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Sales and marketing aren't the same. This is not sales. A growth hacker is a marketing engineer, and I don't think that role has been prevalent until recently.

by natrius 14y ago

Sales and marketing aren't the same. This is not sales. A growth hacker is a marketing engineer, and I don't think that role has been prevalent until recently. Counterexamples are welcome.

orangethirty 14y ago
Yes, it has been around for a long time. Deal is that these people decide to build a business for themselves and not others. Counterexample? Dan Kennedy is a good and recent one (recent as in still alive). His partner, Bill Glazer, is also a good example.
- davemel37 14y ago
  Ironically, Dan doesn't use technology himself and still manages to make millions a year off of the internet... I would take a Dan Kennedy on my team over all the growth hackers on the planet every day of the week. As a marketer the formula is simple, "anything you can break down into a formula or process you can automate... This is a bunch of engineers trying to pretend they are marketers... News flash, I can hire an engineer with chops to implement, I can't hire a Dan Kennedy!!!!
- jfarmer 14y ago
  No, growth hacking is something new. Or rather: "growth hacking" is a term people are using to describe a genuinely new phenomenon. You can trace this phenomenon back maybe 10-12 years, but there is something interesting happening -- interesting enough that people feel the need to coin a term to describe it. Andrew's example is a good one. AirBnb grew in part by piggy-backing off a pre-existing platform (Craigslist) in a way that required skills in copyediting, marketing, engineering, design, and psychology. YouTube did similarly via MySpace. PayPay did similarly via email. Lots of people, like Slide, Zynga, RockYou, and even LivingSocial did similarly via Facebook. There's something new happening here, and it's not coming from "top sales people" or even "top marketers." It's coming from engineers who have decided to approach marketing, customer acquisition, and distribution as an engineering problem. It's more than quantitative marketing or direct sales. The best growth hackers have a STEM background. This thing, whatever it is, is "growth hacking."
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    It's absolutely not new. Read a biography of P.T. Barnum, if nothing else. It's like the old cliche that every generation thinks they're the ones that discovered sex.
    - akshxy 14y ago
      Finding the right channel that will scale a startup is an experiment and a process. If you knew what was going to scale your product, you would of done it by now. Growth hackers do whatever it takes to find growth and that might require a range of skills for user awareness, acquisition, retention, engagement and resurrection.
  - jfarmer 14y ago
    It's not entirely new, no, but it's new like the iPhone was new. None of the component ideas in the iPhone were 100% new, but it wasn't possible to build one at a consumer price-point until certain preconditions, both technological and economic, were met. I'd claim this: marketing more than most disciplines lives or dies by the state of communication technology. The best marketers in any generation know how to use that technology to their advantage. But communication technology is radically different today than it was even 20 years ago, let alone 120 years ago when PT Barnum was alive. For one, it's more digital and more technological. It's also changing at an accelerating pace. 10 years ago neither Facebook nor YouTube existed. 6 years ago Twitter didn't. Tumblr, 5. Pinterest, 2. Instagram, 1. Or, think of it this way (as a marketer might): the rate at which new marketing channels are being created is accelerating. We're talking channels that can potentially reach 1MM, 10MM, 100MM people sprouting afresh every year. That's not the world PT Barnum lived in. Why is is so crazy to think that this new environment results in a new breed of marketer, more at home in bits and bytes than in creating hoaxes which spread through poorly fact-checked newspapers and traditional marketing "stunts?" And that therefore engineers -- the same people who are creating these new channels -- are perhaps best adapted to this new environment? It's also presumptuous to think that growth hackers -- and I'd include myself in that lot -- aren't familiar with PT Barnum, David Ogilvy, Jack Trout, or other famous marketers.

by natrius 14y ago

Sales and marketing aren't the same. This is not sales. A growth hacker is a marketing engineer, and I don't think that role has been prevalent until recently. Counterexamples are welcome.

orangethirty 14y ago

Yes, it has been around for a long time. Deal is that these people decide to build a business for themselves and not others. Counterexample? Dan Kennedy is a good and recent one (recent as in still alive). His partner, Bill Glazer, is also a good example.

davemel37 14y ago
Ironically, Dan doesn't use technology himself and still manages to make millions a year off of the internet... I would take a Dan Kennedy on my team over all the growth hackers on the planet every day of the week. As a marketer the formula is simple, "anything you can break down into a formula or process you can automate... This is a bunch of engineers trying to pretend they are marketers... News flash, I can hire an engineer with chops to implement, I can't hire a Dan Kennedy!!!!
jfarmer 14y ago
No, growth hacking is something new. Or rather: "growth hacking" is a term people are using to describe a genuinely new phenomenon. You can trace this phenomenon back maybe 10-12 years, but there is something interesting happening -- interesting enough that people feel the need to coin a term to describe it. Andrew's example is a good one. AirBnb grew in part by piggy-backing off a pre-existing platform (Craigslist) in a way that required skills in copyediting, marketing, engineering, design, and psychology. YouTube did similarly via MySpace. PayPay did similarly via email. Lots of people, like Slide, Zynga, RockYou, and even LivingSocial did similarly via Facebook. There's something new happening here, and it's not coming from "top sales people" or even "top marketers." It's coming from engineers who have decided to approach marketing, customer acquisition, and distribution as an engineering problem. It's more than quantitative marketing or direct sales. The best growth hackers have a STEM background. This thing, whatever it is, is "growth hacking."
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  It's absolutely not new. Read a biography of P.T. Barnum, if nothing else. It's like the old cliche that every generation thinks they're the ones that discovered sex.
  - akshxy 14y ago
    Finding the right channel that will scale a startup is an experiment and a process. If you knew what was going to scale your product, you would of done it by now. Growth hackers do whatever it takes to find growth and that might require a range of skills for user awareness, acquisition, retention, engagement and resurrection.
- jfarmer 14y ago
  It's not entirely new, no, but it's new like the iPhone was new. None of the component ideas in the iPhone were 100% new, but it wasn't possible to build one at a consumer price-point until certain preconditions, both technological and economic, were met. I'd claim this: marketing more than most disciplines lives or dies by the state of communication technology. The best marketers in any generation know how to use that technology to their advantage. But communication technology is radically different today than it was even 20 years ago, let alone 120 years ago when PT Barnum was alive. For one, it's more digital and more technological. It's also changing at an accelerating pace. 10 years ago neither Facebook nor YouTube existed. 6 years ago Twitter didn't. Tumblr, 5. Pinterest, 2. Instagram, 1. Or, think of it this way (as a marketer might): the rate at which new marketing channels are being created is accelerating. We're talking channels that can potentially reach 1MM, 10MM, 100MM people sprouting afresh every year. That's not the world PT Barnum lived in. Why is is so crazy to think that this new environment results in a new breed of marketer, more at home in bits and bytes than in creating hoaxes which spread through poorly fact-checked newspapers and traditional marketing "stunts?" And that therefore engineers -- the same people who are creating these new channels -- are perhaps best adapted to this new environment? It's also presumptuous to think that growth hackers -- and I'd include myself in that lot -- aren't familiar with PT Barnum, David Ogilvy, Jack Trout, or other famous marketers.