketer has been doing all my life.
 
Philip J. Fry said:
So yes, a growth hacker is a marketer. Is a marketer a growth hacker? No, unless they have a mindset geared towards acquiring and keeping customers.
Click to expand...

I want you to really think about the bolded line. What marketer isn't hired to acquire and keep customers for a business? This is fucking silly. Marketers are here to market the business... I can't be the only one who's mind is boggled at this last sentence. If I hire a marketer... what would they be sitting around and doing all day than? That's literally their job!

This is how the world coming to an end folks...

I'm going to get a job operating forklifts in warehouses somewhere. At least things there make sense. I'll use the title "Gravity Hacker" - yeah, that shit doesn't sound silly at all...
 
I got kinda mixed feelings about it.

  • First and foremost, it is a marketing term. "x hacking/Hacks" ... where x is "life", "productivity", etc..
  • Second, it is basically people "discovering" SEO, AB testing, etc... and going wow.. we can actually grow a company by combining product development, traditional marketing and this internet thing.
  • Third .. Some of the guys using the term actually curate quite a useful combination of techniques, so... https://rocketshp.com/ultimate-growth-hacking-sourcebook/ YMMV!

Dont hate the term, it is good marketing. Use the strategy (if you aren't doing that already)

::emp::
 
Growthing hacking =

1. Doing shit normal people are too lazy to do.

2. Using your brain instead of just accepting things the way they are.

3. Being willing to experiment, split test, not just make shit up and believe it.

4. Knowing how to market and run campaigns.

That's it. There's no magic to it. There's nothing unique about it, other than people taking action.
 
Prentzz said:
"in many cases growth hackers are using techniques such as search engine optimization, website analytics, content marketing and A/B testing"
Click to expand...

Yep, that sounds about right, waste of time with SEO and social with just a fancy new title...

-CC, Senior GravHacker
 
Ryuzaki said:
It's marketers being marketed. And it's hilarious.

My favorite one was AOL's Digital Prophet:

020914_David_Shing_600.jpg


huh.png


Everyone's trying to turn everything into an episode of WWF wrestling. Even Kanye is doing it with music. Now we've got digital prophets and word ploppers and tooty floopers and growth hackers.
Click to expand...
Theres no way this is actually real
 
Ryuzaki said:
It's marketers being marketed. And it's hilarious.

My favorite one was AOL's Digital Prophet:

020914_David_Shing_600.jpg


huh.png


Everyone's trying to turn everything into an episode of WWF wrestling. Even Kanye is doing it with music. Now we've got digital prophets and word ploppers and tooty floopers and growth hackers.
Click to expand...

What the fuck.

Bwahaaha. That's too awesome. Real or fake that's just beautiful. That's going to be the guy who's carried through NeoTokyo, banging a drum, and screaming about the end of the world.
 
This is really illustrative of how people fundamentally misunderstand marketing and it's role in business.

It's not different from marketing. It's being a marketer with a limited toolset, like @Prentzz said.

The only scenario where something like this can fly is when you work in an agency where all the tasks are compartmentalized this far. Even then it doesn't require a silly name. Just be "Marketer, Online Division." I mean, whatever though. I remember growing up and creating clubs and giving ourselves the most amazing titles and names.

This isn't something entrepreneurs are doing. This is something employees are doing. When you're the boss of everything in your own operation, you wear every hat and fulfill every role. There's no time to pretend you're a prophet, guru, rockstar, five star general, ninja, or any of these other games people play.

But it's also a product of the times. This is the old school going into retirement. Instead of passing on trade secrets about advertising in print magazines and doing postcard campaigns, they are slipping into obsolescence while these new hot shot kids are focused on the internet and getting results faster and cheaper. That doesn't make them growth hackers. It makes them marketers in the new medium, and it doesn't even make them good. But you know, when random nobody can run a PPC campaign on Facebook and get 10,000 fans, it looks impressive to the guy who can't even program the time on his VCR.
 
The term was coined because the marketing done by smaller tech companies in the last 10 years has been quite different than the way many large companies have been doing marketing the last 30 years.

Key difference is a willingness to use objective analytic based feedback and change your marketing/concept significantly on the fly. Doing things like A/B testing everything from headlines to price points.

Traditionally large companies had been doing very little of this. They didn't A/B test prices because they were worried consumers would be upset if they learned the guy ahead or behind them got a different price. They didn't A/B test headlines because they didn't want to have a "mixed message" and they didn't collect and use data all that well either. Focus groups were used to determine the effectiveness of a new marketing message instead of just using 5 different messages in different GEOs and see how the data played out. You focus group it until you find the "winner" then use that message nationally.

