<i>"So, why is the title “Growth Hacker” a bunch of BS? Because it’s just a way for marketing averse startups to hire marketers without having to publicly say they’re hiring marketers."</i><p>This is false, as you disprove a few paragraphs later:<p><i>"The goal of a marketer is to grow a customer base. That’s what these growth hackers are doing, they’re just doing it in a more technically advanced way via data confirmation and split testing."</i><p>That is the <i>entire</i> point of using a different term for it. Precise language is a useful tool. A job title that says "we're looking for technically advanced marketers" in a concise way will get you a better signal to noise ratio.<p>I don't understand why this offends you.
There is too much talk about titles and too little talk about how to get a product development process in place that allows for great product design that also achieves key metrics.<p>This post doesn't go very far in furthering the discussion. The answers come not from anti-[job title] posts, but something more positive, like describing how things get done at Facebook, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Zynga, and other orgs that are good at shipping product.<p>I talk to a lot of companies, and it is pretty easy for them to think they want to focus on growth. The interesting problems appear when (as always) there is more to do than you have the resources to get done. How as an organization do you deal with that? Driving towards growth is pretty simple, but doing it in parallel to building and selling a compelling product is harder.<p>By the way, Dropbox had a referral program before I got there. I just helped turn the dial up a bit, in addition to separate product changes.
Here's the bit i never understood with this 'growth hacker' meme: if you're working on or for an early stage startup then <i>everyone</i> is a 'growth hacker', right? if your people aren't working to grow your product/service/community then what the hell are they doing?<p>To the self-proclaimed and aggrandized 'growth hackers' - the OP is right: You're a marketer who took (and absorbed) a stats class. Stop being so fucking pretentious. Joining facebook (or whatever) after the inflection point and claiming responsibility for its growth is like joining apple four years ago and claiming responsibility for tripling the share price.
No. Context is very important here, and it's actually quite apt with regard to hiring and being hired.<p>Data-driven marketing (DDM) is a huge thing now because it reliably magnifies revenue streams. However, the skill set to execute on such strategies is a bit non-traditional for marketing. If you want to hire someone to help build your DDM team, you don't necessarily want a business grad or a top salesman. What you want is an math or engineering transplant, someone with the statistical and technical skills necessary but who knows or is interested in learning the business and marketing aspects.<p>"Growth hacker" moonlights as a buzzword, but it's actually a great way to spin a job opening to appeal to the audience you need to attract: tech-to-business transplants. Ergo, it can also be effective self-branding if you're a tech-to-business transplant looking to make $$$ for helping to create well-documented X% to XX% revenue improvements.
I disagree with this article. A "Growth Hacker" is an engineer that applies himself in the field of marketing. This means coming up with interesting and innovative ways of lowering the cost of user acquisition. The distinction is important since Marketing itself is a very loaded term.<p>Companies like Zynga thrived because they found cheap ways of getting users: early un-managed FB platform, and app referrals. Same with AirBnB and their craigslist post automation.<p>Growth hacking isn't going to make your product better, but more people will be aware of it.
Rather than pooh-poohing this new word or dismissing it by claiming that people use it so they can avoid calling themselves marketers, ask yourself: "Why do people find this distinction useful?"<p>That would make for a much better article, IMO.<p>Here's a thread where I attempt to justify the term: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4309570" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4309570</a>
I think you might have come off as more credible had you said that 'Growth Hacker' is a BS title. That is just a title and anyone can really have that. I have a site with 25 million page views per month, I've been running it for years all by myself, am I a growth hacker ? No. Did I do some growth hacking ? Yes. I used some innovative methods to garner and maintain traffic; methods that traditional marketing folks wouldnt't probably use.<p>Growth hacking might be a buzzword. But to me, it means coming up with a unique and viral way of attracting users to your product. There is a lot of unchartered new territory in marketing - social media being a big one. (turntable.fm had an interesting user acquisition route, I'd call that growth hacking)<p>Personally, I'm excited to see the new and innovative ways in which marketers will leverage these new technologies to reduce the cost and increase the speed of user acquisition.
