Growth wracking ??

If you’re a parent, you want to see your kid grow. But no sane human being tries to speed up this process by tying their kid between two horses and making them pull. Not only is this a very limited view on growing, as if only length matters. You will hurt your kid, scar it. It might never recover. The question is, if we don’t do this to our children then why are we doing it in our marketing?

Growth is good. We all want to evolve, and growing is a form of evolution. But this is not a plea for perpetual growth. I hope, as marketing professionals, we can all agree that growth should be sustainable. Meaningful. Balanced. Good. Whatever you want to call it. Just as with your kid, there’s not just one metric. You want to see your children grow in height, you want to see them well nurtured, you want to see them grow smarter, you appreciate their improvement in social skills, to name a few. Just as in business, a balanced scorecard is a proper way to evaluate progress.

If we don’t do this to our children then why are we doing it in our marketing?

That’s why I'm upset by a marketing niche like growth hacking. It’s a shortcut, one that is very questionable to start with: how can you replace long-term sustainable growth with a short-term objective? By focussing on the right numbers and inflating them by all means possible, sure growth looks like an algorithm. But maybe an algorithm executed on a reputation that was carefully built before, and that might get sacrificed in the process. Your next growth campaign might still work, and maybe the one after that, but eventually you’ll run dry. It’s like using bandages to fix a leaking boat. Unfortunately, growth hacking is a clear answer to today’s market, driven by short-term results. Can we please re-introduce the long-term marketing vision?

It’s this vision that makes the difference. I don’t care if you use growth hacking techniques, as long as they’re embedded in the journey you envision for the brand. Because there is something growth hackers actually do very well: they experiment. They use technology to try out things, measure results and adapt strategies accordingly. But isn’t that what we should be doing in marketing anyway?

Now, does anyone know a growth hacking technique to spread this article, please? And no I’m not putting a damn rocket in front of my LinkedIn name.

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