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Why growth hacking is bullshit. And why real growth comes from winning a thousand tiny battles.
by
@londoner
https://www.intercom.com/blog/growth-hacking-is-bullshit/
Hey, working as a freelancing Growth Hacker I gotta say I disagree with the definition of a Growth Hacker in this article, and thus the whole validity of the article!
I believe Sean Ellis was the first to coin the expression Growth Hacking many years ago.
His definition (and mine) is that a Growth Hacker is someone taking a holistic approach to growth, trying to pick the lowest hanging fruit.
It's not trying to get users to a website, but trying get users who then become customers. Or working to optimize the onboarding funnel of new customers to an app. Or improving the referral program. Or experimenting with the pricing, etc. Always in sync with the main KPIs so value is not gained in one end and lost in another.
Furthermore Growth Hacking is all about using scientific methods where we set up a hypothesis and try to prove it right/wrong and judging the result by using statistical methods.
Lastly, Growth Hacking is about running tons of experiments (I ran 200+ in 8 months on my last assignment, none with great success, but counted together leading to a lot of growth).
And hoping to improve slightly most of the time. In the long run, a Growth Hacker should have contributed with a lot of growth, but single experiments leading to explosive growth is luck. Like winning a poker tournament, even if you are best in the world, odds are you won't win the tournament, but rather earn a slight return on your investment.
Gotta defend my occupation ;)
By this definition sounds like we could all use a growth hacker. Running solo it's impossible to do all this yourself. I'd hire you, but I probably couldn't afford you. Any suggestions for bootstrappers?
I probably have too many suggestions! But if you tell me about your business and your goals I can give some pointers :)
Appreciate it. My heads hurting thinking about it. Another time maybe. :)
This.
Totally agree. Especially true when this comes to advertising. Founders believe they can skim and do things on the cheap and fly. There are no short cuts to brand building.
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Can’t fight a thousand battles as it would just thin resources. Got to have right strategy on value proposition. Then again, what do I know. I only had success in large projects and not in and indie ones
Great Article. Awesome Insights. Thanks 🚀 💪
i didnt expect it to be like that thank you i just reached 4k mrr in my dev agency https://criov.com/ .and was thinking that i am on the right path
thank uu you opened my eyes
Good point. I've never known of a long-term growth hacking success story. Even if the short-term ones seem dubious, primarily to mislead investors with some fake unsustainable dodgy hockey stick growth.
Hi man,
do you know how to get traffic from wordpress?how to do marketing for a plugin?
Great article. Expected it to be a basic rant but you've highlighted some key markers for growth and none of it is about trying to find shortcuts. A smart and solid plan👍
Exactly this. I see so many people online wanting shortcuts to success, and of course they fail, because they don’t want to put the work in. Building something is HARD and takes a lot of time. Be prepared for that and you’ll likely succeed. But expect easy growth overnight and you’ll fail at the first hurdle.