

Defining A Growth Hacker: Growth Is Not A Marketing Strategy - co_pl_te
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/20/defining-a-growth-hacker-growth-is-not-a-marketing-strategy/

======
dchuk
It seems like people are constantly trying to get this new job title of
"growth hacker" to stick by defending and redefining it over and over. Usually
that's an indication that the title is superfluous and ultimately pointless.

Marketing is marketing is marketing, stop renaming it. Also, growth is
absolutely a marketing strategy...in fact, it's one of the main goals of
marketing.

------
rpeden
This is the first time I've read anything about what defines a "growth
hacker". The people quoted in the article seem so eager to assert that they
are not marketers, yet they seem to have a tenuous grasp on what marketing
encompasses.

Although I work as a developer now, I did an entire business degree and had to
study a fair bit of marketing along the way. From day one, it was made very
clear that marketing isn't just amount advertising and promotion. Instead, we
were taught to view marketing as something that is integral to product
development.

It begins before the product even exists, to research the market and talk to
potential users before development begins. This continues throughout
development, and feedback and hard data are used to shape development of the
product. The article,s assertion that marketing typically ends after user sign
up is also incorrect, at least in any company that has been doing it properly.
Marketers love hard data, and aren't going to stop paying attention once
someone becomes a customer. They know very well, and have for decades, that
current users are a key source of data needed to drive ongoing product
development decisions.

Of course, that is how it works in an ideal company. Perhaps in the kinds of
companies that TechCrunch focuses on, marketing has traditionally been done
very poorly, so there isn't much recognition of what it really is. The risk in
reinventing the wheel in this case is that it will be done poorly, ignoring
hard-won lessons and repeating mistakes.

I'm all for advancing the state of the art in marketing, but I'm just not sure
that calling yourself a growth hacker and pretending marketing is something
that it really isn't is the most effective way to do it.

------
bjpcjp
I'm pretty much convinced that the GH movement is merely a recognition that us
product management folks now have a deeper pool of data on which to base our
decisions. This is, in the bigger scheme of things, a recent development and
not available to product managers across _all_ industries.

I welcome the controversy. Eventually GH as a buzzword is going to fade away;
those left standing will have simply added GH to their personal toolbox. 'nuff
said.

