IN THIS ARTICLE
Is growth hacking marketing? The short answer is no. Here's why.
For more than a decade, I've worked in marketing. From an unpaid intern to a marketing director, I've done it all. I've also become a Chartered Marketer and avid learner via the Product Marketing Alliance, HubSpot, Semrush, and wherever else I could continue to grow.
I put a premium on learning. On-the-job learning and out-of-the-book learning.
But with the rise of growth hacking and AI, it seems that the value of experience is being downplayed.
Today, the gloves are off. This is a line in the sand. Marketing is not a growth hack.
What Is Growth Hacking?
Growth hacking uses digital marketing and low-budget efforts to experiment and determine what works in the marketing mix.
At its best, it's a way to be effective with very few resources—something I applaud.
At its worst, it's a gimmick that provides short-term success at the cost of long-term sustainability.
When you look to what growth hacking founder Sean Ellis said back in 2010, we see the original intent:
A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth. Everything they do is scrutinized by its potential impact on scalable growth. Is positioning important? Only if a case can be made that it is important for driving sustainable growth (FWIW, a case can generally be made).
That means growth hacking is done across every possible marketing channel and tactic:
- SEO
- Paid ads
- Communities
- LinkedIn profiles and groups
- Marketplaces
The Problem With Growth Hacking
To be clear, this isn't me standing on a milk box. In truth, I respect the original purpose of growth hacking - experimentation.
As a marketer, it's important to make tests and run tactics to prove or disprove a hypothesis. Constant learning is a good thing.
Believing that growth hacking is a marketing strategy is not a good thing.
It is not. It may create revenue, but what will you do with that revenue?
Option one: Use that revenue to invest in the things that will give you long-term success—strong positioning, solid messaging, and content that speaks to and delights buyers for years.
Option two: Continue to pursue the growth strategy, but you give little substance and value to customers beyond constant tweaks. A great example is how many founders use ChatGPT to create content and entire sites. That is a growth hack, but Google is clamping down, and those hackers are in for a rude awakening.
Growth Hacking Marketing For Founders
And then we have the absurd. Sites promote marketing for founders in a way that you can learn everything you need to be successful in three months.
Trust me when I say that's not the case. You might see results, positive reviews, and revenue, but you're perpetuating the risks of growth hacking.
What is your market strategy? What's the shape of your go-to-market strategy and hiring plan? Do you know how to create a balanced value and competitor-based pricing strategy?
You won't get that in a three-month engagement for $3,000.
Taken to its extreme, we see AI marketing departments. For the low cost of $19 a month, a founder can get a website, content, social posts, and emails. Seriously, this is a thing. It's affordable, but at what cost?
If you want to learn marketing, you must invest time.
It takes ten thousand hours to truly master anything. Time spent leads to experience; experience leads to proficiency; and the more proficient you are the more valuable you’ll be.
You may learn about marketing as a founder from a three-month engagement.
You may get your marketing done in 90% of the time.
But, you won't have gained the knowledge and skills to sustain this for the duration of your start-up's existence.
The Good Of Growth Hacking
Sure, there are some great examples of growth hacking.
Something like Expandi can help you to automate LinkedIn by:
- Sending connection requests
- Scraping the names of people who like your posts
- Targeting attendees of events
But, like ChatGPT, it's important to be ethical.
It is unethical to automate your entire marketing on LinkedIn. First, it violates their terms, and second, it gives rise to spam. LinkedIn is a place for people to connect and learn, not swim in a sea of DMs.
Things like Expandi should be used for growth hacking, but only at the first stage—namely, sending a first message to connect. Once you're through the looking glass, it'll only annoy recipients who get no value or personalization messages.
That's a great example of how a SaaS founder can scale their outreach.
Growth Hacker Or Marketer?
Is there a difference between a growth hacker and a marketer? Is that a growth marketer?
I struggle to see how a growth marketer differs from a content marketer, a social media marketer, a customer marketer, or a product marketer.
Every single thing you do in marketing needs to be tested. Everything needs to drive value. Value is about the customer. Value can also lead to revenue.
You're missing the point without product market fit and positioning, packaging, and pricing that can monetize customers loving your product.
Marketing is always about the customer. When we stray from that, we try to deliver more revenue and less value.
The two can go hand in hand, but without having a marketing strategy, you're purely tactical. A growth hacker or growth marketer cares only about growing, not if it's the right audience or if what they're doing adds value to that audience. It's metrics gone mad.
Trust me when I say that when you're a tactical marketer, you're there to take direction from sales and leaders, not what your customers want.
Growth hacks alone can’t solve all your marketing problems, but the right ones may add immense value to an already humming marketing flywheel.
Rand Fishkin, Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World
You cannot hack marketing. It is something that requires effort and patience. Inherent to that is the need to test, but to think you can get sustainable results in short order is deceiving.
Have you seen a spike in traffic? It's likely due to black hat link building. That's a hack.
Have your competitors boosted to 100 new reviews in a short period? That's a hack.
Have you seen a company post 20 blogs in one week? That's a hack.
These are all unethical hacks.
Conversely, have you studied product usage data and implemented new marketing journeys to increase upsell opportunities? That's an ethical hack. You studied and made changes as part of a broader product-led growth marketing strategy.
Have you developed three blogs with 150% week-over-week traffic growth as part of a pillar and cluster content approach that ties into your annual research? That's an ethical hack of building research, content, and link-building around topics your niche loves as part of your content strategy.
See the difference?
Should You Focus On Growth?
Yes, of course!
But how you get there needs to be a long-term plan. You should want to learn from people with marketing experience more than yours - that's the fun of learning. You should take to Gartner and read their brilliant research.
You should try it yourself.
Along the way, you'll experiment with A/B testing and optimize content and websites.
But, you'll apply that principle to much more. You'll speak to hundreds of prospects and customers to learn their language. You'll write content. You'll build websites. You'll learn your market inside out.
Marketing is fun.
Don't hack at it.
Put in time.
Love it.
Please.
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