Personally I've decided to accept that buzzwords and titles will proliferate, and that this is impossible to prevent. Isn't the whole not-caring-about-titles thing part of startup culture? As long as you can do your job, I don't care if your business card says growth hacker or marketzilla or SEOgasaurous. You might face greater scrutiny if your resume says "Rails Ninja" on it, but in the end it's about whether you can program, and whether a Rails Ninja is a good culture fit when everyone else is a Javascript Pirate.<p>Doing due diligence (i.e, a proper interview) for a hire means figuring out the truth behind the bullshit. If you don't actually have enough knowledge to differentiate between a bullshit $TITLE and a good candidate who happens to call themselves $TITLE, then you don't have enough information to make a good hire anyway.<p>Hell, the titles are helpful sometimes. Candidates non-ironically self-identifying as a trendy title can help you filter out idiots. They're doing you a favor.
This post is at risk of becoming a "reverse" self-fulfilling prophecy by exposing more people to the buzzword. I have personally never seen it in the wild (except once through HN, when the term was first introduced).
I think most marketers are supposed to have some technical experience if you are looking for a job in SV. I notice people saying being a growth hacker is like being a marketer but more technical. Most marketing job positions require at least a little "front end" developer knowledge. In short calling someone a growth hacker is annoying because it is trying to obfuscate an easy to understand job title and is unnecessarily buzzwordy.
Confused. Growth hacking is BS, but growth hacking is marketing, and marketing is legit?<p>You summed it up nicely.. growth hacking is marketing using technical skills. I think that summary is very attractive to technically minded people, and makes it unique compared to traditional one way marketing.<p>If growth hacking is introducing marketing to a technical crowd and enable them to grow customers in a tech centric industry (startup), why the frustration? Is there some underlying issue with non-tech marketers not being able to connect with results in tech startups as well?<p>Having a foot in the technical and business world for the last decade has shown me that techs tend to learn more about business than vice versa. Capable people are everywhere though, maybe we need Growth Hacking 101 for marketers?
I always thought "growth hacking" meant a hacker that has strong knowledge of "hacking" tactics (a/b testing, optimizing on boarding funnel, etc) as well as a keen business sense (markets, distribution, etc) to grow the startup's user base.<p>Anyone?
You're right sir.<p>And this helps answer another popular theme of 2012: should people learn to code? YES.<p>This is a great example of what other professionals (non-coders) can do if they learn new tools, if they learn how to work with code.
So, growth hacker is a marketer. Fine. But not all marketers are growth hackers. My understanding is that, growth hacking is a specialty in marketing which focus on consumer web marketing. It is also a very technical and hands on position. As a growth hacker, you not only need to have a marketing plan, but also need to implement or help implement the marketing plan. There is nothing wrong for giving a name to a sub-category of marketing profession.
This would be a lot more credible if lean startup and cloud deployment weren't described as "talking to your customers early and often" and "hosting as a service".
I think I've read the term "growth hacking" too many times between the post and the comments and now it sounds like something a bad oncologist does.<p>I should go to bed.
I believe one of the nuances of the "growth hacker" title (cheeky title concerns aside) is the implication that user acquisition and product dev need to be interlaced. Consumer web is too competitive today to build a product and bolt on user acquisition. A role that sits on both the growth team and the product team is essential. Thus the birth of the growth hacker.
While the term used is irrelevant.<p>I would say there is a big difference between the typical marketer and someone that's able to execute something like the airbnb/craigslist integration (and by execute I don't mean code every line).<p>Or someone that's able to take a product from 0 to 500k users.<p>I do agree though in terms of online, not knowing about any of this stuff makes you a much less effective "marketer".
I partly agree to it. The web is full of buzz words meaning nothing. Growth Hacker, however refers to a combo of marketer +coder. I get totally pissed off at terms like <i>python rockstars</i>, <i>javascript pirates</i> <i>rails ninjas</i>. Seriously WhyTF do we need such pompous terms? An experienced programmer goes well.
I somewhat get the argument that using the word "hacker" in relation to a marketing function somehow defiles the coveted word. But it does describe a role that is distinct from other marketing roles, so it deserves a different title. Call it what you will, but the semantics don't bother me.