“Growth Hacking” is BS • Hacker News Board

Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS

#11

Post by ashray » Tue, Aug 28, 2012, 4:15 AM UTC

I think you might have come off as more credible had you said that 'Growth Hacker' is a BS title. That is just a title and anyone can really have that. I have a site with 25 million page views per month, I've been running it for years all by myself, am I a growth hacker ? No. Did I do some growth hacking ? Yes. I used some innovative methods to garner and maintain traffic; methods that traditional marketing folks wouldnt't probably use.

Growth hacking might be a buzzword. But to me, it means coming up with a unique and viral way of attracting users to your product. There is a lot of unchartered new territory in marketing - social media being a big one. (turntable.fm had an interesting user acquisition route, I'd call that growth hacking)

Personally, I'm excited to see the new and innovative ways in which marketers will leverage these new technologies to reduce the cost and increase the speed of user acquisition.

Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS

#12

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 28, 2012, 4:15 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS

#13

Post by natrius » Tue, Aug 28, 2012, 4:21 AM UTC

"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 split testing."

That is the entire point of using a different term for it. Precise language is a useful tool. A job title that says "we're looking for technically advanced marketers" in a concise way will get you a better signal to noise ratio.

I don't understand why this offends you.

Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS

#14

Post by aymeric » Tue, Aug 28, 2012, 4:28 AM UTC

A bit off topic: how do I go about finding a freelance marketer? People I find on odesk seem to be of the spammy kind. Any advices?

Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS

#15

Post by ashray » Tue, Aug 28, 2012, 4:28 AM UTC

natrius wrote: post #13

"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.

Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS

#16

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 28, 2012, 4:28 AM UTC

natrius wrote: post #13

"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…

[deleted]

Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS

#17

Post by jacques_chester » Tue, Aug 28, 2012, 4:43 AM UTC

An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which have, under old names, become odious to the public.

-- Tallyrand

Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS

#18

Post by j45 » Tue, Aug 28, 2012, 4:43 AM UTC

Confused. Growth hacking is BS, but growth hacking is marketing, and marketing is legit?

You summed it up nicely.. growth hacking is marketing using technical skills. I think that summary is very attractive to technically minded people, and makes it unique compared to traditional one way marketing.

If growth hacking is introducing marketing to a technical crowd and enable them to grow customers in a tech centric industry (startup), why the frustration? Is there some underlying issue with non-tech marketers not being able to connect with results in tech startups as well?

Having a foot in the technical and business world for the last decade has shown me that techs tend to learn more about business than vice versa. Capable people are everywhere though, maybe we need Growth Hacking 101 for marketers?

Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS

#19

Post by programminggeek » Tue, Aug 28, 2012, 4:44 AM UTC

Maybe instead of arguing of meaningless titles for these roles, we should get back to building things, finding users, making money, and all that jazz.

Re: “Growth Hacking” is BS

#20

Post by lambtron » Tue, Aug 28, 2012, 4:50 AM UTC

I always thought "growth hacking" meant a hacker that has strong knowledge of "hacking" tactics (a/b testing, optimizing on boarding funnel, etc) as well as a keen business sense (markets, distribution, etc) to grow the startup's user base.

Anyone?