Growth hacker marketing vs. digital marketing?

Growth hacker marketing vs. digital marketing?

Growth hacker marketing and digital marketing? -- not made into a single practice. Some of the confusion that arises with growth hacking is fluid or bleeding terms. This is nature as it's a new topic.
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Growth hacking is a new and emerging practice. Before its emergence, it was used in many forms and shapes but not made into a single practice. Some of the confusion that arises with growth hacking is fluid or bleeding terms. This is nature as it’s a new topic.

Some of the biggest confessions are from popular terms or topics like digital marketing, growth hacker marketing, or growth marketing.

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Although one of the first applications is used in growth hacking, it was emerging as the topic is in traditional marketing. Although traditional marketing plays a huge role in growth hacking, it is not growth hacking overall.

Many people get confused; in today’s world, growth hacking is seen as a cross-functional practice.

This cross-functional practice essentially brings several business functions into a single lens. This single lens we are referring to as growth hacking brings in cross-functional elements like strategy, human resources operations, research, development administration,n and even functions like finance.

Growth hacking has gone through three fundamental phases. Its first generation started as just pure hacking as in using technology to advance commercial interests.

Then it evolved into what is best coined as code plus marketing, most famously quoted by Sean Ellis. The third phase is code plus marketing plus function.

Although marketing please be a significant role, it is a replaceable function, although in many cases, marketing is seen as the revenue-generating component of any business.

So when we hear popular terms like growth hatter marketing, growth hacking, growth hatter growth hackers growth hacks, or growth marketing, they all refer to the practice which is termed overall as growth hacking

Before we get started, some helpful background to growth hacking

  1. What is growth hacking?
  2. Why is growth hacking important?
  3. How does growth hacking work?
  4. When should growth hacking be used?
  5. How to develop the skills to hack growth?

What is growth hacking?

Growth hackers explore new growth opportunities systematically at any point of the customer journey, from awareness through the market to brand ambassadors by optimizing the product. In terms of technology, it originated in 2010 when Sean Ellis coined it is mostly used by startups because of its limited budgets and limited resources.

Since then, it has shown an incredible increase in popularization among large-scale and traditional businesses. Companies like Shopify like Uber has their own head of growth and dedicated growth team. The growth hacker is based on an experiment-based, data-driven.

What is Growth Hacking by Nader Sabry

There is a wide range of definitions; in the Book Ready Set Growth, Hack growth hacking is defined at a strategic level as a process that achieved disproportional results.

This is best understood through an example of efforts v.s results. This is when less effort is exerted to get dispositional results. Growth hacking works that simple.

Not just in top tech companies run by silicon valley’s top entrepreneur making hundreds of millions of dollars daily, shaping silicon valley’s culture, and defining the new silicon valley entrepreneur.

As many growth professionals leave the traditional marketers behind, a new breed of growth hackers is emerging.

How does growth hacking work?

As defined in the Ready Set Growth Hack, growth hacking is a systematic process governed by the growth cycle concept. the growth cycle is a three-phase process, where it starts with a growth problem, moves into experimentation then into scaling.

Based on this process, once a growth problem is well defined through a specific process, it would then be up to the growth hacker to find solutions. Solutions are found vis structured and systematic experimentations.

scientifically proven backed growth thinking system

Using growth analytics for data-driven growth decisions, growth hackers can quickly discover what works and doesn’t before investing a penny in more development. This is governed by a process called growth thinking which is a design methodology used for growth hacking.

Break the rules – growth hacking

The hidden weapons of growth hacking are simple and simple: Be a rule-breaker. The job requires you to think outside the box and unleash your creativity. A growth hack involves having the right mindset on growth.

This job requires creativity and ad-hoc experiment with hypotheses and high potential. Be creative growth Hacks won’t come with any rules. Rule-breaking is at the core of growth thinking and how the growth hacking process works.

  1. if a rule is working, find a better way to break I
  2. If a rule isn’t working, break it with a better one
  3. If a rule is about to fail, let it and then break it
  4. If a rule is about to have success, break that too

The growth hacking mindset or growth mindset is a very different way of working than that of other professions. Their goal is the north star metric which is basically a growth goal and only a growth goal.

