Let's put an end to the confusion around "Growth Marketing", "Growth Hacking", "Marketing" and "Growth".

Are you working in sprints, feeding a growth backlog regularly, running data-driven rapid-experiments based on a scientific iterative process? If not, you are not doing growth marketing nor growth hacking and you should keep reading this article to learn more about their differences. And – SPOILER ALERT – no "Marketing" is not the same as "Growth marketing" or "Growth hacking".

?? Disclaimer and context :

This is definitely a huge polarizing topic!

I am a Growth Hacker, Growth Manager and Growth consultant myself with a strong background in Digital Marketing, and I prefer to refer to my line of work with the term "Growth Marketer". (we will come back to that later on in this article) I have been applying the Growth process for the past 4 years. (Definitely not saying that seniority and titles are defining the source of truth but just wanted to give you some context).

So obviously, some of you will consider all the following as biased, but bear with me and please do take ten minutes to read through the following article as I will base all my arguments with facts and data as well as mention their sources. I am not going to try to convince you about the relevance of the Growth methodology. My primary goal is to be able to put an end to the confusion that exists around Growth, its nomenclatures in "growth marketing" and "growth hacking", and the differences with Marketing.

?? "Growth marketing" and "Growth hacking" have a HUGE positioning problem!

When I talk to people about growth marketing or growth hacking, we always spend the first part of our conversation reaching a common understanding of what do we ACTUALLY mean by it.

So in order to get us started and to make sure that we talk about the same thing when referring to Growth, Growth Marketing, Growth Hacking, and Marketing, let's just start with a really simplified definition of all the previously mentioned terminology.

?? Simplified definitions and original references:

• "Marketing": This is the "old" traditional marketing approach (appeared in the 19th century during the industrial revolution). Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association (AMA) as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large" (source: AMA official marketing definition)
• "Growth Hacking": This is the original term coined in 2010 by Sean Ellis, founder and CEO of GrowthHackers, to describe the sustainable growth approach used by hyper-growth companies like Facebook, Airbnb, and Amazon. It is a rigorous approach to fuelling rapid market growth through high-speed, cross- functional experimentation. The term was made mainstream in 2017 when his book "Hacking growth" was published for the first time, making his knowledge accessible to all in the business world. (source: seanellis.me, Sean Ellis' personal website)
• "Growth Marketing": This is a fairly new term used to replace “growth hacking” because it simply does sounds better and most people don't want to be associated with black-hat practices/hacking. It's a term chosen either by risk-averse people or growth hackers that want to avoid the never ending discussion around growth hacking being real and not just a buzzword...?????♂? Yes that's it, that's that easy. But in fact there are a bit more nuances than that. For most people using the "Growth marketer" term, the main difference they make from a "Growth Hacker" is that you have a background as a Marketer. But this is just an oversimplification since most Growth hackers comes from a Marketing background, and that's where most people get confused - Read, growth hacking is not just a tool for marketers, it can be equally applied to everyone from product developers, to engineers, to designers, to managers, etc. Also defined officially by Sean Ellis and HubSpot team as follow: Growth marketing is all about creating a culture of experimentation, and being ready to test, test, test. It's all about running marketing experiments based on data and make improvements that make our customers fall in love with our products. (source:A Data-Driven Approach To Growth Marketing guide, created by Sean Ellis team and HubSpot team)

• "Growth Manager" or "Growth Master": The goal of the growth master/manager is to get all of the disparate parts of the company working effectively together to drive growth. One of the keys to getting different parts of the company working together is to define a common success metric. Growth teams refer to this metric as the North Star Metric (NSM). The growth master/manager works with their growth team to plan and implement tests to improve the growth of this metric. Generally, the more tests a team runs, the faster they discover effective ways to accelerate the NSM. This can be compared somehow to a Scrum Master role but for the growth hacking methodology instead of the agile framework. (source: What is a growth master? article by Sean Ellis)
• "Growth": Would refer to the growth methodology across the whole company/business including all departments and competencies (eg: sales, product, CS,...) NOT just Marketing. (source: extract from the "Hacking growth" book from Sean Ellis & Morgan Brown)

In summary, Marketing is what it has always been since the late '80s but can also refer to the industry as a whole, while Growth Hacking and Growth Marketing are a new methodology which combine Marketing concept and tools, as well as, Design, Coding, Automation, Product, Development, etc. And finally, Growth is not just about Marketing! Growth is a team sport and NEEDS to involve ALL the different competencies of one company. Without a cultural shift in the company – integrating the growth mindset across the whole company – there is simply no long term sustainable growth.

