Why Growth Hacking is Overrated
Originally published at www.scotchandramen.com.
The phrase “growth hacking is bullshit” pulls up nearly half a million results on Google. Why so much vitriol towards a strategy that’s supposed to build businesses? Do all these people actually hate growth?
Most people who dislike growth hacking (ourselves included) consider the term to be little more than a buzzword. Originally defined as “a process of rapid experimentation…to identify the most efficient ways to grow a business,” growth hacking is now used to describe virtually every business tip in existence. And while we like helpful suggestions as much as anyone, the truth is that successful organizations are built upon much more than just a hodgepodge of tips and tricks. To achieve the results you want, you need a comprehensive marketing strategy — and you need to implement that strategy intelligently. Enter: the marketing flywheel.
Flywheels Versus Growth Hacks
Let’s go back to the original growth hacking definition we mentioned a moment ago. In theory, it sounds pretty effective. Experiment, measure results, and then make the next move based upon the last experiment. The scientific method in action, right?
The problem is that once your business has attained a certain level of success (i.e. adding employees, getting funded, building a sizable customer base, etc.) “rapid experimentation” is no longer viable, or even desirable. Once you know what works, why not build upon that success, rather than galavanting off in search of the next “hack?”
Marketing flywheels are a different kind of type of growth strategy, in which a successful marketing process is repeated time and time again with the goal of building momentum and creating a self-sustaining marketing machine.
What Does a Marketing Flywheel Look Like?
Let’s take a look at a concrete example of the somewhat abstract description of marketing flywheels that we provided above.
The Moz SEO flywheel is a repeatable process that goes like this
● Create content
● Optimize keyword usage within that content
● Publish content
● Promote the published content
● Grow organic reach thanks to the success of the content
● Utilize lessons learned in the process to inspire the next piece of content.
● Start from the top.
Scotch And Ramen Can Help Build Your Marketing Flywheel
Here at Scotch and Ramen, we use the flywheel method to build a self-sustaining content marketing strategy for our clients. We’d love to be a part of building yours — but regardless, we’re willing to offer a look into the way our process works:
● Produce a main piece of content. This can be a blog article, a podcast, a vlog, or just about any other kind of online content you can imagine.
● Rehash the main content into small, sharable bits of information. Tweeting your favorite line of a blog post and transcribing some of your podcast into a LinkedIN story are two good examples of this.
● Promote user-generated content. If you’ve been sharing content and engaging the right audiences, you’re bound to start receiving interesting questions, comments, and reviews. Perhaps someone will even offer to do a guest post or invite you to their podcast!
● Use information and inspiration gathered in this process for the next piece of main content. Eventually, this system will gain momentum and begin producing so much user-generated content that is essentially becomes self sustaining, producing a steady flow of inbound leads — in other words, the holy grail of all marketing.
Want to discuss this process with us? Book a free consultation today!
