We’re glad you’ve joined our Growth Hacking Academy! In earlier lessons we covered what growth hacking is, how to become a growth hacker, the best tools and growth hacking examples, and finally growth hacking strategies. In this lesson we’ll point you at the best books on growth hacking.
Don’t miss our lessons — they’ll serve you well.
Perhaps you’re here because you want to grow your online business and need tools that teach you how. If you want to develop your business, books on becoming a growth hacker are a good place to start.
Before we begin, you should know that growth hacking is a mindset, an approach to marketing — so there’s no single way of working and it doesn’t rest on one discipline. It’s a set of techniques and knowledge drawn from different fields, strategies and tools. Growth hacking aims for the best possible result while making the most of the budget.
There are many books on growth hacking, and most are in English. The reason is that this new approach to marketing came from America, and experts in Italy are still few — so Italian growth hacking books are genuinely rare.
Today we’ll look at some of the best books on growth hacking for anyone starting out in this world and wanting to understand how growth hacking works.
Let’s begin.
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Growth hacking books
Growth hacking isn’t simple.
Contrary to what some might think, it takes ability and knowledge across several fields — marketing, digital marketing, programming, analysis — plus a creative, unobvious approach.
There are many kinds of growth hacking book, teaching you:
- how to acquire users;
- how to create content that spreads;
- which tools are useful;
- how to use data analysis;
- advertising techniques on Google Ads and Facebook;
- how much SEO matters;
- how to earn coverage with no budget.
Those are some of the things growth hacking books cover.
Now for some interesting titles.
Growth Hacker, by Raffaele Gaito
One of the best books on growth hacking, written by one of the leading experts in Italian growth hacking, Raffaele Gaito.
It’s titled “Growth Hacker. Mindset e strumenti per far crescere il tuo business” (here’s the link to the book).
It’s written in Italian and covers subjects such as:
- the shift from traditional marketing to marketing for growth (growth hacking);
- the skills a growth hacker needs;
- what a growth hacker does day to day;
- how to apply growth hacking to your own business;
- the structure of a user acquisition strategy using every channel available.
So, as you’ll gather, it matters first to understand the foundations and then to get into this world using the tools and techniques this book will certainly give you.
On to the next growth hacking book.
Growth Hacking, fai crescere la tua impresa online
This growth hacking book, written in Italian by Luca Barboni and Federico Simonetti, gives beginners an excellent picture of growth hacking and the tools available (here’s the link to the book).
Its contents range from explaining what growth hacking is through to examples of the techniques American entrepreneurs used to launch a product from nothing and get remarkable results.
The book suits students as well as professionals who want to learn to work in this field and grow their company.
Here you’ll find ideas for getting your business moving and breaking out of a mindset that doesn’t optimize.
Traction
This one — “Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers” by G. Weinberg and J. Mares (here’s the link to the Italian edition and here’s the English one) — is not one to miss.
What’s one of the main goals for a business that wants to grow? Acquiring customers.
And why is this book essential reading? Because it gives you every channel you can use for acquisition.
Isn’t that something? It gathers 19 channels, explained one after another, showing you how to use them and when one channel makes more sense than another.
Growth Hacker Marketing
Among the best books on growth hacking you’ll find this: “Growth Hacker Marketing” by Ryan Holiday (here’s the link to the book).
It takes startup models as its subject.
What startups have in common is having to revisit their growth model, working to make everything efficient and to understand which moves lead to a given result.
In it the author explains the success factors that took startups to four times the numbers, and the revenue, they had.
To work well, a growth hacker has to be able to analyse, to code, to know digital marketing, and much more.
Here you’ll find cases such as Dropbox, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Need a list of growth hacking tools?
Need tools to grow your business? Want to use growth hacking for your clients and work out which tools are available? No problem, we’ll give you the full list. FREE!
Request the free growth hacking tool list
Best growth hacking books: Hooked is essential
What to say about this one?
It reveals the success factors shared by companies that achieved remarkable business results.
What’s more, the author — Nir Eyal — used his research to formulate a model of successful products. In particular he holds that there are processes built on four-phase cycles that win the customer over and convince them not to abandon the product.
This growth hacking book will be extremely useful if you’re launching a new product or have started a new venture.
It’s another of the best books on growth hacking, and in Italian you’ll find it under the title “Creare prodotti e servizi per catturare clienti” (here’s the link to the book).
Best growth hacking books: Lean Analytics
As the title says — “Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster”, by A. Croll and B. Yoskovitz (here’s the link to the book) — this one suits entrepreneurs at the start of their venture who want to understand how to validate their idea, find users, monetise what they’re doing and get people talking about it.
It will show you the approach and the mindset to adopt around data analysis, which is fundamental to refining what you do and growing the business.
Inside you’ll find various business models to take as examples.
It’s certainly an interesting book and well worth reading.
A growth hacking book worth reading: Sprint
Three Google Ventures partners produced this genuinely valuable book (here’s the link to the book).
Jake Knapp created a process, used inside Google, for testing any idea in five days. That model is set out in the book, and it’s thoroughly interesting — don’t you think?
It suits anyone who wants answers.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a small operation or a large one, you’ll certainly come away with information you can use.
Growth Hacking 101
This one is very recent, published in February 2018 (here’s the link to the book).
It’s among the best books on growth hacking because it teaches you what growth hacking is, what the growth stages are, how to create and set up emails, how to refresh the content of an offer, how to grow a Facebook page, how to find new customers, what to do and what not to, and how to use social media.
You’ll also find suggestions on how to do growth hacking.
Conclusion
In this lesson we’ve pointed you at the best books on growth hacking. You’ll certainly find them useful for getting your own venture moving; these books exist to open your mind and set you up with a different approach to marketing your business.
Growth hacking is a way of getting the best possible results in the shortest possible time while making the most of the budget available. It takes a great deal of study — a large store of knowledge and practical ability — to do it profitably.
If the subject fascinates you, make use of this reading list, and then stay tuned to your favourite Growth Hacking Academy.
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