35 things to consider for growth hacking success

Some of the following topics and subject areas can create confusion and are some of the areas you need to consider to learn and understand better.

  1. Does growth hacking work? of course, it does see what is coming next
  2. famous growth hacking examples will not work for you; focus on your own growth hacking techniques
  3. growth is the only metric that counts in growth marketing
  4. validate ideas fast; don’t wait
  5. a sign up page is not the only measure you need to keep going
  6. most companies don’t use growth hacking; this is your advantage; many companies overlook this
  7. online business isn’t where growth hacking starts or even stops; it applies across the board
  8. customer acquisition has to be mastered as part of growth hacking
  9. customer acquisition cost is vital don’t lose sight of them when growth marketing
  10. user acquisition and customer acquisition are different
  11. acquisition channels have to be well defined in advance for growth marketing
  12. Using a wide range of growth hacking techniques 
  13. Marketing campaigns are marketing efforts, and good marketing strategies
  14. Focus on new users but don’t overlook existing users
  15. at the core is the growth hacking experiment
  16. Do not overlook product-market fit for growth hacking to work
  17. Always start with a growth strategy before tooling up and growth hacking
  18. Data analysis is key; let it guide your decisions; this is how growth hacking works
  19. get a good cloud storage service with more storage space
  20. business growth is why growth hacking exists
  21. best growth hackers are hard to find
  22. building growth teams is critical; don’t work alone
  23. do not stop at google analytics growth hacking si way more
  24. start growth hacking now to master it; don’t wait
  25. growth marketers are not growth hacking
  26. a growth hacker funnel is the same as a growth funnel (the pirate funnel)
  27. tight budgets are why growth hacking exists
  28. traditional marketing doesn’t work anymore
  29. continuous improvement is a must
  30. small businesses do stand to gain the most from growth hacking
  31. technical skills cannot be ignored
  32. know your target group
  33. Want to hire a good growth hacker? Get the job description right and include top technical skills
  34. Google ads o not your fried but rather a crutch
  35. mobile apps are not the only channel consider responsive strategies

Those 35 points are things to consider when growth hacking to be successful. A seasoned growth professional or growth hacker does this daily.

What is growth hacker marketing?

Growth hacker marketing is a popular term identifying the practice of marketing lead by a growth factor.

The growth factor is an individual who uses the growth hacking process, but it is exclusively applied to marketing in this particular case.

This is also referred to as growth marketing as a broader topic not to be confused with growth factor marketing; it is the same thing.

Overall that is not entirely true in cross-functional growth hacking, which is where we are today; anyway, the future growth hacking is going marketing is only a single component of the whole picture.

So why all the confusion? Growth hacking is an emerging practice; it will be bleeding terms in fluid definitions.

We must understand the difference where they come together separately. In this case, marketing is an isolated and completely different function; growth hacking has a subset.

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What is digital marketing?

as defined by Wikipedia, “Digital marketing is the component of marketing that utilizes the internet and online-based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services.”

Overall the practice of digital marketing in itself has greatly involved including big ideas like digital transformation. The Covid 19 pandemic has accelerated this process of digital transformation. Although a digital transformation may not be digital marketing, it plays a huge part in enabling digital marketing.

Some of the components to consider our things like influencer marketing or social media marketing. The growth marketer takes advantage of digital assets to influence a target audience towards their offering in a completely digital environment.

This would include tactics like email marketing. An email campaign is set up to capture new customers by offering them lead magnets to nurture them through an email sequence to convert them from a lead to revenue.

The emergence of a digital funnel could be better known as a sales funnel or even a marketing funnel (pirate funnel can also be the reference in the growth hacking space).

The funnel is an idea where you go from visibility to qualifying customers converting them into revenue and retaining them to generate even more revenue. Sales funnels do differ in size and complexity, but your goal is the same it is to walk a customer on the journey from knowing about your brand all the way to buying your product or service.

In light of digital marketing, this is done 100% digitally or online.

This is where a tool is like landing pages, Google ads, Facebook ads conversion rate optimization, online virtual events, and other real strategies are used to gain visibility to converting customers into revenue online.

