The marketing vs Growth Hacking debate
Marketing and growth hacking are not interchangeable terms !!
Off late I see a lot of people either describe themselves as growth hackers or looking for one. Most times they’re just using the term instead of saying digital marketing.
Why they’re not the same:
Marketing is a long terms strategy; Growth Hacking is a short-term tactic.
Marketing is the marathon; Growth hacking is the sprints in between.
Marketing is a long-term plan on how to sell a product or service. You plan twenty or maybe fifty different things to reach a big goal.
Growth hacking is using unconventional methods to catalyze stretches and milestones of your marketing strategy to reach the big goal faster.
Marketing is like reading 1000-page book. Growth hacking is reading pages 300–700 from an audiobook at 2X listening speed. The goal remained the same. Just that you hacked your way around it.
Honestly, growth hacks are only effective until they become mass knowledge, or the channel changes its algorithm. (Remember how Facebook killed their pages in Feb’18 with their algorithm change or how the LinkedIn algorithm is spiking videos into our feed at the moment).
Think about it. Today the LinkedIn algorithm is focussing on Video content and Facebook’s on Groups and communities. Flexing your strategy to ride this wave is growth hacking. Over time everyone will start doing this and after a point, the algorithms will change to focus on AR or VR or something cooler. The wave would be gone and you’d need to change strategy.
Marketing would still find ways to reach the prospects — today LinkedIn, Facebook, Insta, tomorrow #JazzyNewTechOfFuture
Marketing is reaching the goal constantly year after year. Growth hacking is the “whatever it takes” bit to reach there.
Hopefully, that helped clear the haze a bit.
P.S. — I’m no ace growth hacker but figuring my way to the goals is what I do.
Feel free to drop in a PM to dee@plash.in if there’s any aspect of your business you’d love to growth hack. Either I’ll tell you what you could do or guide you to those who can 😉
