What Is Growth Hacking and How is It Different From Traditional Marketing?

So, you want to know more about growth hacking? You’re in good company. 

Google receives 27,100 monthly requests from people like you who want to better understand this marketing function and how it can benefit a company hungry for growth.

In this article, we’ll go over growth hacking, how it differs from traditional marketing, and what it takes to be a successful growth marketer. We’ll also provide you with strategies, examples, resources, and a blueprint to get you started on your growth hacking journey.

Growth hacking is like engineering (stick with me, Arts degree holders). It’s about building systems that allow you to create tests and learn from them so that you can build even better systems. With engineers, they’re building bridges, but for growth hackers, it’s all about designing growth strategies that yield ever higher growth rates.

Growth hacking (or growth marketing) is a modern approach to marketing. Instead of gut-calls and one-size-fits-all solutions, it leverages actual user data to find paths to sustainable growth. It may not be as easy as applying X generic growth strategy for Y result, but the end result will be bespoke hacks that encourage growth for your product. Once you get into the growth hacker mindset, every aspect of your UI and UX becomes an opportunity to optimize. With each positive tweak you make, you’ll improve your product and unlock the growth you’ve been looking for.

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What is growth hacking?

Growth hacking is a process where you run experiments on your products to find the best optimizations to increase growth. Unlike traditional marketing, growth marketing is concerned with all aspects of a user lifecycle, from acquisition to adoption and advocacy.

According to Sean Ellis, the person who popularized growth hacking in 2010, a growth hacker is “a person whose true north is growth.” To find true north, growth hackers need to run experiments to see what increases growth for that product. It’s not enough to know that doing X worked for Uber; you need to know that it’ll work for you too. The growth hacking process requires you to experiment with your user base to find what strategies work specifically with them. When you find something that works, keep on experimenting and refining as your product user base grows with it.

To be an effective growth hacker, you need to know how to run experiments. A basic growth hack experiment can be set up this way:

1. Set a goal: Increase signups by 10% in the first quarter.
2. Create a hypothesis on how to reach that goal: We can increase signups by 10% if we start advertising on LinkedIn ads.
3. Set a way of measuring the success of your experiment: The experiment will be successful if we see a 10% increase in signups after three months of LinkedIn ads.
4. Use what we learn to improve growth: If we get the 10% increase, we make the LinkedIn ads permanent and try an experiment where we increase the budget to see if we can get more. If it fails, then we try to understand why (maybe our users aren’t as active on LinkedIn as we thought). This info still tells us something about our user base. Our next experiment can avoid LinkedIn and instead focus on a different way of increasing signups.

If you follow these steps and run experiments, you’ll improve your growth metrics over time. However, growth hacking only works when customized to a specific situation. One company’s growth hack could be another company’s downfall. Growth hacking is about experimenting, not blindly copying. It’s all about monkey see, monkey try for themselves in a limited trial.

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What is a growth hacker?

A growth hacker (also called a growth marketer)  is a vital marketing team member focusing on data-driven, experimental approaches to increase user acquisition, engagement, and retention rates quickly. 

The growth hacker mindset

A peek into the growth hacker mindset will reveal that they are, by nature, problem-solvers, innovators, and data analysts. 

As problem solvers, they’re intrinsically curious, relentlessly test new approaches, and are unafraid to fail. They embrace experimentation as a core principle. Over time, you’ll learn that a growth marketer’s favorite expression is "Let's test that."  

As an innovator, a growth hacker is fearless of trying unconventional methods and iterating quickly based on data. Their nonstop passion for learning and continuous optimization fuels their out-of-the-box thinking. 

As a data analyst, they possess a deep understanding of user behavior and a desire to solve problems that prevent growth. They're analytically minded, viewing data as a guide to exceeding their growth objectives. 

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Essential growth hacker skills

To complement their mindset, a growth hacker needs sharp skills in the following areas.

‍Technical Proficiency. We’re not talking developer-level proficiency. But having a basic understanding of how technologies, especially SaaS tools, impact growth is important.  In particular, knowing how marketing automation works or having a working knowledge of APIs is valuable.

‍Deep-and-Broad Market Understanding. A growth hacker needs to be a marketing generalist of sorts, grasping essential SEO, SEM, social media marketing, email marketing, and content marketing concepts. With that general understanding, they can better approach these marketing “buckets” in creative and unconventional ways.