Extract from the "Hacking growth" book from Sean Ellis

Some people think of growth marketing as traditional marketing, as some shortcuts and hacks in social media marketing, as some one-time trick shot tactics, and others think everything related to marketing is growth marketing or that it’s just a buzzword. ????????♂?

?? Growth hacking and growth marketing are NOT a one-time trick short, a silver bullet or anything just about "hacks"!

Extract from the "Hacking growth" book from Sean Ellis

People referring to growth hacking/growth marketing as a "one-time trick short", a "silver bullet" are at the very epicentre of the confusion around Growth in marketing! For some reasons and for most people the word that usually follows "growth" is "hacking". And for whatever reasons "hacking" has a really negative connotation and makes people feel a certain type of way.

The first step to optimize your growth is to really understand what it is and how it works. 

I like to simply describe growth hacking as the scientific process to rapid experimentations behind company growth with a strong focus on digital marketing and product testing. But let me give you the official definition and let's go back to the origins of Growth Hacking/Marketing.

?? The origin of Growth Hacking/Marketing (and a bit of history)

Me casually having a beer with the founding father of the Growth Hacking methodology, Sean Ellis. (May 2019, Helsinki)

According to Sean Ellis, "the process is not, as it’s been misunderstood by some, about discovering one “silver bullet” solution. The press coverage of many of the widely celebrated growth hacks, such as the Dropbox customer referral program and Airbnb’s integration into Craigslist, has encouraged this notion that one great hack is all you need to ignite growth. But while finding such big breakthrough ideas—like Dropbox’s referral program—is absolutely a goal of the process, in truth, most growth is due to an accumulation of small wins. Like compounding interest in a savings account, these gains stack on top of one another to create liftoff. And the best growth teams continue to experiment with improvements even once growth takeoff has been achieved."

Back in 2010 when Sean Ellis coined the term "growth hacking" and in 2017 when he published his book "Hacking growth" with Morgan Brown they decided to use the term "Growth Hacking" and refer to its practitioners as a "Growth Hacker" for primarily two reasons:

• As we have now stated previously the growth hacking methodology is NOT just about Marketing, so why referring to it as "Growth Marketing"/"Growth Marketer" when you can also have a growth hacker that has a background in engineering, data science, management, or others.
• Secondly, at that time back in 2010 the connotations around the term "hacking", "hacks", "hackers" were totally different from nowadays. Growth hacking is too often thought to be all about devising clever workarounds that break the rules of existing websites and social platforms. “Backdoor” tactics are not core to the method; and most growth professionals groan at the mention of the case. When Sean Ellis coined the term growth hacking for the method, he did so in the broader and positive sense that it’s now come to be understood—as in “hack space,” “hackathon,” and in the address of Facebook headquarters, 1 Hacker Way—meaning creative, collaborative idea generation and problem-solving to thorny challenges that are the essential characteristics of growth hacking. Something rather interesting happened since, nowadays this is the opposite: people associate the "hacking" term with quite negative feelings and context, probably due to the recent rise in data privacy concerns and the abuse of tracking and security breach by advertisers and black hat hackers. Thus why nowadays Marketers – who love to create new words and categories – transformed the original term "Growth Hacker" into "Growth Marketer" to make it more socially acceptable and limit its negative connotations. But keep in mind that a growth marketer (as it is commonly understood today) is only one type of growth hacker. (Hopefully that last sentence didn't get you confused, if so, go back to the first section "simplified definitions and original references".)

Screenshot from a Google search for "hacking" ran on the 08.03.21 - 100% of the first page results is just about negative news, illegals hacking, black hat hackers (dark unethical practices) etc… So no wonder the connotation has changed in people’s mind. ??

Ok so now that we got all those foundations, context and definitions figured out, shall we dive into the actual growth process and how does it differ from traditional marketing?