"Growth Hacking" is also something that fits in the early life of a brand more than mature brands. Nike isn't trying 5 new catch phrases each year to replace "Just Do It" because it's already so established and "optimized". It's the concept that new brands can throw 80% of what they have away and start from scratch on a monthly basis to keep reinventing themselves until they find what really works for them. It's being willing to change every variable in your funnel from start to finish significantly and quickly to try to get incremental gains.

It makes a ton of sense why the guys that know how to do this kind of marketing coined the term to distinguish themselves from traditional marketers that work with a much more narrow range of variables.
 
Ryuzaki said:
But it's also a product of the times. This is the old school going into retirement. Instead of passing on trade secrets about advertising in print magazines and doing postcard campaigns, they are slipping into obsolescence while these new hot shot kids are focused on the internet and getting results faster and cheaper. That doesn't make them growth hackers. It makes them marketers in the new medium, and it doesn't even make them good.
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Damn straight it doesn't make them good.

These days I see copy archangels, content grandmasters, text ninja's, infographic circle jerks and what have you write fancy pants articles about how to do copywriting... copywriting as in using text to sell whatever you have to offer.

And you know what? I am still waiting for even a single paragraph that comes close to being in the same freaking galaxy as the stuff I learned from sales letter dudes like Eugene Schwartz, Roy H. Williams, Gary Halbert, John Carlton, and companies like AWAI.

Meanwhile, I have to sit here and listen to a "copy guru" tell me how headlines based on odd number lists tend to work better. You have no idea how much you look like a trained monkey in comparison to the 50 pages of insights on how to write good headlines alone I've read, in one course.

There's really no comparison. Anyone worth their salt learns from the old school first and then works his way back to present day. Old school people are always the pioneers and big experimenters, the mad scientists. New school people are always the copycats, using different names for it but doing the same ol' sh*t.
 
Bash it all you want guys. A lot of money has been made off of this catch phrase marketing toolset.

Money has been made by the people slinging it and by the people using it.

Nobody masters every tool in the marketers bag. But master one toolset and you can bank. Even this one.
 
@Calamari, but all it is SEO, social media, a/b split testing and web analytics, according to @Philip J. Fry's wikipedia links... The concepts aren't the problem, it's the ridiculous names.

-Khalid Carter, 5 Star Field Marshal General, Senior Head GravHacker at Cyberdyne (Cyber Dynamics Systems Corporation) - Conqueror of Gravity within the Earth Realm in general, and at Sam's Club in particular.
 
emp said:
I got kinda mixed feelings about it.

  • First and foremost, it is a marketing term. "x hacking/Hacks" ... where x is "life", "productivity", etc..
  • Second, it is basically people "discovering" SEO, AB testing, etc... and going wow.. we can actually grow a company by combining product development, traditional marketing and this internet thing.
  • Third .. Some of the guys using the term actually curate quite a useful combination of techniques, so... https://rocketshp.com/ultimate-growth-hacking-sourcebook/ YMMV!

Dont hate the term, it is good marketing. Use the strategy (if you aren't doing that already)

::emp::
Click to expand...
been looking for this link for ages, thanks. Really good content
 
My favorite Growth Hackers of all time, in order:


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The Clue-Finder, The Web-Cutter, The Stinging Fly, The Lucky Number, He that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water, The Friend of Bears and The Guest of Eagles, The Ring-Winner and Luck-Wearer, and The Barrel-Rider.



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The Ganden Tripa of the Gelug School, Lhamo Dondrub, Tenzin Gyatso, He Who is in Exile, Holy Lord, Gentle Glory, Compassionate, Defender of the Faith, Ocean of Wisdom, The 14th Incarnation of His Holiness, The Dalai Lama.



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He Who Walks Behind the Rows, The Demonic Fertility Spirit, Father of the Children of the Corn, God of the Old Testament, The Super-Entity.



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David Shing, Digital Prophet, Growth Rockstar, He Who Walks Behind the Rows, Get-Bigger Maker, Shingy, The Shinganator, Shingasaurus Rex, Not-A-Troll-Doll Hacker.



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Queen Daenerys of House Targaryen, First of Her Name, The Stormborn, the Unburnt, Queen of Meereen, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons.



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CCarter, Senior Gravity Hacker Automation Director - Sector 7, 5 Star Field Marshal General Tsou Chicken Eater, Conqueror of Gravity within the Earth Realm in General, and at Sam's Club in Particular, Flipper of Burgers and Dropper of Fries.
 
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@Ryuzaki OMFG, I actually just read this dude's quote, that's fucking perfect... story of my life.
 
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