A Definition for Growth Hacking

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Growth hacking strategies are designed to acquire new users and customers while limiting costs, making them ideal for startups in need of massive leaps in growth.

Growth hacking is a process of rapid experimentation across marketing, product development, sales, and other channels in order to identify the most efficient ways to grow a business. Growth hacking is a term used to describe a process of rapid experimentation across marketing, product development, sales, and other channels in order to identify the most efficient ways to grow a business.

A strong focus on data and understanding audience behavior is essential to successful growth hacking, which will lead to the discovery of unforeseen opportunities ripe for exploring. A growth hacker's responsibility is to consider growth in every stage of audience interaction, experimenting quickly and making product updates as needed to keep the product aligned with audience needs.

Origins of Growth Hacking

According to Sean Ellis, a growth hacker is defined as "a person whose true north is growth. Everything they do is scrutinized by its potential impact on scalable growth." Growth hacking was further explored by blogger Andrew Chen, who stated that a "Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing...a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of 'How do I get customers for my product?' and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph."

Shortly after that, books and conferences on growth hacking began to appear, including the "Growth Hacker Conference" in 2013, hosted by Gagan Biyani, with growth hacking experts from innovative companies such as Linkedin, Twitter and YouTube. GrowthHackers.com appeared in 2015 and the practice became ready for adoption by companies in different industries.

Differences Between Growth Hacking and Traditional Marketing

Growth hacking can be traced back to the early days of marketing, for example McDonald's decision to rapidly expand in the 1950s. By taking a gamble on an untraditional idea, McDonald's was able to create massive growth for the company - an excellent example of growth hacking tactics.

While modern growth hackers often utilize traditional marketing tactics like SEO, content production, social media, and email marketing, their focus on growth over time means they prioritize whatever techniques have the potential to pay off in the most growth.

The Growth Hacking Funnel

When searching for opportunities to provide growth, growth hackers focus on the full "Pirate's Funnel," created by Dave McClure. The Pirate's Funnel stages are meant to demonstrate a user's journey from product discovery to conversion, with unique growth opportunities presented at every step. The six stages of the funnel include:

• Awareness – Consumers are first introduced to the product
• Acquisition – Consumers begin interacting with the product
• Activation – Consumers become customers or users of the product
• Retention – Customers/users continue to interact with the product over time
• Revenue – The product’s stakeholders receive income from the customers
• Referral – Customers begin engaging in lead generation for the product

By thinking about all aspects of the funnel, growth hackers can take advantage of moments when there are bigger opportunities to generate income, whereas marketers only focus on the awareness and acquisition stages.

Benefits

Growth hacking has the potential for exponential growth and leaving lasting impacts on an audience. Tactics don’t necessarily have to be repeatable but can have the ability to cement a brand’s legacy for years to come. Companies that embrace growth hacking can set measurable goals with a high potential for payoff, perfect products through constant experimentation, find a more thorough understanding of their data, and build stronger overall brands.

Successful companies built using growth hacking

• Dropbox: Dropbox was able to successfully increase growth and expand by "gamifying" its onboarding process. By offering free space upgrades in exchange for different types of messages, Dropbox was able to increase its user base, retain existing users, and bring in new users at a minimal expense.
• Airbnb: The company knew that in order to compete with the leading provider of alternative accommodation, it would have to build a user base, a customer base, and a reputation that could compete with Craigslist. By providing a way for users to copy their Airbnb listings to Craigslist with one click, Airbnb found its solution by taking advantage of Craigslist's vast audience and precise selection of target users.
• Gmail: The only way to join Gmail when it first launched was by receiving an invite from someone who was already using the product. By limiting accessibility to a product, there is always a risk involved but it has the potential to result in large rewards.