The growth hierarchy

In straightforward terms, every organization globally has only three functions, regardless of how big or small or even how complex. Every organization in the world does the following three things:

  1. They make something
  2. they sell something,
  3. and they organize.

This means that for an organization to be able to make money, they need to make something. Once they make something, they need to sell it even if the organization’s goal is this sound just an idea like a political or community-based work in isolation. But to make what they make and sell work, they need to organize what you do.

unicorns pave the way for growth

So how does all this come together into what we refer to as the growth hierarchy? We have an excellent a good example today are unicorns. Unicorns are start-up companies worth $1 billion or more.

Intl. unicorns map 3 image - Growth Thinking - think, design, growth hack a design approaching to growth hacking

We have approximately 1000 identifiable unicorns in today’s world; 25% of them are worth over $10 billion; half of them exist in the United States, and the largest emerging cluster of unicorns is in China.

Unicorns are a significant example because they have flipped the traditional organizational hierarchy we have been taught to use.

Through several different forms of conditioning, including that of an NBA education, we have been taught that there is an ideal organizational structure where the hierarchy lens the responsibility of growth to each function within an organization.

This has traditionally worked where each function is responsible for growth, but it doesn’t work in today’s world. And this is where are unicorns set the example.

They have flipped the traditional organizational hierarchy by giving growth priority over function. This essentially means that a growth team or leadership that overlooks functions needs to satisfy growth.

If a function within an organization, in this particular case unicorn, does not satisfy the growth potential, it is adjusted, removed, or improved.

the emergence of growth hacking

Welcome to the emergence of where growth hacking comes into play. This is wherein a new breed of talent has been developed, better known as growth hackers.

Growth hackers work with a cross set of skills than support and develop a growth team that does nothing but manage growth hacking. Their product is the growth hacks; growth hacks are accelerated growth.

As a result, in the early days, an entire marketing team was dedicated to managing the growth hacking process hiring the best Grove hackers to develop the best growth hacks.

At the center of this is business growth in several famous growth hacking examples from this early era. This helped define the idea of growth teams.

Growth teams were a set of growth marketers purely focused on the growth hacking process. As mentioned above, although this is where we started, this is not where we are today, nor is it where we are going, as the growth hacking process is a cross-functional practice today.

The big secret behind growth hacking

With time it was learned that a gross hack within the growth hacking process had serious limitations. This is where one of the largest conspiracies emerged from the shadows of what we know today as growth hacking.

Growth hacking secrets

The big secret is that the most potent growth hat in the world is kept top secret. If you can Google search and find a growth hack that is openly written about, it is expired.

That growth hack is no longer a secret; it is out in the open that means its potency is gone.

Therefore the biggest secrets in the area of growth hacking or what we refer to as black hat activities more growth hacking activities in the dark greyscale area.

Black hat growth hacking is where illegal and immoral practices happened. Unfortunately, there are many growth hacking activities is still happening in this area.

The dark greyscale area is where the highest level is potency because the practices are legal, ethical, and morally correct. The difference is that a dark greyscale growth hack is kept top secret.

Greyscale growth hacking

Greyscale growth hacking is largely exclusively available to growth hackers; they’re very deep inside the space. A growth hatter in the greyscale area usually works within very small growth teams who are growth communities.

Growth Hacks Search dropdown

Although their focus is on business growth, the technicalities of achieving that are kept secret with very tight circles.

The reason is at the core of its growth hack is exploitation. If this exploitation is well noon or exposed, it is possibly patched, or fixes stop becomes very high. Once and exploitation is fixed, the growth hack is no longer potent.

This is why greyscale growth hacking is largely a secret. The biggest question is how can in everyday growth a great marketer learn the secrets.

What is the growth hacker?

The growth hacker is at the center of this process. One of the unique characteristics of a growth hacker is their ability is to work across cross-functional skills that enable accelerated growth.

The mindset of a growth hacker is unique in many ways.

The growth hacker has reminded us that drivers reach towels in decision-making when we look at different components.

Data-driven decisions primarily drive them. Data analysis is crucial to understanding where to focus effort in the growth hacking process.

