I hate the term "Growth Hacker", but there is certainly a ton of demand for full stack marketers. The role may seem vague because it is definitely cross-functional but almost always has the following requirements:
- Product Competency (ability to product manage and make sensible product decisions)
- Marketing Competency (knowledge of all possible marketing channels and enough understanding to prioritize marketing efforts across them)
- Engineering Competency (ability to work directly with engineers and ability to do basic statistical analysis)
This basically describes a Product Manager who also has an in-depth understanding of marketing, which is not really that vague at all.
I think the growth hacking/engineering role/persona is especially now building up as a core skillset as product decisions need to be made way faster and way often than ever before (thanks to realtime usage data and very short release cycles).
This basically puts way more pressure on making the right decisions for the product & its marketing (in a holistic cross-functional way). A thing that traditionally was handled 'well enough' with several people/departments that communicate.
In a nutshell it is a product management position but with emphasis on marketing and growth. Depending on the lifecycle of your company this is the job of the founders/CEO or the product manager or a dedicated CMO. All in all the skillset in itself is very very valuable and there is not enough good material on product management and cross-functional agile marketing.
I am contributing content in this area and hope more and more people will follow. There is a ton out there that solely focuses on marketing (low barrier to entry) but not much quality content on the intersection of marketing & engineering & ux.
If you are interested in growth hacking feel free to check out my upcoming book:
Also very happy to help anyone who'd like to grab a coffee/tea with me in San Francisco or Bay Area or via email, twitter, hangout. Feel free to get in touch.
- Product Competency (ability to product manage and make sensible product decisions)
- Marketing Competency (knowledge of all possible marketing channels and enough understanding to prioritize marketing efforts across them)
- Engineering Competency (ability to work directly with engineers and ability to do basic statistical analysis)
This basically describes a Product Manager who also has an in-depth understanding of marketing, which is not really that vague at all.