You may not have heard of “growth hacking” but it’s been around since 2010. We take a look at the meaning of the term and what the actual job entails.
Another Marketing Role
Many marketing jobs advertised across various recruitment platforms always seem to include sales jobs within the results pages. Sales teams work closely with marketing departments, but if you are seeking a marketing role, would you want to see sale roles popping up on the job search?
So, is growth hacking the same, should this be separate from standard digital marketing jobs when looking at new opportunities within the creative area, or will it be merged with marketing jobs?
Marketing vs. Growth Hacking
The difference between marketing and growth hacking comes down to similar goals but completely different aims.
Marketing’s core aim is promoting, selling services and products via inbound and outbound marketing strategies within the set budget.
Growth hacking is primarily product focussed on the growth and rise of a start-up company, on a little budget or no budget.
Basically, growth hackers are product managers, marketers and web developers all rolled up into one.
The role can be picked up by a marketer and even programmers can choose to be a growth hacker.
The Growth Hacker often look at low-budget alternatives to traditional marketing, by focusing on areas like viral marketing, social media or targeted advertising, for example.
The main factors of growth hacking are:
- Rapid experimentation across marketing channels
- Product development
- Efficient ways to grow a business at a low-cost
Growth hacking enables businesses to care about customer retention with long-term sustainability. Many popular companies have implemented this kind of strategy and have seen great results.
The Difference
So, the difference between a marketing guru and a growth hacker comes down to budget constraints;
- A marketer growth all depends on the budget but a growth hacker’s growth comes first and the budget comes second.
- A growth hacker will look at ways around the budget to deliver effective growth without digging into the profit. The benefit of this is that it potentially will save a business a lot of money.
With the digital marketing world evolving could growth hackers be something of the past or could it develop into something more.
