Sustainable Growth vs. Growth Hacks
I wonder why people believe in growth hacks, I personally believe more in sustainable growth. Most startups are designed to grow as quickly as possible, but that doesn’t mean that a startup has to spend all it’s time on growth hacks and only try to grow in a short space of time, ignoring scalable marketing tactics. The reason I am mentioning this is sustainable growth allows you focus on scalable marketing that you can use over the long term.
Growth hackers should love products. They should have abilities such as being data-driven, creative, good communication skills and use testing methodology. The core of Growth Hacking is a combination of product, design, marketing and data with the goal of driving customer growth. Some pint to Sean Ellis who wrote a blog post on the topic in 2010. In fact, this term already existed when Hotmail launched its mail service in 1997. By the end of 1997 they boasted more than 8.5 million subscribers.
Sustainable growth focuses on understanding the customer. The Bullseye Framework is a five-step repeatable process to maximize your chances of getting traction: brainstorm, rank, prioritize, test, and focus. One example of this can be found in ‘Traction’ , a book that Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares self-published. The book explains how to achieve exponential growth by finding and retaining potential customers in just three months.
Success depends on your focus, current product, your past and future products. It is really difficult to predict a successful product because each startup and product has its own distribution channels and market size/share targets.
To achieve success, i feel you do need include some level of sustainable growth. Customer expectations have changed over last few generations. A startup that grows rapidly may then realise it was just a spike, yet on the other hand a startup that grows too slowly may stagnate. Finding the optimum growth rate is key.
Growth hacking means quick acceleration and startups need to maximise their growth rate in order for the company to sustain its growth without having to increase financial leverage. For that, it really then depends on what stage you are. Sourcing and hiring the right people to be part of your team is also a crucial aspect of startup growth. It is also very important you spend time trying out a few channels yourself and have a product-market fit before you set out.
There is plenty of valuable information and resources out there on marketing, most of the more established companies either have already adopted strategies of sustainable growth or are about to do it. Companies can attempt to liquidate marginal operations, increase prices, or enhance manufacturing and distribution efficiencies to improve the profit margin. In addition, there are companies growing in a consistent way using GH tactics, but they seem to be walking the “learn by doing” way, more of a snatch and grab mentality over the snowball effect of consistent sustainable growth.
So, sustainable growth is more reliable than using growth hacks because the company may run into trouble due to unrestrained growth. I also feel you need elements of transition to becoming a sustainable company if you are a high-growth startup. I must also point out if your startup is lacking guidance and advice, then building your startup by sustainable growth can be helpful down the line when planning more healthy, corporate growth.
Here’s another article written on The Rouse about Growth Hacking
Are you using Growth Hacking tactics at your company? Or are you fed up of the term? Let me know in the comments below