‍Cross-functional Collaboration. Growth hacking often crosses departmental lines, so strong collaboration and communication skills are crucial for effectively working with product, customer success, and sales teams.

Growth hackers must have skills and passion for data analysis, technical proficiency, market understanding, experimental design, and collaborative teamwork. This potent combination can unlock creative solutions, optimize marketing strategies, and drive sustainable business growth.

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Growth hacking marketing vs traditional marketing

Growth hacking and traditional marketing often use the same marketing channels but differ in focus and key performance indicators (KPIs).

Differences in focus and metrics

Traditional marketing typically focuses on building brand awareness and generating the best possible leads for sales. 

In contrast, growth hacking marketing focuses squarely on growth. It runs campaigns that span the entire funnel, encompassing customer acquisition, engagement, and retention.

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Hannah Recker, Head of Growth Marketing at Coefficient, elaborates:

Adopting a growth marketing approach doesn't abandon traditional marketing areas, but differs in the approach, goals, and speed of execution. A growth marketer focuses intensely on a single metric for an extended period— whether it's acquisition, activation, or retention—and rapidly tests and iterates to move the needle on the metric that can have the greatest impact on the organization.

Measuring the impact of traditional marketing often involves tracking metrics like reach and impressions, click-through rates (CTR), marketing-qualified leads (MQLs), and sales-qualified leads (SQLs).

Growth hackers rely on KPIs like customer acquisition costs (CAC), recurring revenue (MRR, ARR), and customer retention rates to gauge the effectiveness of their efforts.

Pros and cons of both methods

Traditional marketing isn’t synonymous with outdated marketing. It remains a powerful method for building a long-lasting brand in the marketplace. Its downsides are that its efforts take time to show results, and it is more challenging to measure ROI.

Growth marketing supplements traditional marketing by providing quick results that are data-driven, agile, and better able to show the impact on business growth outcomes. 

The danger of going whole-hog on growth marketing is the loss of critical top-of-funnel traffic provided by the established traditional marketing methods.

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The most effective marketing approach incorporates tradition and growth. Combining both marketing worlds will lead to sustainable growth and long-term success.

How could you benefit from growth hacking?

Growth hacking can deliver benefits beyond KPIs, including press-worthy wins, improved budget allocation, cross-functional improvements, and a competitive edge.

Rapid growth worth sharing

Focusing on rapid user acquisition, engagement, and retention, growth hacking is uniquely poised to deliver speedy growth for an organization. 

Its growth is often seen in explosive bursts rather than incremental gains seen with traditional marketing methods. If your organization is big on press releases, you’ll have a bunch to share with the marketplace based on growth hacking outcomes. Everyone loves to see enormous growth in a small period!

Cost-saving potential

Growth hacking is mainly known for driving revenue. However, it can also be extremely useful for saving an organization money.

Its data-driven, experimental modus operandi leads to better resource allocation. By constantly A/B testing and tweaking, the marketing team minimizes wasted spending on long-term investments.

Continuous improvement across the organization

Growth hacking doesn’t just benefit the marketing department. Hacking experiments take place to optimize all functions of an organization.

Insights gained from growth hacking allow for improvement in user experience, new product development, sales tactics, and marketing strategies.

Competitive advantage

Rapid growth and satisfied customers can create a competitive advantage in the marketplace. We’ve already addressed possible press opportunities, but there are also tons of case studies and testimonial gold to be mined to win competitive deals.

The growth hacking mindset can also help an organization adapt and respond to market changes quicker than more established competitors, who are less capable of pivoting in the face of change.

From achieving rapid growth worth sharing to unlocking cost-saving potential, fostering continuous improvement across the organization, and gaining a competitive advantage, growth hacking empowers businesses to thrive.

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Growth hacking misconceptions

As growth hacking has gained popularity, so have misconceptions about what it does and how it functions within an organization. 

Haters gonna hate, but it’s still worth dispelling these three common misconceptions.

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Misconception 1: Growth hacking is a quick fix band-aid

One of the biggest misconceptions is that growth hacking only provides immediate, effortless results.

Truth is, growth hacking is an iterative process that requires consistent experimentation and analysis. It takes time, dedication, and a commitment to data-driven decision-making. 