Let's get started with the growth hacking methodology, nowadays referred to as the growth methodology:

?? The growth methodology:

I selected my three favourite growth methodologies images concept. The one from Sean Ellis obviously, but the two others from two companies that I admire and follow closely: Columbia Road and Growth Tribe Academy. I strongly recommend the first one if you want to work on your e-commerce project with a team that has a strong growth mindset and approach, and the second one if you want to gain knowledge and certifications around growth marketing, automation, and AI. Check out their website for more info. (PS: I am not having any affiliate program with them, it's 100% genuine recommendations)

We will not go into the details of each stage in the process otherwise this article will become a book...?? And guess what? There is already a really great book detailing all the process stages!?? (cf. Hacking growth by Sean Ellis, in case that was not clear already)

The original growth hacking methodology by Sean Ellis:

1. Analyze — data analysis and insight gathering
2. Ideate — idea generation
3. Prioritize — experiment prioritization
4. Test — running the experiments

And repeat.

Note that all those stages are around one specific Objective!

The growth process by Columbia Road:

Already a bit more detailed in this process, which I really like since it summarises everything I have been talking through up to this point in the article. You get started by identifying your business objectives which you tie to specific KPIs to make sure they are measurable, you identify growth opportunities in your growth backlog and do not limit them to only marketing but to technology, strategy, design, etc. It highlights that you need to work in sprints - usually a 1–3 week intensive period of workshopping and hands-on work - during which you identify opportunities around one business objective and collect a backlog of growth ideas to start testing, you scale and automate the wins and kill & learn from the failures/inconclusive tests. Eventually, after weeks to months, you find tractions and you are able to start continuous growth.

The growth process by Growth Tribe Academy:

The G.R.O.W.S.-process is a 5-step loop for growth hackers to run experiments. It has been designed by Growth Tribe in 2016 to help growth hacking teams implement a process-based way of working based on the original growth hacking methodology from Sean Ellis. These are the five steps of the G.R.O.W.S. framework:

1. G – Gather ideas: Brainstorm as many experiment-ideas as possible with your team.
2. R – Rank ideas: Use the BRASS or PIE-framework to prioritize which ideas have the highest ROI (=potential x effort).
3. O – Outline experiments: Choose your next steps and design your experiment as quick and small as possible.
4. W – Work work work: Execute your experiment in a 2-4 week window.
5. S – Study (and implement) the outcome: Analyze the data from your experiment and decide on the next steps to take: learn or implement!

What I truly appreciate in this version is that it highlight the pre-requisite that are needed before you jump into the growth process. (Which can have a truly negative impact on your business if you do not consider it).

?? The pre-requisites for growth:

Figuring out the following – read having it documented somewhere in your cloud and not just thought out in your own head – is crucial before implementing the growth process successfully:

• What is your value proposition?
• What is your business model?
• Who is your audience
• Psychographic Persona 
• What are your different segments?
• What is your North Star Metric (NSM)? 
• ?? PRODUCT MARKET-FIT ?? This is super important to note that no company should jump into the growth methodology before having figured out their product-market-fit! Simply put: If you haven’t determined a product is valuable, why would you waste time and money trying to grow it? There is only one exception that was given to me by Sean Ellis himself. We will come back to that in more detail in the following chapter.
• User journeys/Pirate Funnel: Which part of your customer journey gets the most attention needs? What actions do your users need to take in each stage of your funnel? How do you measure whether your users showed interest or intent at every stage in your funnel?

?? Three of the biggest misconceptions about growth!

? Growth is ONLY about the results! ?

Contrary to common belief and what all C-suite and board members would love to believe, it's all about the process (at least at first) before you can reach sustainable growth results. Anyone trying to undergo growth hacking/growth marketing without following a thorough scientific process as we outlined above is set to fail from the start!

Indeed it does take time! If you were thinking that growth hacking will be your way to find quick wins and take a shortcut, you're wrong! Putting all this process and mindset in place require a lot of effort. And according to the latest statistics from the growth hacker community – the largest online community of growth professionals founded by Sean Ellis himself – 80% of the experiments led by a growth team during their first year of execution are set to fail! So if that would be all about the results we wouldn't be here doing growth. You just need to invest in growth, build all the foundations properly and keep on pushing the right mindset across the entire business in order to find this one big win that will make the difference in the entire business and will allow your business to scale sustainably. As explained by Sean Ellis himself previously, press coverage has encouraged the notion that one great hack is all you need to ignite growth, but in truth, most growth is due to an accumulation of small wins.

