
Everything Is Marketing: How Growth Hackers Redefine The Game - techn9ne
http://www.fastcompany.com/3003888/everything-marketing-how-growth-hackers-redefine-game
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jonnathanson
Marketing ≠ Advertising.

While the article makes some nice (if broad) points, I wish people would stop
conflating the disciplines of marketing and advertising. Advertising is a
subset of marketing -- one of many. The two terms should not be used
interchangeably, as this article does.

The article does a nice job of comparing "growth hacking" (which, by the
description, does sound like something more akin to marketing) with
traditional _advertising_ , then attempts to make generalizations about the
marketing field. Granted, this is a piece in Ad Age, which is focused on
advertising.

It's just ironic that the piece asks us to think of marketing as more than
just advertising, while proceeding to interchange the two terms.

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arscan
I hate to be negative, but for an article on growth hackers, this spends very
little time describing what growth hackers do (the role). Sure, it covers a
couple of examples of how marketing is evolving into new mediums, but it
doesn't tell how growth hackers play a part in that. For the violin example,
is the author implying that growth hackers would come up with that better
marketing strategy (help kids get into college)? For the Amazon example, is
the author implying that growth hackers would come up with the policy of
having all engineers write a press release of their product before building
it? If so, then I don't really see how thats any different than traditional
marketing / product development.

The article has a reference that I think does a much better job describing the
role:

[http://andrewchen.co/2012/04/27/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-
an...](http://andrewchen.co/2012/04/27/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an-
airbnbcraigslist-case-study/)

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ryanholiday
To be fair (as the guy who did the article), I didn't choose the headline. The
article isn't really about growth hacking, it's about a better way of thinking
about marketing--which growth hackers are one example of.

But headline/article disagreement is just a reality of web journalism I
suppose we have to get used to.

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arscan
Ah, my apologies. It is good content otherwise; I just had different
expectations given the headline.

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ryanholiday
Apologies on my end sir! I hate that as much as anyone

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aginn
The article does a decent job of discussing growth hacking just after Sean
Ellis wrote about it in 2010. You can find most substantial content on tactics
and best practices else where.

I am glad the importance of growth is spreading to the mainstream but people
need more meat these days.

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timjahn
Can someone explain to me exactly what a "growth hacker" is?

So far, it sounds to me like today's term for "marketer".

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ryanholiday
If marketing = driving new business/customers, there is no different between
"marketers" and "growth hackers."

They use different tools to accomplish the same task. It's time that marketers
realize there is more at their disposal.

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inthewoods
Agreed for the most part - but are modern-day marketers not aware that there
are more tools at their disposal? As a marketing professional, about 90% of
what is described as growth hacking is, in my opinion, just plain old
marketing. And most of it is pretty understood in my circles - content
marketing, SEO, SEM, landing page optimization, etc.

There is a product part of it as well - so my conclusion is that growth
hacking is probably more about a different way to think about product
management than marketing. The examples given of Hotmail and others fall into
that bucket - making changes to the product itself to drive growth.

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noelwelsh
A good overview of "growth hacking" and lots of links, but you won't find much
of the nuts and bolts in the article. Worth a read if you're new to the idea.
Suggested further reading/watching:

Brian Doll (Github -- and you thought drink ups were just for fun?):
[http://emphaticsolutions.com/2012/06/22/marketing-for-
geeks....](http://emphaticsolutions.com/2012/06/22/marketing-for-geeks.html)

Paul Willard (Atlassian): <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyZOGJHl_a0>

There's lot more out there, but these two were good overviews for me, and
included more detail on how to do it.

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kami8845
Thank you very much for that second link. The exact right link at the right
time!

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kevinconroy
Taking it a step further, stop thinking of marketinhg as you just saying "buy,
buy, buy" but rather engaging your customers. Creating memorable, lasting
impressions and relationships can be an incredibly effective strategy for
building and sustaining a group of customers.

See also: Unmarketing ([http://www.amazon.com/UnMarketing-Stop-Marketing-
Start-Engag...](http://www.amazon.com/UnMarketing-Stop-Marketing-Start-
Engaging/dp/1118176286))