Yes, some growth tactics may only yield short-term gains. But, because growth marketing is focused throughout the buyer’s lifecycle, their many touchpoints keep customers engaged and loyal.

Misconception 2: Growth hacking is only about tactics

The term "hacking" often suggests that growth hackers rely solely on tricks or "hacks" to achieve results. 

This is a narrow view of their work. Many growth hackers prefer the title "growth marketers" to dispel this misconception, as their work involves much more than just tactics. 

Effective growth hacking requires building a detailed strategy that factors in the target market and product-market fit. It often integrates different marketing and product development perspectives, requiring team alignment and collaboration.

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Misconception 3: Growth hacking ignores brand-building

Another common misconception is that growth hacking focuses on short-term gains at the expense of long-term brand integrity. Not the case.

Because growth marketing works in parallel with traditional marketing, growth strategies can be implemented while sustaining a brand's core positioning and identity. The two groups complement each other’s work, so traditional marketing's work to build a brand will only be enhanced by growth marketing initiatives.

Alas, growth hacking has never been a magic bullet for instant success. It is a data-driven, iterative approach that requires strategic planning, cross-functional collaboration, and a commitment to continuous improvement. Feel free to use these talking points with growth-hacking skeptics!

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How to start growth hacking

Define your goals and KPIs 

You can’t show the impact of growth hacking without setting up goals. So, setting clear, measurable goals aligned with business objectives should be your first step in your growth-hacking journey.

As a reminder, growth marketing KPIs we’ve talked about include: 

• CAC
• MRR
• ARR
• Customer retention rates

Over time, you’ll add more KPIs to this list. But, in the meantime, keep these metrics in a place where you can easily refer to them as inspiration. 

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Understand your audience 

You need a deep understanding of your target audience to tailor your growth hacking campaigns. Building empathy with your audience can improve your decision-making and help you prioritize your strategies and tactics.

Buyer and user personas can help you dive into the hearts and minds of your audience. These personas need to be up-to-date and consistently refreshed to run with your quick, agile journey. If no one on your team is assigned with persona refreshes, ask to conduct market research to update your personas' needs, pain points, and online behavior sections.

Brainstorm and prioritize 

Start getting creative! Jot down growth tactics across the marketing field–content marketing, SEO, social media engagement, email marketing, or paid advertising.

Once you’ve made a list of post-it wall of ideas, prioritize tactics based on potential impact and available resources. Start small with a few well-defined experiments to quickly measure results and refine your approach.

Test and measure

Once you’ve launched these small, focused experiments, begin your A/B testing to prove (or disprove) your hypotheses. 

At the same time, regularly track your progress to measure (and share) your impact on the organization.

You might be tempted to test experiments with a great shot of producing a quick win. But if you want to fully adopt a growth hacker mindset, try something with a potentially more ambiguous outcome. 

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Mary Matton, Growth Marketing Manager at Sendoso, explains:

Experimenting only on things you know will be successful isn’t experimenting - it’s stacking the deck in your favor. True growth hacking is about not being afraid to try things that you have no idea if they’ll work, and treating the outcome as a learning opportunity. It’s also how you set your baseline for A/B testing and iteration down the line - something that you should also constantly be doing as you’re seeing successes or failures from your work.

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Speaking of failures, don’t let them get you down. Winning experiments in growth marketing are made because of losing experiments. Failures provide a golden opportunity to adjust your tactics and save money in the long run.

Once you’ve gotten the hang of these first few growth experiments and have seen positive results, try a few larger initiatives to see an even greater impact.

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Growth hacking experiments you can start with

Growth hacking is all about experimentation, but like a Cheesecake Factory menu, it’s hard to know which experiment to try first. To get you started, here are three growth hacks you could start planning today.

1. Purchase social media ads for a month: Social media is a great way to get the word out about your company. To start your experiment, pick which platform you want to advertise on. The most popular are Facebook and Instagram. If you’re already on these platforms, try a more niche platform like Pinterest or Reddit. Choose one that lets you meet your target audience where they are. Next, design ads targeted at a specific segment of your target audience. Finally, pick a metric that you’ll track that means success for you. This could be traffic, signups, or purchases. Now run the ads for a month and see how your new ad campaign affects your chosen KPI.

