Everything Is Marketing: How Growth Hackers Redefine The Game

Everything Is Marketing: How Growth Hackers Redefine The Game(fastcompany.com)

48 points by techn9ne 13 years ago | 15 comments

Marketing ≠ Advertising.

While the article makes some nice (if broad) points, I wish people would stop conflating the disciplines of marketing and advertising. Advertising is a subset of marketing -- one of many. The two terms should not be used interchangeably, as this article does.

The article does a nice job of comparing "growth hacking" (which, by the description, does sound like something more akin to marketing) with traditional advertising, then attempts to make generalizations about the marketing field. Granted, this is a piece in Ad Age, which is focused on advertising.

It's just ironic that the piece asks us to think of marketing as more than just advertising, while proceeding to interchange the two terms.

arscan 13 years ago |

I hate to be negative, but for an article on growth hackers, this spends very little time describing what growth hackers do (the role). Sure, it covers a couple of examples of how marketing is evolving into new mediums, but it doesn't tell how growth hackers play a part in that. For the violin example, is the author implying that growth hackers would come up with that better marketing strategy (help kids get into college)? For the Amazon example, is the author implying that growth hackers would come up with the policy of having all engineers write a press release of their product before building it? If so, then I don't really see how thats any different than traditional marketing / product development.

The article has a reference that I think does a much better job describing the role:

http://andrewchen.co/2012/04/27/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an...

ryanholiday 13 years ago | |

To be fair (as the guy who did the article), I didn't choose the headline. The article isn't really about growth hacking, it's about a better way of thinking about marketing--which growth hackers are one example of.

But headline/article disagreement is just a reality of web journalism I suppose we have to get used to.

arscan 13 years ago | | |

Ah, my apologies. It is good content otherwise; I just had different expectations given the headline.

indiecore 13 years ago | |

>then I don't really see how thats any different than traditional marketing / product development.

Bingo

aginn 13 years ago |

The article does a decent job of discussing growth hacking just after Sean Ellis wrote about it in 2010. You can find most substantial content on tactics and best practices else where.

I am glad the importance of growth is spreading to the mainstream but people need more meat these days.

timjahn 13 years ago |

Can someone explain to me exactly what a "growth hacker" is?

So far, it sounds to me like today's term for "marketer".

smacktoward 13 years ago | |

It's how marketers market themselves.

ryanholiday 13 years ago | |

If marketing = driving new business/customers, there is no different between "marketers" and "growth hackers."

They use different tools to accomplish the same task. It's time that marketers realize there is more at their disposal.

inthewoods 13 years ago | | |

Agreed for the most part - but are modern-day marketers not aware that there are more tools at their disposal? As a marketing professional, about 90% of what is described as growth hacking is, in my opinion, just plain old marketing. And most of it is pretty understood in my circles - content marketing, SEO, SEM, landing page optimization, etc.

There is a product part of it as well - so my conclusion is that growth hacking is probably more about a different way to think about product management than marketing. The examples given of Hotmail and others fall into that bucket - making changes to the product itself to drive growth.

alexpopescu 13 years ago | |

My understanding--which might be completely wrong--is that growth hackers are people coming up with "new" non-classical marketing approaches. Oftentimes these experiments seem to be based on real data analysis.

noelwelsh 13 years ago |

A good overview of "growth hacking" and lots of links, but you won't find much of the nuts and bolts in the article. Worth a read if you're new to the idea. Suggested further reading/watching:

Brian Doll (Github -- and you thought drink ups were just for fun?): http://emphaticsolutions.com/2012/06/22/marketing-for-geeks....

Paul Willard (Atlassian): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyZOGJHl_a0

There's lot more out there, but these two were good overviews for me, and included more detail on how to do it.

kami8845 13 years ago | |

Thank you very much for that second link. The exact right link at the right time!

kevinconroy 13 years ago |

Taking it a step further, stop thinking of marketinhg as you just saying "buy, buy, buy" but rather engaging your customers. Creating memorable, lasting impressions and relationships can be an incredibly effective strategy for building and sustaining a group of customers.