This gives a gross hatter the edge they need to see where growth is where most competitors will not.

The profile of a growth hacker

As with other careers, the same individual will have better success than most, but let’s dispel some mythos before this. Growth hacking is a new world of growth hacking that opens up job opportunities. Certain people can succeed in this new work. Working within a growth team is critical, not just working on a marketing campaign, understanding growth marketing, or being part of a traditional marketing team.

That is all something else. Being about to work within a growth team is a different dynamic altogether. Being creative, flexible, and open to working with others, but more importantly, a structured and systemic process enables everyone t to challenge highly controversial ideas and bring them into action.

The importance of a growth team

Growth hackers have to work within very dynamic teams; They have to be bake to deal with different types of people and have a high tolerance. Diplomacy isn’t a well-known skill among many growth hackers, and this is vital to ensure dynamic teams work well. This doesn’t;t mean being passive but rather assertive in your approach to ensure growth teams work well.

Software Hacker

Growth hacks are often more technical in their work, or they have software to meet their business goals. Hackers use software programs to build their startups. If growth hackers aren’t programmers, they will still have to understand programming enough to coordinate with others who also write programming. Remember, the product is now technology-based.

Mastering the technology will be critical for growing the venture capital industry. You need to understand much more technology for success with a startup for growth hackers, but it’s unnecessary. Usually, being a programmer, you can get better in progress, but it can’t be emphasized.

Learn analytics.

The data shows you what works or not. Data indicate expansion or fall. The analysis provides you enough of the information needed to start to map a course. If you start using stiff data and make yourself a growth hacker, you can’t succeed. Learn data. Then you will master a growth hacker technique. Is the evidenced truth-telling for you?

Growth data

Data determine how to perform a growth hack. It will help you understand user interaction from a user’s point of view if you have rigid data. You have to learn how to grow as a growth hacker. It is important to respect information and to do actions according to data.

Analytics is a vital part of growth hacking and a huge part of the role of a growth hacker. If you want to become a growth hacker, you need to master analytics and data-driven decisions. Although new ideas are important historical data can play a vital role in the future.

This is essential in startups as it plays a role in getting new customers, retaining older ones, and even getting investment.

You have to be unethical to be a growth hacker.

To become a growth hacker has to come close, and as with any discipline, it has bad people behind it. Path users cannot undo the spam out of their name. Most growth hackers never ask ethical questions. They are building harmless product features that increase conversions, and they are getting this product into the public with their knowledge and distribution routes.

It’s clever but not unethical. Most growth hackers don’t even get asked if they will be Jedi or Sith in the future. They’re smart and ethical. But that’s exactly what he meant. Do you feel moral is moral? We are here to discuss it.

What will a growth hacker becoming or looking into

Understanding the growth hacker, their starting point is customer acquisition. Customer acquisition is essential to the growth hacker’s ability to develop and generate new revenue.

Often the business model being used may lack the ability to enable growth hacking to take place. It is not far fattest that a growth hacker would re-engineer a business model several times to make it work.

First, hackers develop growth hacking strategies to achieve rapid growth by using a viral factor to create scalable growth. Product market fit is one of the crucial elements a growth hacker needs to evaluate. Poor product market fit can be detrimental to the success of a business. Product market fit is vital as pivots may be required quickly.

By analyzing data in the acquisition channels, hackers look for new users in new customers to acquire. They will profile potential customers using tools like Google analytics engineering an entire funnel developing an onboarding process from sign up to conversion.

Here are different things to consider what a growth hacker would be doing to grow a business:

  1. to generate leads to get potential customers
  2. get more from existing customers to build a user base
  3. how to acquire targeted emails and email marketing
  4. using youtube videos to get traffic
  5. how to best create landing pages
  6. get customer feedback effectively
  7. learn from user behavior
  8. optimize social marketing efforts and social media posts
  9. Analytics software that gives you an edge
  10. how to optimize Facebook ads and google ads
  11. how to improve influencer marketing
  12. build manage and optimize marketing campaigns
  13. managing and optimizing marketing channels
  14. How to do marketing automation and well
  15. Many integrations with the best growth hacking tools
  16. growth hacking tool tracks the right data, not just any data
  17. always keep abreast of top growth hacking tools
  18. growth hacking tool makes automation simple
  19. build good relationships with the service provider
  20. always be on the lookout for new tools
  21. develop led magnets at sign up page

How does growth hacking in digital marketing come together?

