Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Dropbox are all Multi-Billion Dollar brands which share a very important commonality:  all were start-up companies which were built from the ground up without the use of ‘traditional’ marketing techniques such as public relation firms, press releases, or radio and billboard advertisements.  Passing on the ‘traditional’, these companies hired marketers who were coined as “growth hackers.”

I instantly became interested in how a “growth hacker” functions after discovering what they have accomplished, so I decided to dig a little further and find out what they’re all about.  Interestingly, growth hackers are vastly different from what a ‘normal’ marketer offers, so I decided that this blog is going to give you a little taste of what growth hacking is about.

First things first, a growth hacker is basically a marketer who is solely in charge of marketing for a start-up company.  Although growth hackers and marketers are both involved in the overall plan of advertising a brand, a growth hacker utilizes a unique set of tools to tackle the challenges of promoting a start-up brand to the public.  Certain challenges that growth hackers have to overcome are:

i.              Extreme uncertainty among start-up companies.  You have no idea of who your consumers are, the value of your product, and which markets are best suited for your product.

ii.             Slow growth.  Start-ups need to have an enormous amount of growth to be successful.  Growth hackers have to figure out how to increase growth by tenfold in order for the start-up to be successful.

iii.            Brand Equity.  Consumers have no idea about your brand, and thus you must educate them in a positive manner in order for them to trust you.

For a growth hacker to surmount such daunting tasks, they must first form a mindset of doing anything and everything which will maximize user engagement and sharing.  Generating positive social media and word of mouth gets consumers interested in your product.  In attempting to promote positive social media, growth hackers utilize certain tactics and tools:  viral and paid acquisitions, sales teams, content and email marketing, search engine optimization, and analytics.  Analytics are an important tool in the arsenal of growth hackers because data is what should drive all marketing and product-development decisions of start-up companies, not hunches or instincts.

Loads of information is available on growth hackers and I could keep going on forever.  If start-up companies spark your interest and you want to learn more about the specifics of marketing a start-up company, I would suggest looking into buying and reading “Growth Hacker Marketing:  A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising” by Ryan Holiday.  It’s offered as an eBook on four different platforms: B&N, iBooks, Kobo, and Amazon.