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.
“Growth Hacking” is BS
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Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS
#22No. Context is very important here, and it's actually quite apt with regard to hiring and being hired. 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 w…
Totally agree with you. I think this is about hiring the right type of people. Honestly, marketing has a bad reputation with many technical people. So if you tried to hire a CS grad into an online marketing role, it might be tough. Hence the new title. Whatever works!
Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS
#23I 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. Companies like Zynga thrived because they found cheap ways of getting users: early un-managed FB platform, and app referrals. Same wit…
A "Growth Hacker" is an engineer that applies himself in the field of marketing. or a marketer who learns how to code?
It's possible you might end up with an equivalently effective person, but I think it'd be easier to transition from coder->marketer. I suspect that the knowledge required to be useful is about 70-30, or maybe 85-15, heavily on the coder side.
To pick up some marketing ideas that will start moving the needle on your startup, read a small book. You'd probably already know enough to start iterating on 3 or more techniques.
To get a marketer to pick up the most basic coding skills, start with flow control and variables. It could be a month before you're useful, in one language only. Then understand HTML, SQL, the server-side language, maybe jQuery, plus maybe security so you don't start adding lots of useful but dangerous code. Understand performance, so you don't kill the server with a loop in customer-facing code. Not just be able to click a "add new test" button, but integrate ABingo without hassling the rest of the team (if that's the best tool for the job). The point is: whatever it takes. You need to know enough technical concepts to be fast and loose with whatever will move the needle best. You're making few marketing decisions, but many technical ones.
So: fully agreed with your other comment. Marketers will be well-served by getting into some of the code, because it'll enable them greatly. But if I were hiring a marketer->coder, I'd be a lot more wary.
Up until today, I've disliked the growth hacker "thing". But these posts have clarified it for me. I'm generally irritated at the non-bschool vibe around here, but on this issue I'll lean heavily on the coder side.
Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS
#24Here's the bit i never understood with this 'growth hacker' meme: if you're working on or for an early stage startup then everyone is a 'growth hacker', right? if your people aren't working to grow your product/service/community then what the hell are they doing?
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.
Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS
#25"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." This is false, as you disprove a few paragraphs later: "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 spl…
I think he's just tired of buzzwords and took it out on the wrong title. Now, if he had a post titled "I'll bitchslap the next person who asks me to build something web 2.0". I would totally read that and upvote it to high heaven.
So lets call it a quantitative marketer then?
It describes the role more precisely and it sounds cool.
Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think he's just tired of buzzwords and took it out on the wrong title. Now, if he had a post titled "I'll bitchslap the next person who asks me to build something web 2.0". I would totally read that and upvote it to high heaven.
So lets call it a quantitative marketer then? It describes the role more precisely and it sounds cool.
Sure. The main point I took from the article was a frustration with the way people feel a euphemism is needed for "marketer" (which does seem rather elitist), and that avoids that, and also sounds less trend-following-buzzword-happy than "growth hacker" (which to me always makes we wish I could hack another few inches of height on so that I could dunk a basketball).
Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think he's just tired of buzzwords and took it out on the wrong title. Now, if he had a post titled "I'll bitchslap the next person who asks me to build something web 2.0". I would totally read that and upvote it to high heaven.
So lets call it a quantitative marketer then? It describes the role more precisely and it sounds cool.
It's still a marketer.
Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS
#28It's different in a way that growth hacking looks at retention and marketing doesnt.
Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS
#29Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS
#30Here's the bit i never understood with this 'growth hacker' meme: if you're working on or for an early stage startup then everyone is a 'growth hacker', right? if your people aren't working to grow your product/service/community then what the hell are they doing? 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 pr…
Well, it's on my business card. I guess that's what I'm going to be defending for the next few years.