What is Growth Hacking

A Growth StoryBy Rommil SantiagoNovember 2015

What is Growth?A brief walkthrough

Show me the money

The goal of most companies is to generate revenue.

The Market Stuff we can do

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To do that, you look at the market and evaluate your core competencies.

Business Strategy

* More or lessDevelop a business strategy – or something resembling one.

Marketing StrategyProduct Strategy

The biz strategy spawns a product and a marketing strategy

Product Market Fit

The ultimate goal is to create a product that is loved by a market

Then build on this love to generate more revenue

?But what if you have limited resources?

?But where do you invest? Product development or marketing?

=What if?

What if investing in product meant investing in marketing, too?

Growth (Hacking) is Product-Powered Marketing

Growth (Hacking)

• Narrowly focuses on growth goals

• Reduces marketing spend and amplifies it

• Leverages not-so-obvious mechanisms through product

• Results in disproportionate ROI

• Is a mind-set

Famous Growth Hacks• LinkedIn made it so that to be discoverable you had to make

your profile public dramatically improving their SEO.

• Hotmail had a link at the bottom of their message that said “Get Your Free Email at Hotmail”

• YouTube made it easier for users to share their content on MySpace by creating Embeddable code

• Dropbox’s referral program

• Twitter’s recommended followers

Realistically, you won’t find many “growth hacks”;

But a growth-mindset, a lot of elbow grease and persistence will still get you far.

The Ingredients of GrowthThe skills and mindset needed to nurture growth

Ingredients of growth hacking

Data

Product-Orientation

Focused on growth goals

Risk-taking

Ruthless Prioritizatio

n

Perseverance

Decisiveness

Action-Oriented

Proximity

Strong/Direct

Comms

Influence

Ingredients of growth hackingData• Quantitative and qualitative.• Data helps hackers to come up

with clever solutions and inform if progress is being made against growth goals.

Product-Orientation• Familiar with the product and

the tech used.• Able to “talk shop” regarding

all the supporting tech related to the product (including analytics, marketing automation, etc.)

Focused on Growth Goals• This means a focus ON growth

– NOT the exclusion of all else except growth.

Decisiveness• Plans and strategy mean

nothing without execution. • The faster decisions are made

and the faster things get implemented, the quicker teams can fail and learn and get that much closer to growth.

Ingredients of growth hackingRisk-taking• Growth hacking requires a thick

skin where it is understood that the path to growth is paved with failure and lessons.

Strong & Direct Communications• Transparency and mature

directness is important to ensure quality work is done and all angles are covered.

Ruthless Prioritization• Ruthless prioritization for high

ROI initiatives. Understanding that not all growth is made equal.

Perseverance• Experiencing continued failure

is not easy. Also success is not forever.

• Persistence is required to keep driving towards growth – because the path to growth changes constantly. Constant iteration is the norm.

Ingredients of growth hackingAction Oriented• Growth hacking is often an all

hands-on-deck effort. • Many wear multiple hats and jack-

of-all-trades are commonplace. Pitching in is an everyday occurrence.

Influence• Growth often works through

other functions – building rapport and trust is key to getting things done.

Proximity• Distance is a growth killer.• The closer teams are the faster

growth happens. • Eliminate miscommunications

and drama.