As we have defined above, growth hacking is a process used to accelerate growth. That process is run, developed, and improved by growth hackers. The emergence of the growth hacking discipline had been rooted in marketing and, more specifically, in digital marketing practices, and it’s barely days.

Today that is not the case as growth hacking has emerged as one of the super skills of the future digital marketing is one of the components used in the growth hacking process.

Digital marketing and making it work

By nature, digital marketing will have its own limitations when it comes to growth. Many of the people in digital marketing have migrated, whether in part or whole, to growth hacking.

Although digital marketing and growth hacking or two completely different things, you find those who see the limitations of digital marketing migrating.

the growth hacker mindset vs. digital marketer

The fundamental difference between the growth hacker mindset in the Digital marketer mind is that a growth hacker focuses exclusively on the process of being able to accelerate rate growth.

Whereas in complete contrast to the digital marketer mindset is that it is developed around digitalizing the marketing process

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What is the Growth hacker mindset?

Four main taxonomies determine a growth hacker’s mind: driver’s reach, decisions, and tools. The combination of the four forms the underlying idea of aching disproportionate results.

Growth Hacker Mindset - Growth Thinking - think, design, growth hack a design approaching to growth hacking

1. Drivers 

The drivers are the underlying motivations and stimuli that inspire how growth hackers think and take action.

 Mischiefness

They deeply need to break the rules, as they do not believe in the rules they have not benefited from governing and limiting their way of life. Therefore this underpins their thinking to find a way to break the rules to their benefit. 

 Curiosity

They are fascinated by digging deeper into how things work by asking the big why questions. This allows them to understand theories and phenomena better to map out their mechanics to manipulate them toward their benefit.

 Status quo 

The general rules over institutionalization drive their need to challenge the establishments surrounding them. This allows them to break the rules and change the norms of how society around them works. 

2. Reach

Growth hackers have a goal to reach as many people as possible without the general population knowing how they did it.

 Focused

They have a too-focused approach by pinning done abstract problems and creating unique structures to solve them.

Collaborative

They have a resourceful approach where they work with like-minded people and find other cross-functional people to reach their goals effectively. 

 Value-creation 

They focus on creating value with monetization, often trying to reach the masses to make a change.

 

3. Decisions

When hacking growth optimization is the goal to solve at a high level, there is no one solution to a single problem but finding the fastest, easiest, and cheapest way.

 Creativity

Growth hackers are resourceful; they find simple, fast, and digestible ways to solve problems. One of the challenges for growth hackers is thinking too technically. 

 Experimentation

They run tests and lots of them to determine the most optimal approach to getting results using all possible avenues.

 Data-driven

They make decisions based on data, even if the data might potentially be blinding. Data helps determine the most optimal options.

4. Tools

Growth hackers seek new tools, optimize existing ones, and find optimal ways to connect them to solutions. 

 Systemization

For a solution to work, it needs to be automated, and when automated, the probability of scalability is a lot higher when seeking exponential growth.

 Optimization

When finding the right tools and connecting them, the goals are optimizing the way they work together. This holistic approach helps maximize optimization. 

 Technology  

Technology enables automation, scalability, and integration, which underpins growth even if you’re a non-tech company.

The mindset of a growth hacker is defined by how they solve problems. The elements described above are the most common thinking patterns of growth hackers.

14 Growth hacker habits

Growth hackers have 14 critical habits they work with. They do not work with all of them as a strength at once. You will find a single strength supported by three other habits and the rest for development over time. The 14 habits are:

  1. Openness 
  2. Flexibility
  3. No ego
  4. Risk-taking
  5. Fresh perspective 
  6. Generosity 
  7. Curiosity 
  8. Team focused
  9. Listen before action
  10. Cohesive approach
  11. Consensus
  12. Diplomatic
  13. Action driven
  14. Collective win

Remember that these habits help support the T-shaped skills.

