Welcome to the second lesson of our Growth Hacking Academy, on growth hackers: who they are and what they do.
As we explained in the last lesson, growth hacking is an innovative way of doing marketing. It’s the evolution of traditional marketing and it’s built on constant experiments. Growth hacking is about growing a business.
Not everyone can improvise this approach to marketing. Only a few manage it, and in this article we’ll find out why not everyone can be a growth hacker — and how to become one.
Want to know in detail who growth hackers are and what they do?
Let’s get into it.
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Growth hackers: who are they?
Growth hacking isn’t a trade for everyone.
The growth hacker’s role is building online marketing campaigns that fit the client perfectly, tailored to their goals and their budget.
If you’ve been wondering who growth hackers are, here’s the answer: they’re the new marketers, the marketers of the future, with skills and ability across several fronts.
They’re the new corporate strategists, also known as the pirates of marketing.
To grasp how much the role matters in modern business, consider Coca-Cola, which recently replaced its marketing director with a growth hacker.
Let’s dig in.
Growth hackers: what sets them apart?
The growth hacker combines several aspects, kinds of knowledge and ability. They know digital marketing broadly and use every marketing and online advertising tool available (SEO, SEM, email marketing, inbound marketing, social media marketing, affiliate marketing and so on), they can code, they can analyse data thoroughly, and they have plenty of creativity.
So, as you’ll see, this is a very complete role held by someone with a great deal of experience… honestly, I tend to be sceptical of 20-year-olds calling themselves growth hackers. It isn’t possible — not because they lack ability (they may well have it in future), but because there physically hasn’t been time to gather all the knowledge the job demands.
Growth hackers work creatively and find solutions even where you’d think none exist. The growth hacker’s best friend is the spreadsheet, and what’s fascinating about this role is that it’s as analytical as it is creative.
What characterises them? A growth hacker has real skill, plus these traits:
- the growth hacker tries everything. Running plenty of tests is fundamental to working out which strategy to use and refine;
- they don’t give up: they know plenty of these strategies will fail — several have to be tried before the winning one arrives;
- they’re a multidisciplinary professional handling the whole marketing channel: acquisition, activation, retention, referral and revenue, all in service of growing a business;
- they enjoy grappling with data;
- they have an open, responsive, creative mind;
- they’re curious: always experimenting, always keen to improve and to widen their skills and knowledge.
What do growth hackers do?
Growth hackers get called in by companies, startups included, when it’s time to grow and change how the budget is used. At first people thought the growth hacker was a role exclusively for startups, mistaking growth hacking for zero-cost marketing. As we saw in the last lesson, that isn’t so: growth hacking takes a budget. The difference is that the budget is used efficiently and spent only on strategies that work and produce a positive ROI. Which is why growth hacking suits not only startups but any kind of business.
The growth hacker’s goal is growing the business, always with the client’s objectives in mind.
Typically growth hackers split the budget into small sub-budgets used to test several strategies. Once it’s clear what works and what doesn’t, the budget is consolidated and invested only in the strategies that produced interesting results.
So what do growth hackers do?
They develop strategies and run constant, and above all fast, experiments (over a few days, sometimes hours) in order to identify as quickly as possible the best strategy for getting the results expected.
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
The growth hacker’s mindset
What do we mean by that?
For the growth hacker it matters to have, as we said, a flexible mind — ready to change and think in record time, ready to keep learning and testing.
To reach the business goals set for them, the growth hacker has to be proactive, quick and inventive.
The growth hacker’s mindset, as you’ll have gathered, differs from the one used in traditional marketing. Growth hackers are marketers who never tire of trying and learning.
Conclusion
If you’ve followed this lesson you’ll have a clear idea of who growth hackers are and what they do. Plenty of people talk about growth hacking, but real experts are still few.
This lesson will have left you intrigued by who growth hackers are and what they do. Maybe you’d like to become one yourself.
Stay tuned to your favourite Growth Hacking Academy. In the lessons ahead you’ll also learn how to become a growth hacker.
Want advice on growing your business? Get in touch! With growth hacking we’ll work out and implement the best strategy for reaching your goal.
Want to become a growth hacker? Get in touch! We’ll find the right course for you.
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