By now, you have a fair idea about growth marketing and what it can do for your business. If not, feel free to revisit our introductory blog on growth marketing and how it’s different from the traditional marketing approach. In this blog, we are going to introduce you to another term - Growth Hacking, which is almost annoying for those who’ve heard it thousands of times, and confusing for those who don’t know what it is.
What is Growth Hacking?
Growth hacking is probably THE buzzword for start-ups. It’s used as an umbrella-term for achieving massive growth on small budgets in a short time, hence ideal for businesses that are just starting out. The goal here is to acquire as many customers as possible without spending much. Growth Hacking was coined by the founder and CEO of GrowthHackers, Sean Ellis, in 2010. Growth hacking has contributed to the success of many companies like Spotify, Hotmail, Dropbox and more.
Take Facebook, for example. The growth of this social media giant in the last half-decade can be attributed to their on-the-feet strategies fuelled by the developing world. Even after hitting 1 billion global users, Facebook has been relentlessly optimizing its app for low-budget Android smartphones and low-bandwidth internet connections. By doing that, the company has additionally acquired 746 million more users in Asia and the Rest of the World market. Since its inception in 2004, Facebook now has over 2.5 Billion users.
Growth Marketing vs Growth Hacking
Growth hacking involves a certain mindset, while growth marketing is a long-term plan. Think of growth marketing as a broader concept for growing your audience by testing various channels, whereas growth hacking entails executing a specific tactic on a particular channel or making modifications on a product that grows that specific audience, usually on a small budget.
Growth hacking involves fast spurts of spontaneous growth (i.e. the rabbit) while growth marketing is slow and steady, in a holistic sense (i.e. the tortoise).
Growth marketing is different from growth hacking in the following ways:
Taking that Step Forward
As companies scale, they add marketing strategies and tactics that work to their marketing repertoire. The strategies that succeed become part of their long-term marketing plan. They are further modified, expanded and improved upon with time. And when these strategies form the key components of this larger plan to retain existing customers and also move onto acquiring new target audiences, it becomes growth marketing. In this way, hacking in the long term will lead to an effective marketing strategy.
One thing is for sure; growth marketing is the future. A well-thought-out growth marketing strategy can help marketers use real-time data to identify which efforts are working and which aren’t. At Amura, we have been doing just that for the past ten years. Being the pioneering growth marketing agency in India, our team of dedicated experts has helped over 500 businesses grow by catering to the entire funnel. We try newer hypotheses, put them to the test and quickly zero in on what works.