01. Openness 

They use an open approach to gain resources, using them, and find solutions to growth problems. This often is the underpinning factor behind their creativity. 

02. Flexibility

When using an open approach, they work flexibly to solve growth problems knowing they don’t have the exact solution but need to be flexible in finding it. 

03. No ego

They focus on removing their ego from the equation; this is often challenged by technical thinking – blinding them to find creative solutions. 

04. Risk-taking

They take bold yet calculated risks, often progressive, to manage unknown facts that are not seen early on. 

05. Fresh perspective 

They focus on finding new ways to solve existing problems by finding new solutions not yet attempted or poorly executed. 

06. Generosity 

They are open-handed to negotiate and broker the acquisition of new resources by being generous to open new doors.

07. Curiosity

They look deep into the whys. This helps them find unseen possibilities not seen by asking excellent questions and often challenging the status quo. 

08. Team focused

They often are challenged with trust, but they thrive by forming collective learning and efforts when developing their small groups of trusted people. 

09. Listen before action

They focus on getting useful quality information before managing their risks and coming up with better growth hacks quicker and easier. 

10. Cohesive approach

They focus on developing networks beyond their teams for the exchange of know-how and cross-development opportunities. 

11. Consensus

They focus on developing a common approach to ensure buy-in and momentum to generate the energy needed to undertake large initiatives. 

12. Diplomatic

They are often challenged with being diplomatic, which ensures relationships supersede technical barriers to solutions.  

13. Action driven

All their know-how and tools are geared towards taking action, leaving little space for theories that waste time and do not get results. 

14. Collective wins

Finding ways that everyone wins in the process, including those directly involved, even if their role is minor in the overall outcome. 

More in-depth views into a list of some growth hackers book and book growth hacker marketing

1- Hacking growth

The book Hacking Growth was created to show you how the basics of hacking are covered. It was used in many different industries/businesses/success stories. Some companies applying growth hacking strategies include Google, Twitter, and others.

This book explains how it works and will help you find success! It’ll also help you know how to find growth hacking.

2- Growing happy clients

You do not have to be a growth hacker to enjoy this book. The author helps readers understand why he was successful at hacking growth for his own book.

In this guide, you will read everything that separates successful growth hackers from average hackers from the average one.

3- Hooked

Nir Eyal’s books shed light on why a user always looks back to it. He shows how to promote addictive behavior among Consumers via triggers and rewards. The Hooked Model is a new way to look at ways to encourage retention in society.

The book provides a unique view of growth hacking techniques.

4- Don’t make me think.

I consider this book an unquestionable need for any UI designer, growth marketer, or web designer who wants to make more money.

What are things like this when a visit is hardly intuitive when they have to do so just a few seconds?

5- Growth Hacking: Silicon Valley’s best-kept secret

Growth hackers are sometimes referred to as growth hackers by the Silicon Valley elite because they can accelerate their growth. This book aims to answer all your questions and create awareness about this trend gaining popularity among entrepreneurs marketing professionals.

The novel is written by Raymond Fong and Chad Riddersen and is published by Harper.

6- Contagious

Jonah Berger investigates where something goes viral and explains how these events happen. People don’t see adverts; they hear others’ views. My videos have a Facebook status, but one time is there an instant response when I reload?

This book explores how something goes from unpopular to wildly popular to become wildly popular. How would a person be perceived by an unassuming person as being so popular?

7- Traction

The key to thriving is how consistently you grow and acquire new customers. It’s called traction, and it makes everything else easy—fundraising, hiring press partnerships, and acquisitions. The book teaches you the nineteen channels to improve business continuity and how you pick the right one.

In this book, you will see how to build a business worldwide, hire press partnerships and build a brand new customer base around the same channel as you want to build around the Internet. Choose the best channel to create a business around Facebook, Twitter, YouTub, and Twitter.

Traditional and technology examples

So I’m going to give you three traditional examples. I’m going to give you three new school examples of technology companies who’ve done this. And so, you can see a spectrum of examples of how this works.

