Time to Call BS on the Cult of Growth Hacking | Hacker News Reader

Time to Call BS on the Cult of Growth Hacking

joelandren.com

58 pointskevin_morrill32 comments

I 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.

I 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.

Growth 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.

I 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.

Effective 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."

What 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.

Amen.

What is Growth Hacking? The author should have defined it ...

Apparently it's the promise of something-for-nothing through nebulous means, similar to social media marketing and viral marketing.

Yeah I messed up. I'll link to it in the post:

http://www.aginnt.com/growth-hacker#.Uii2m2TORe4

That should say "one whose passion", not "one who's passion".

Yes, another example of how growth hackers shouldn't be writing copy ;-)

It's the equivalent of calling yourself a "ninja rockstar hacker"

Hmmmm...not viral enough. Doesn't sound like you're disrupting anything.

How about pirate super saiyin hacker?

A 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.

Anyone 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".

He did link straight to a definition.

http://www.aginnt.com/growth-hacker

After the parent comment was made.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335252

Of course, the link still doesn't answer the question.

Growth 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.

I 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.

growthhackingguide.com

Before 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.

Totally agree. Marketing measurement is much easier in growth hacking. It is the FUN stuff, but not the only stuff.

Your site is blocked by McAfee as a source of malware, btw.

Can you access wordpress? I'm just using a re-direct.

I can. You can submit your site for review, it seems they mis-flag lots of sites.

Do 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.

Yes.

There are lots and lots of people who don't want precise analytics.

Why don't some people want precise analytics? Because if you aren't sure if something worked, then you can't be at fault for it not working.

Measuring closely what works and what doesn't is of course better, but there are plenty of people who are scared about losing their jobs who would prefer not to track.

Ok, but those people would not be interested in "growth hacking" either, then. And there are other people who do want accurate analytics.

My objection is to the idea that growth hackers are the first people who have ever tried to use data to drive marketing decisions. They aren't.

I guess I wonder how old you are or how much exposure to marketing you have, since marketing has been driven by numbers and the methodologies you've mentioned for a long time at a lot of places.

I won't claim that there may be some specific aspects of "growth hacking" that are new, but I've seen everything you've mentioned long before the emergence of "growth hacking."

"Before Growth Hacking, marketing people did PR, Partnership, Trade Shows, Ad Campaigns, etc. Yukk."

Growth hacking is ALL of those things (and more) combined with engineering to measure and optimize.

Also, good luck trying to sell an entreprise product if you forgo partnerships (building relationships)... and ad campaigns (Adwords, Twitter Ads, etc).

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