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Time to Call BS on the Cult of Growth Hacking
- nonchalance 13y agoWhat is Growth Hacking? The author should have defined it ...
- jbooth 13y agoApparently it's the promise of something-for-nothing through nebulous means, similar to social media marketing and viral marketing.
- joelandren 13y agoYeah I messed up. I'll link to it in the post: http://www.aginnt.com/growth-hacker#.Uii2m2TORe4 http://www.aginnt.com/growth-hacker#.Uii2m2TORe4
- nonchalance 13y agoThat should say "one whose passion", not "one who's passion".
- joelandren 13y agoYes, another example of how growth hackers shouldn't be writing copy ;-)
- dchuk 13y agoIt's the equivalent of calling yourself a "ninja rockstar hacker"
- JackFr 13y agoHmmmm...not viral enough. Doesn't sound like you're disrupting anything.
- LordHumungous 13y agoHow about pirate super saiyin hacker?
- jacquesm 13y agoA growth-hacker is someone who extracts large amounts of money from hopeful customers awaiting magic growth, similar to how certain companies promise to enlarge certain body parts as if by magic. If you think about it long enough you reach the conclusion that any growth-hacker that is not working on a no-cure-no-pay and if-I-break-it-I-am-liable base should simply not be engaged. It's the new SEO.
- JonFish85 13y agoAnyone in advertising or marketing could probably call themselves a "growth hacker". Apparently the term "hacker" is the hot thing, so it gets thrown around as if it means something anymore. Ten years ago: "Software Engineer". Today: "Java / Full-stack hacker". Ten years ago: "Accountant". Today: "Financial hacker".
- ignostic 13y agoHe did link straight to a definition. http://www.aginnt.com/growth-hacker http://www.aginnt.com/growth-hacker
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jasonlotito 13y agoAfter the parent comment was made. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335252 Of course, the link still doesn't answer the question.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- xpop2027 13y agogrowthhackingguide.com
- bryant__d 13y agoGrowth hacking is nothing new. It's just marketing folks re-branding themselves. It's the exact same product marketed under a new name with a new brand image and targeted at the tech audience. It seems to have worked. Every startup now wants to hire a "growth hacker" instead of a CMO. And developers now ascribe more value to marketing than before.
- ignostic 13y agoI completely agree with you - I commented something similar before I saw this. Let me play the devil's advocate, though. Couldn't you argue that "growth hacking" has a lot in common with "agile programming"? Neither is promoting entirely new methodology - they're just built on existing best practices with a new image and name.
- ignostic 13y agoEffective marketing often relies on either finding new mediums to reach an audience or presenting the message in a a new way. Oh, and it's easier to make marketing more effective when you can measure, test, improve, and iterate. I don't really care whether growth hacking represents a new discipline or methodology, but it's easy to claim the superiority of your discipline when you include two common paths to success as part of the definition. Calling yourself a "growth hacker" seems a lot like calling yourself a "football winner" rather than a "football player."
- andyl 13y agoBefore Growth Hacking, marketing people did PR, Partnership, Trade Shows, Ad Campaigns, etc. Yukk. To me, Growth Hacking is a measurable engineering exercise. Data-driven and scalable - way better than marketing days of old.
- joelandren 13y agoTotally agree. Marketing measurement is much easier in growth hacking. It is the FUN stuff, but not the only stuff.
- RyJones 13y agoYour site is blocked by McAfee as a source of malware, btw.
- joelandren 13y agoCan you access wordpress? I'm just using a re-direct.
- RyJones 13y agoI can. You can submit your site for review, it seems they mis-flag lots of sites.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- snowwrestler 13y agoDo people really believe that companies would spend millions of dollars on PR, trade shows, ad campaigns, etc. and not carefully measure their return? Sure, measurement before the Internet involved social science instrumentation rather than log analysis; but that does not mean it was not careful, rigorous, and even cutting edge for its time.
- bennesvig 13y ago
- bennesvig 13y agoGrowth Hacking is essentially thinking of the role of a marketer as someone who is a chef instead of a waiter, which marketers have been traditionally. Good marketing is generally baked into the product/service itself. In the traditional model, a company would make something and then think about marketing. While the marketer might have ideas to make the product better, generally all they can do is create a better presentation for what is already made. The concept of growth hacking isn't anything new, as many companies have included marketing in the product creation. The only change is that analytics are becoming better and the cost of tweaking a product or service once it's in the market is decreasing.
- manishsharan 13y agoI recently bought this book "Growth Hacking - A How To Guide On Becoming A Growth Hacker" By Jose Casanova and Joe Casanova. I am on chapter 5 and it reads like the same blogpost repeated over and over. Unlike the MVP/ Lean Start-up phenomenon/movement which has scholarly work done to validate the idea and a distinct methodology , growth hacking blogs seem just buzzword centric babble.
- hvass 13y agoI don't understand what you mean that 'growth hacking' doesn't have a distinct methodology, since unlike traditional marketing it is very quant-based and the way I see it, it evolves from MVP/Lean to get PMF and than getting traction in a very analytical way where you can quickly see which channels are driving growth and which are not. It is very incremental unlike the traditional marketing's "big bang" approach to launching. Also, I consider A/B and multivariate testing for conversions a huge part of growth hacking and they are obviously based on scholarly work. When you ruthlessly track and optimize, you need to have the statistical chops to do it properly.
- lukethomas 13y agoWhat I find sad about this "growth hacking" phenomenon is how the focus is on a single specific tactic, as if that is the key to all growth-related problems. On top of that, growth hacking is used a vehicle for self-promotion, as if one person is responsible for success. It's honestly a team effort, and to pretend like it's one person is a shame. Lastly, isn't "growth" for the sake of growth a vanity metric? Personally, I'd want someone who knows how to retain users and prevent churn over someone who spams his way to millions of users. Just my thoughts.
- joelandren 13y agoAmen.
- etler 13y agoI think it's the same as SEO. There are legitimate SEO practices and then there are scammy trendy sounding ones. The legitimate techniques typically involve a lot of systematic testing and hard work. The scammy ones throw buzz words around and have little to back them up.