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If you use the word "hack" and "hacking" as synonym for "unprofessional" (ex: he is just a hack), then growth hacking makes sense that it's not good. (Also, when non pro's write code, that is a hacking)
Hacking is getting something done creatively. As in, hacking away at a problem.
People reapply the same concepts and ideas, but with new terminology all the time. It's good marketing :)
Now, I must get back to word sculpting...
I am largely to blame for the recent tirade against “growth hacking.” I’ve let the term be bastardized and redefined a lot since my original blog post on it back in 2010 http://www.startup-marketing.com/where-are-all-the-growth-ha... . I wrote that blog post primarily for startups that had achieved product/market fit. The idea was not to replace marketing, but to create a category of marketing activities that have a…
I've always thought that it was the other way around, i.e. marketing is one of the things you can do in growth hacking, but not everything. To me growth hacking means doing/focusing on things that help grow the business, and marketing is just one of the things you can do. Other things that you can do to help growth include actually improving the product and reduce friction, which are not marketing. Maybe I've misunderstood the term "growth hacking" then.
Traditional online marketers are paralyzed by their lack of technical and design skills. The best they can do is brainstorm ideas and spend money on ads.
The difference between "growth hacking" and "online marketing" as I understanding it is that the former involves dedicating engineering effort: building repeatable automated systems that operate at scales that are untenable with manual effort. Marketing, as a business objective, has historically been underserved by engineering. "Marketing engineering" occupied approximately the same status level as internal IT. "Grow…
Summary: This is simply an opinion piece that I wrote to try to get the point across that growth is everywhere, and constraining it to a definition is simply counterintuitive.
In short, if it grows your business, then by all means do that, whatever it is, and to keep learning, experimenting and testing new strategies.
"Growth hacking" is like an SUV: an attempt to take something stigmatized as effeminate (minivans) and masculinize it, to the point that it develops its own mancult.
I am largely to blame for the recent tirade against “growth hacking.” I’ve let the term be bastardized and redefined a lot since my original blog post on it back in 2010 http://www.startup-marketing.com/where-are-all-the-growth-ha... . I wrote that blog post primarily for startups that had achieved product/market fit. The idea was not to replace marketing, but to create a category of marketing activities that have a…
> Growth hacking (to me anyway) is a subset of marketing activities too. I've always thought that it was the other way around, i.e. marketing is one of the things you can do in growth hacking, but not everything. To me growth hacking means doing/focusing on things that help grow the business, and marketing is just one of the things you can do. Other things that you can do to help growth include actually improving the…