‍2. Ask users to do one thing in your engagement emails: Emails that aren’t written in a way that connects with your audience often end up in the spam folder. To increase engagement, try a neat trick pioneered by the founder of AppSumo, Noah Kagan. End each one of your emails with a simple task that users can accomplish. Once you get users to do one thing, you’re more likely to get them to do even more with your SaaS product, increasing overall engagement. Try it yourself and measure if this change improves email-open and link-click rates.

3. Incentivize referrals: Referral programs are big business these days. When created correctly, they incentivize your customer base to invite their friends and colleagues to try your product. Set up a referral program by offering your long-time users a benefit when they refer a certain number of friends. After running your program for three months, track the number of referrals, signups, and new customers who lasted more than a month.

If you need more inspiration, check out our blog post on 30 ways to experiment with acquisition, product, and virality to find sources of new growth for your product.

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Growth hacking strategies

Growth hacking typically involves one of these four popular strategies to help focus their efforts. With a strategy in hand, you can better establish relevant KPIs, determine your key internal stakeholders, and build a successful growth-minded campaign.

Market Penetration. Here, you focus on increasing market share within your target market. Find ways to enhance your existing product's appeal to this market through pricing and packaging experiments, or advertising.

Market Development. Explore new market segments–think new geographic regions or niche markets—for your existing products. Identify untapped customer groups with similar needs and adapt your strategies to reach these new audiences. 

Product Development. Improve existing offerings or introduce new products to better meet customer needs and preferences. This growth strategy includes incorporating user feedback, developing complementary products, and improving existing functionalities to increase value and engagement. 

Diversification. Find opportunities outside of your core product and market. This growth hacking technique could involve creating completely new products or entering unrelated markets to capture new growth opportunities. 

All four growth hacking strategies have something in common: They’re supported by data and continuous iteration to ensure maximum impact and return on investment.

Consider using pirate metrics to track your impact and ROI. Dave McClure of 500 Startups created the “pirate” in pirate metrics from its very Jack Sparrow-sounding acronym, AARRR.  With a product lens, this acronym can be defined as the following:

• Acquisition — number of users who arrive at your product
• Activation—percentage of users who have a good experience with your product
• Revenue—average contract value (ACV) per user per month
• Retention—percentage of users who stay with your product, month after month
• Referral— percentage of current users who refer new users

Try this pirate metrics calculator to see the impact that boosting each pirate metric can have on your monthly recurring revenue (MRR).

Growth hacking tools you’ll need

A growth hacker needs tools to run their experiments and collect data. Not only will these tools make it easier to get the data you need, but many will also help you organize the data to make it easier to draw conclusions. If the selected tools work for you and your growth team, explore how you can get more mileage out of them through integrations.

Acquisition tools

• Unbounce: A tool for creating better landing pages and boosting conversion rates. It uses smart A/B testing to find the best variant of your landing pages and then starts to send new visitors there quickly. Especially essential for ecommerce companies who need their landing pages to convert.
• Wistia: A tool for creating video content for your site and social media. Wistia’s video maker not only makes creating videos easy but also lets you collect engagement analytics so you can home in on a video content marketing strategy that works for your audience.
• Privy: A tool for running and analyzing your email marketing campaigns. Privy’s email builder lets you create interactive emails that’ll be more likely to draw in users, so your emails stay out of their spam folders.

Engagement tools

• Appcues: A tool for analyzing user engagement and optimizing product adoption through better UX and UI. Appcues’ no-code builder lets you place modals, slideouts, tooltips, and more in your flows to improve user experience. Plus, Appcues will help you track how well your flows engage users so you can continue to optimize for the best results.
• Buffer: A tool for running and analyzing your social media campaigns. Buffer’s platform includes analytics that tell you how your followers are engaging with your latest posts. It’ll also show you who your social media posts are reaching so you can see what messages are resonating with your target market.  
• Zapier: An automation tool used for connecting web apps, so you give your users a better overall experience. By connecting your product with other popular platforms, you give your product more usability, which makes your users happier.

Retention and referral tools

• Customer.io: A tool for crafting, automating, and analyzing your messaging, from emails to push notifications. With Customer.io, you can set up messaging campaigns to engage your users and help retain at-risk users who look like they may churn.
• Zendesk: A tool for creating personalized customer service experiences. Zendesk’s platform makes giving great customer service easy, so users walk away from interactions with your company always feeling respected and valued.
• Extole: A tool for encouraging advocacy and referrals. Using Extole, you can easily start referral programs, encouraging your core users to get involved and invite new users to try your product.

