Why Growth Hacking Matters

Derrick Hicks
Jul 10, 2017 · 5 min read

As I started writing this article, I looked up previous definitions of growth hacking on the web. Wikipedia ended up having one of the best definitions in my opinion. I made one small change to it based on my experience, though. Here it is:

“Growth hacking is a data-driven process of rapid experimentation across marketing channels and product development to identify the most effective, efficient ways to grow a business” — Some person on Wikipedia.

Essentially you are using data to zero in on the key opportunities that exist within your business that will have the largest impact on growth. That might mean you test a marketing campaign or change the messaging on a landing page. Maybe you launch a new customer referral program. Heck, you might even need to add a new product feature to fuel growth. It all depends on what your data is telling you to work on.

Now that we have the definition out of the way, let’s dive into why Growth Hacking matters. In upcoming articles, I’ll be diving much deeper into the “how” of Growth Hacking.

Why Growth Hacking Matters.

If you aren’t growing, you are probably dying.

Almost everyone in the business world cares about growth. Investors care. CEOs care. Executives care. Bankers care. Employees care. Everyone cares about growth. Growth matters a lot! A company that is growing is WAY more fun than a company that isn’t. Period.

If you and your company aren’t learning and growing, your competitors most likely are. It will only be a matter of time before you are eclipsed by someone else that prioritizes growth more than you. Growth is critically important.

Growth hacking priorities and systematically figures out how to grow a company.

Fast, Validated Learnings.

Even though I don’t really love the word “hacking”, I appreciate and believe in what it implies: Growth Hacking is all about fast, data-driven, validated learnings. Everyone on a growth team is constantly trying to figure out exactly what growth levers exist and how they might make a difference.

Growth hacking focuses on running tests that produce results OR learnings as fast as possible. Testing velocity tends to be one of the most important measures of success, secondary only to real growth. Every test is launched in a way that yields some kind of insight or deeper understanding of the target customer or business model.

Most companies are constantly throwing crap on the wall hoping shit sticks. Growth hacking at least creates a framework for testing and validating ideas to prove if they work or not.

True Democratization of knowledge. No egos allowed!

Data and actual results are the ultimate “humbler”. Data doesn’t care if you truly believe your idea will make a huge difference. Data just tells you what happened and how your test resonated with your target audience. It’s a beautiful (and humbling) thing!

When I worked at Bodybuilding.com, my team and I were constantly coming up with ideas that we thought would help us grow. Granted, most of them were probably bad ideas (especially mine). However, we had to constantly FIGHT for those ideas. There was no process or system of rapid, iterative testing. You had to convince the “powers that be” your idea would work. There was no real feedback about how to make your idea more feasible. Everything was just based on the gut instinct of the leadership in place.

A real growth hacking process creates an environment that democratizes ideas. Everyone can see your backlog of ideas and debate what ones they think will make the biggest impact. It doesn’t matter where the idea originated from. All that matters is how viable the idea is, how much can we learn from it, and how quickly we can get it out the door.

Confront the brutal facts.

Good To Great by Jim Collins

In Jim Collins’ book, Good To Great, he talks about confronting the brutal facts. According to Jim and his research team, this is a core principle of building a lasting organization. In fact, it’s one of the first steps you need to take to move your company from just being simply “good” to being a truly “great” company.

Good To Great is one of my all-time favorite books. This concept of confronting the brutal facts really stuck with me. Part of why it stuck with me was due to how much time I was spending analyzing marketing data at the time I was reading it. I felt like I was confronting the brutal facts of Bodybuilding.com’s performance every minute of every day!

The other big reason this chapter stuck with me was that I was watching the leadership team at Bodybuilding.com seemingly do the exact opposite of what was recommended in that chapter. At least, that is how it seemed to me at the time. Maybe they were well aware of what the data was screaming, but I didn’t see any indication that told me otherwise.

This is why I have come to really love Growth Hacking. One of the first steps of any growth hacking process centers around identifying what makes your company grow and how you will be able to measure that.

Many companies have no idea what their “growth engine” actually is let alone how to make it run faster. One of the first steps to implementing a Growth Hacking process is getting your analytics stack and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in place. You are basically confronting the brutal facts right from the beginning.

Key Takeaways:

Why Growth Hacking matters…

  1. If you aren’t growing, you are probably dying.
  2. You generate fast, validated learnings.
  3. It democratizes the knowledge of what is or is not working.
  4. It forces you to constantly confront the brutal facts.

Originally published at growly.org on July 10, 2017.

Derrick Hicks

Written by

Director of Marketing @LeanLawCo | Lean #Startup #Entrepreneur | Father of 2 | Husband of 1 ;-) | #SEO #GrowthHacking #Business

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