growth hacking
has
developed as a way of supporting the profitable growth of these businesses.
Growth hacking
An approach to improving
the commercial results
from online services
through structured testing
and optimisation of
marketing approaches.
Box 10.1
Growth hacking
Andrew Chen, an entrepreneur who is an adviser and investor to many start- ups,
describes a growth hacker as follows in his post Growth Hacker is the new VP
Marketing (Chen, 2012).
Growth hackers are 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. On top of this, they
layer the discipline of direct marketing, with its emphasis on quantitative measure-
ment, scenario modeling via spreadsheets, and a lot of database queries.
This quote shows that many of the features such as a focus on testing and learn-
ing through conversion rate optimisation (CRO) are not new – indeed, they have been
featured in this book for several editions – but it shows a change in mindset in how
business transformation can be achieved. Another key feature of growth hacking is
examining techniques for getting viral growth through encouraging users to share their
experience. The growth of Hotmail from 0 to 12 million users before it was bought by
Microsoft is a favourite anecdote of growth hackers. For Hotmail the sharing was rapid
due to the email signature: ‘PS I love you. Get your free email at Hotmail. Signature.’
Today, encouraging sharing through social sign-on and social sharing is more an
approach sought by growth hackers. These techniques have helped companies like
LinkedIn grow from 13 million to 175 million users, according to Schranz (2012), who
explained that Facebook’s Growth team started by establishing a simple framework of
things to measure and improve to make it easier for everyone to understand what to
focus on and why it matters:
●
Acquisition – Get people in front of your product . . .
●
Activation – Provide a great initial experience . . .
●
Engagement – Keep people engaged, deliver value . . .
●
(Virality) – Get people to recommend your product . . .
Some of the principles of growth hacking are being adopted by existing busi-
nesses, looking to enhance the sales of their digital channels. For example, publisher
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Part 3 Implementation
Different types of change in business
Viewed at a large scale across an entire industry, change takes two forms.
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