Growth Marketing ≠ Growth Hacking. Here is why they are different...

There must be something right with this new instant video messaging tool, that it became a go to tool of silicon valley biggies like - Airbnb, Dropbox & Uber.

We are talking about Loom. It lets you record quick videos or screen-shares and share it instantly with your colleagues as an email or a message link.

In 2.5 years since its launch in 2016, it has grown to nearly 1.1 million daily active users. As of May 2020, it could be somewhere around 6 million daily active users.

Did they use growth hacking or did they deploy growth marketing ?

Or wait ... is it a case of product led growth ?

⭐️For those who are short on time - TL;DR-

Growth Hacking - For startups in the pre PM/F stage where the product core features are still evolving - growth means acquiring critical volume of new users at minimal cost. At this stage, product development teams are small & growth hackers can act as catalysts by deploying creative strategies for quick wins.

Growth Marketing- Once startups have scaled beyond PM/F they rely on growth marketing teams for identifying & optimizing growth channels. Growth marketing managers typically own hard KPIs related to ROI of these channels. However, they do not own KPIs related to development of new product features - as growth levers.

For those with time on hand, let's dive right in ..

⚡️Growth hacking -

It means deploying creative, low cost strategies to acquire as many users or customers as possible while spending as little as possible.

In terms of skill, a growth hacker can be considered to be a digital marketer with a wide array of tech & non-tech skills across - acquisition channels, marketing automation, user psychology, design, CRO & basic front end development.

The objective is to achieve minimal viable user volume so as to validate your product & test your channels.

It is much in demand at early stage pre PM/F startups with limited team size (typically it is prevalent within a small marketing/product teams of 1-3 persons).

As experimentation is time & resource intensive, growth hacking based on marketing tactics is seen as a cure all solution at early stage startups.

Pros - a creative growth hacker can deploy hacks drawn from past experience and generate phenomenal results.

Cons - There may not be a set playbook. Hacks which worked somewhere might not work for the present case. Hence, growth hacking may not lead to repeatable and scalable success.

⚡️Growth marketing-

Growth marketing function involves - creating, experimenting & consolidating marketing channels for optimizing these KPIs.

Relevant for startups across - early PM/F & late PM/F stages. The goal is to grow hard KPIs based on specific parts of the user journey. It could be user acquisition, activation, retention or monetization.

It is focused mainly on optimizing acquisition & retention campaigns through marketing channels e.g.

Acquisition marketing channels - SEO, SEM, SMM, Content, Referral, affiliate etc.

Retention marketing channels - Email campaigns, push notifications, premium memberships, exclusive offers etc.

The objective is to incentivise users to complete various interactions with the product such as - sign ups, first time usage of core features, repeat usage and completing transactions.

Accordingly, there may be separate teams working across - acquisition, activation & retention.

To have a better understanding let us take a look at the JD of a SEM growth marketing manager at Airbnb:

“Own the optimization and management of paid search accounts across Google and Bing, including structure & targeting improvements, search query mining, keyword expansion, landing page testing and improvement of bid management processes.

Proactively find new opportunities for growth and efficiency gains..

Share learnings and best practices regularly with the rest of the search team, including both SEM and SEO specialists."

From the JD it is evident that SEM growth manager will own the metrics related to optimization of paid search across Google & Bing. In general, growth marketing managers are responsible for growth of specific channels & own the KPIs related to ROI of these channels.

So, I am saying..
Growth Hacking ≠ Growth Marketing

What do you guys think ?