Understand the difference between Growth Hacking and marketing

I work with most startups marketing management Like people Growth hacker "This term is both love and hate. On the one hand, this word will Marketing People are distinguished from those who do the same thing in large American companies; On the other hand, like those words from Silicon Valley that are always buzzing and appear too frequently, it makes people want to vomit every time they hear it.

However, " Growth hacker "It's a foregone conclusion. So we can also own it and figure out what it means - so that we can use, hire and train such people.

Growth Hacking And marketing management Difference of

Marketing personnel can also become growth hackers, but they have to face different challenges and use different tools. The difference between Growth Hacking and marketing can be seen from the following main differences between start-ups and large companies:

1. Startups are highly uncertain organizations

In a startup, you may not know who your key customers are, why they buy your products (or whether they will buy them), and which marketing channel is the most effective. Most of the time, big companies know all this. So when the founding company was still trying to build a car and start the engine, big companies were already trying to make their car run faster.

2. Startups are designed to achieve great growth

Startups expect to grow by 20% each month, while large companies are satisfied with an annual growth of 5%. The challenges that the marketing personnel of large companies have to deal with are as follows: I already have a mature business with significant market penetration. How can I make up for the other percentage and keep the business growing? By contrast, the marketing staff of start-ups need to know how the number of users has grown from a small base to 1000 times.

3. Startups do not have the same resources or brand values

Compared with large companies, working in start-ups gets less money and less popularity. This means that you have to cultivate your potential customers and at the same time spend a small cost to obtain users.

So the term Growth Hacking appears. Growth hackers use analytical thinking, product engineering and creativity to significantly improve their company's core data.

Many online descriptions of Growth Hacking have unnecessary restrictions. I don't think growth hackers must be formal engineers, because many excellent growth hackers don't often write code. Growth hackers don't have to use virus marketing: can you say that the guy selling coupons didn't use Growth Hacking to increase his users to 180 million?

Furthermore, Growth Hacking is not a new practice, but a new word. People who can compete with Google algorithm (aka SEO) can use creativity and analytical ability to make the company grow rapidly. Amazon's legendary use of AB testing certainly belongs to the category of Growth Hacking. Linkedln's original email import plan is also. (Users are encouraged to let Linkedln import the address book of their mailbox and send an email to their contacts inviting them to use the service.)

Decompose the concept of "growth hacker"

"Growth" is half of what is easy to understand. As Sean Eills said, "Just like the compass always points to the north, growth hackers always focus on growth."

Basically, all they are doing is to make the basic data rise and be on the right track. What makes this growth different (from large companies) is scale: successful start-ups can increase users from 0 to millions (or hundreds of millions) in a few years.

"Hacker" is a pun. One definition is that programmers who create features that allow the company's products to experience viral growth. However, I think it can also refer to "hackers" who are closer to life, that is, those who think outside the framework, ignore rules, and find new ways to solve problems. In this way, the growth of hackers requires both creativity and analytical ability.

What tools will growth hackers use?

Here are some basic tools that most growth hackers will use:

Virus marketing: Use the existing features of the product to encourage users to share your product with more new users.
Paid Marketing: There are many types. List some, such as search engine marketing (SEM), Google advertising words, Facebook advertising, display advertising, mobile advertising, radio, television, outdoor advertising, and many other ways that can be used - but they do not provide sufficient resource allocation for most growth hackers. Finally, you can also adopt affiliate marketing, or provide incentives to third-party marketers who promote your products and cut expenses.
Telephone Center/Sales Team: Of course, creating a sales team is not equal to "Growth Hacking", but a new trend has emerged recently: outsourcing cheap labor to support start-ups (usually in the Philippines, sometimes as interns in school). These employees can do anything from mass mailing your customers to creating hundreds of pages more conducive to SEO. In this case, I think it is a kind of "Growth Hacking".
Content marketing: Use blog posts, information charts and virus videos to increase brand awareness and website traffic, and turn visitors into users.
Email Marketing ： If you believe that the job of increasing hackers is not only to increase new users/customers, but also to encourage them to pay more, then email marketing is a very important part.
Search engine optimization （SEO）： Don't be fooled: most mainstream SEO books and articles talk about something different from what start-ups need to do SEO. Startups that use SEO effectively build a flexible infrastructure for thousands or millions of pages. Most online search engine optimization theories only focus on the ranking of 5 – 10 keywords.
AB test and analysis: Although this is not a way to get users directly, there is no doubt that it is large Data analysis And AB testing can help growth hackers improve their access to users and transformation funnel.

Of course, there are many detailed articles explaining each of the above. I recommend that you read in-depth articles on Quora and start-ups' marketing blogs to gain more knowledge in the fields you are interested in.

This article is compiled by Yaohe Technology. If it needs to be reproduced, please indicate the source and the original link

Original author: Gagan Biyani

Original link: Explained: The actual difference between growth hacking and marketing

This article is published by @ Yaohe Technology Translator to everyone product manager