So it hopefully helps you hone in to what is a great example of this happening. Now, number one, McDonald’s. I love McDonald’s are awesome. Awesome, awesome stuff. All right, so roughly 50 years ago,

McDonald’s had implemented a growth hack; they started building their own billboards, right? So keyword here is building their own billboards, and the growth hack was that they put it on busy freeways on exits right before one of their restaurants would be available in roughly one to three kilometers.

The reason being, they want to get you hungry with that beautiful BigMac picture and help you take action on it within one to three kilometers because guess what?

McDonalds drive-thru and Kodak growth hack

You can just drive right through. That’s actually how they built their drive-through business. Amazing, right? The next one is Kodak, right?

Kodak is one of these super-scaled companies of its time. So one of them actually implemented several growth hacks, but one of my favorites is the disposable camera. So you’d pay once you get a camera with the film and the production costs all in one.

But the beauty of it is that these cameras would be available in convenient places that you’d want to take pictures that you would have probably forgotten to take your camera. And remember those were days when we didn’t have mobiles with cameras on them, right?

Very different times. So they would put them in places like tourist attractions, like right at the entrance we were like, Oh my God, I ran out of film or I forgot to bring my camera or I need another camera or whatever the case may be.

FedEx Growth Hack

They hit you up in the right places, right? The next one is FedEx. So it used to be called federal express. When they actually pulled this off, they focused on optimizing their supply chain to do overnight delivery. And that’s how they became known as the logistics.

Somebody would just do overnight delivery and open up the whole express business because of this growth hack. And that’s why they shortened their name from federal express to FedEx. Right. So that’s a traditional example. So let me give you some newer ones. So Dropbox is a very famous one.

Their biggest growth hack is their ability to get their customers to do more referrals. Um, it’s a lot more sophisticated and deeper than that. I’m just keeping it as simple as possible. But they built a sales force using their customers who can bring incredible, profitable customers for them.

Airbnb vs. Craigslist

And the second is Airbnb. Another classic, uh, they basically tapped into Craigslist, which was a listing service. So when they didn’t have the volume to get people to go to their properties, they would automatically list them into Craigslist and drive the traffic straight to them.

And they were essentially lifting the traffic from Craigslist. Brilliant growth hack YouTube. So I don’t know if you know this, but YouTube used to be a data video dating service to start with, and then they pivoted into video hosting.

And finally, what we see today, but their biggest growth hack before the video. Now, this is the strange part because we got so used to it. We didn’t even think this is an impossibility, but the videos were not shareable.

That is, that is the biggest growth hack they’ve done. They are the ones that made them embeddable both through several places.

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Learning from the top Online Growth Hacking & Marketing Courses

These growth hacking courses have been curated by experts providing an overview of this new dimension of marketing. CXL has a 114 hour Online Growth Marketing course, making it one of the most time-consuming marketing online courses.

Growth Tribe Academy provides live and interactive courses which encourage active learning and ensure that students completed the course as soon as possible.

The HypeBomb course was aimed at people starting businesses and companies. The Demand curve course is meant to help you learn the general spectrum of growth marketing to get the opportunity to gain business development experience of each market segment and industry.

This video tutorial will introduce you to google search advertising, Facebook e-mails, and Google AdWords.

Tipping away from the mainstream growth hacking course, there are special places where advanced, and high-speed training occurs. one of those sources is the growth ninja school run by best-selling author Nader Sabry of Ready Set Growth hack.

What you will learn at growth ninja school

Growth hacking courses are designed to take you from strategy to action in an effective way.

Growth Skills

Learn foundation growth skills to supercharge your startup, cooperation, or government organization

Advanced techniques

Develop advanced strategies, tools, and methods based on heavily guarded secrets of the fastest-growing companies in the world

Your formula

This blueprint training is designed to formulate your own customized formula that works for your own growth.

Benefits of the growth thinking design methodology — 

  1. From idea to action – accurately and rapidly turn growth hacking ideas into execution quickly and cost-effectively,  
  2. Think at scale – quickly and effortlessly find methods to take an abstract growth hack, structure it, scale it, and 
  3. Save time and money – rapidly prototype your growth hacking ideas saving time and money.  

This methodology uses a design system that Visualization, Systemize, Optimization, helps Rapid development, and instills Collaboration.