Experiment ROI graph from Growth Tribe, highlighting the importance to keep pushing for high quality and high volume rapid experiments in order to increase strong compound growth.

Before even thinking about which tools to use, which strategy and tactics to implements you need to get started at the very bottom with establishing the right mindset. Getting yourself and your team in a fail-safe environment is crucial for the success of the growth methodology implementation. Once you got that done, you can start establishing all the processes that we outlined above. Then you can start thinking about your needs in terms of people, team composition, skills training, etc. And finally, you can now implement tactics (mistakenly and commonly referred to as "hacks"). Most people make the mistake to try out one tactic without all the previous mentioned pre-requisite, so without surprises they fail without understanding why and without actionable learnings.

Growth transformation pyramid by Growth Tribe

? You can use the growth hacking methodology before or in order to reach product/market fit. ?

"Scaling growth before having product/market fit is the fastest way to kill your startup. But it may be an even bigger tragedy to have product/market fit and miss the opportunity to successfully scale growth. So when you are not sure if you have product/market fit, the decision of whether to start scaling or not can be gut-wrenching." - Sean Ellis

The Startup Pyramid by Sean Ellis (startup-marketing.com)

If you wouldn't know about all the processes and definitions we covered up to now, you might be tempted to apply "growth hacking" for an early-stage startup that didn't even achieve its Product/Market Fit. You might think that you will find a faster way to grow your startup. But as Sean Ellis put it perfectly it can be fatal for your business! Because you will invest in the wrong area, spend your time and energy trying to grow a product/service without even knowing if there are actual demand and needs for it. Sounds silly when we put it that way, right? ??

"Product/market fit is not just the prerequisite for growth, it is the fuel that powers all sustainable growth efforts. Achieving product/market fit is so difficult, that once you have achieved it, it becomes your company’s most important asset." - Sean Ellis

There is one exception to this rule is if you have a network effect business. In other words, you require a critical mass of users to validate if you have product/market fit. One of the most understandable examples is Facebook. For more information here's a presentation that Sean Ellis did years ago to explain what you need to do for this type of business.

? All marketers should learn growth hacking/growth marketing ?

This is the same as saying "Does every marketer needs to know about SEO?" Arguably yes, at least to some extent, but realistically no ??. Some companies are looking for generalist and others for specialist. Growth hacking is not just for Marketers, it is a field on its own and can be applied for Sales managers, Product owner, UX designer, etc… So in short NO, not all Marketers need to know about growth hacking, only if you wish to work in a growth team and to specialise in growth hacking. Growth Hacking/Marketing is not here to replace traditional Marketing as we defined it in the early chapters, it is here to complement the efforts of the Marketing team by acting as the "lab" where you can test and experiment not only on Marketing but with your product and more. It’s a different day to day than a generalist Marketer or specialist Marketer. Remember that growth hacking = growth marketing ≠ marketing.

?? The main differences between traditional marketing and growth hacking/marketing:

By now I would hope that we already clarified many facets of that topic, but here is a summarised view on all the difference between traditional marketing and growth.

Of course, as all summarised view this is an oversimplification that cannot portray all the depth and nuances of the topic. Of course there are marketing teams that have bottom of the funnel objectives as well, but this is a generalisation of the current landscape across all industries and companies sizes.

?? All good things must come to an end...

I really hope this article was helpful and clarifies all those notions to you. If you learned something new, liked reading my article, I would really appreciate you sharing it, tagging relevant friends/colleagues that might benefit from it, and/or leaving your feedback in the comments below. Thank you in advance.?? And may the growth be with you.??

?? If you are interested to go further, have questions, want to chat about anything growth-related, wish to hire me as a speaker for your next event or need help with your project, feel free to contact me:

• Feel free to DM me directly on LinkedIn
• For comments or questions directly related to this article and its topic you can email me at [email protected]
• For professional inquiries you can email me at: [email protected]

?? References:

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