Didn’t see everything you want? Here are some more resources you can explore to make the perfect tech stack for your growth marketing team.

• The ultimate growth toolbox: 50 growth hacking tools. An epic storeroom of tools product managers can take and plug into their own unique growth hacking machinery.
• 29 user onboarding tools to drive growth. From progress bars to user segmentation, these onboarding tools can give you quick, easy ways to help users get attached to your app.

Growth hacking examples to learn from

Growth looks different for every company. That doesn’t mean you have to do an Airbnb and engineer a never-before-seen marketing strategy. Explore what growth hacking strategies have worked for others and consider how you could customize them to your own growth machine.

Mailchimp

The email marketing giant wasn’t always as big as it is now. In fact, Mailchimp has been optimizing its website and product for over 20 years, slowly adding improvement onto improvement. One area it spent a long time experimenting with was its pricing page, which saw numerous tweaks to language, prices, and design.

Over time, Mailchimp’s pricing page has been simplified, the CTA buttons have been tweaked, and the page is far better at communicating the key differences between the plans. Should you copy Mailchimp’s pricing page layout? No, but it might be worth experimenting to see if similar changes could increase your conversion rate and profitability as well.

Wealthfront

Wealthfront is currently a leader in the Fintech sphere and a major disruptor in a multi-trillion-dollar industry. Originally, however, this Silicon Valley startup had trouble getting people excited about investing. It first tried to gamify its platform to get people to sign up. This worked to increase overall signups, but it didn’t attract users who wanted to take the next step and become paying customers.

‍Next, they tried to use a referral program. This ended up being the ticket to success, as around 15% of people who got invited ended up signing up for Wealthfront.

For more inspiration, here are some of the most innovative and successful growth case studies out there. Some are classics you may have heard of already, while others are less expected.

Where to learn more for better growth optimization

To build your own growth hacks within your company, you need a regular supply of ideas, vocabularies, launch pads, and devil’s advocates. Curate your own reading list from these trusted sources.

• The 21 best growth hacking blogs to follow right now. A list of not-to-be-missed blogs from people who know how growth hacking works. Includes personal blogs from people like Noah Kagan and company blogs from teams like KISSmetrics. You’ll also learn about more broad topics like SEO, digital marketing, product development, and more.
• Amplitude’s Medium channel. A regular source of data-driven tips to optimize your app’s acquisition, conversion, and retention.
• A Guide to the Best Growth Hacking Resources. An arsenal of tried-and-tested resources to give you inspiration and assurance for your growth hacking practice. This list includes books, courses, influencers, and more.
• Growth Insights video series. For regular doses of growth inspiration, tune in to this YouTube series from Growth Tribe, a group of thinkers dedicated to making concise resources for marketers.
• 50 Women in Marketing to Follow. To celebrate International Women’s Day last year, Content Hacker put together this ultimate list of women in marketing. The list includes well-known entrepreneurs, founders, and authors whose words will help keep you experimenting and inspired.

Growth hacking has become crucial for businesses to accelerate growth and gain a competitive edge. 

For more traditional marketers, it takes a bit of time to understand growth hacking mindset, strategies, and benefits and to overcome common misconceptions about the field.

But, once you adopt a growth-hacking mindset and strategy, wow! You’ll soon see how your initiatives optimize your marketing efforts, improve user acquisition, engagement, and retention, and ultimately drive sustainable growth. There’s no going back.

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FAQs

Is growth hacking still a thing?

Yes, growth hacking is used by many startups and agile corporations. Many e-commerce and SaaS companies depend on growth marketing to complement their existing marketing efforts.

What is the new term for growth hacking?

Many marketing teams prefer “growth marketing” to reflect the insightful, deliberate impact this marketing function brings to an organization.

Is growth hacking in demand?

Growth hacking is in demand in organizations that have not seen the desired results from traditional marketing approaches to new customer acquisition and retention.

What is growth hacking in digital marketing?

Growth hacking in digital marketing is a data-driven, experimental approach focusing on rapidly growing a company's user base, engagement, and revenue through innovative and cost-effective strategies. 

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