Growth hacking is a term you need to know if you're interested in growing your business. In this post we explain what growth hacking is, how important the role of a growth hacker is, why you should be doing growth hacking in your company, and what advantages it brings to your product or service. In recent years this term has gone very viral, as companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, and LinkedIn have implemented growth hacking as a growth strategy alongside digital marketing.
If you don't have time to read this blog post, don't miss my YouTube video — in it I quickly explain the concept of growth hacking and the importance of understanding it as a process of continuous experimentation.
What is growth hacking?
There are many different definitions, but we can say directly that it's a process that seeks to grow a business efficiently through rapid experimentation techniques applied to a product and its marketing channels.
In the definition I just gave, there are several essential elements when working with a growth hacking mindset:
- Process. Growth hacking is a constant and continuous process — it's not a one-off event. Being a methodology and a mindset, it entails ongoing development aimed at growth that never ends. So if someone tells you they have the magic formula for growth hacking and making 1 million in a few months, they're selling you air. That is NOT growth hacking.
- Grow. This is the ultimate and total objective of growth hacking. Everything we do, every test we run has one purpose: to grow.
- Experiment. Growth hacking is made of experiments — experiments that are conceived, analyzed, and tested — which produce results that are sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes exceptional.
- Speed. Working with a growth hacker mindset means being fast and flexible, keeping an active list of rapid tests that allow us to improve our business and grow as quickly as possible. Doing growth hacking means working on volume, because moving fast lets you find the winning combination sooner.
To achieve maximum growth with the minimum possible spend and effort, Growth Hacking combines elements of:
- product development.
- data analysis.
- user experience design.
- creative marketing tactics.
What does a growth hacker do?
A growth hacker is someone who has the ability to program creative solutions to growth-related tasks and apply them in alignment with the startup's vision. What makes a growth hacker unique is that they don't limit themselves to traditional marketing methods.
Instead, growth hackers leverage the power of technology and data analysis to develop strategies that can generate measurable results in a short period of time.
Additionally, a growth hacker must stay on top of the latest digital trends and be able to adapt quickly to changing conditions. Yes, a growth hacker is a curious person who always wants to experiment with new things.
If you work in or are pursuing digital marketing, you'll probably want to train as a growth hacker — it's a smart move as it not only helps other companies grow but also enhances your professional profile in a constantly growing and highly valued sector.
What does a growth hacker NOT do?
The growth hacker is an important profile for a company's growth, but it's important to know what they do NOT do to avoid confusion or misconceptions:
- They don't do one-off activities — done once and finished. The growth hacker works consistently, monitoring data and creating new experiments alongside teammates. Their work never ends.
- The growth hacker doesn't work alone. They always talk and collaborate with colleagues — whether from their own growth hacking team or from other departments (particularly marketing and product).
- The growth hacker doesn't look for shady tricks. Anyone selling a magic formula is probably scamming you.
- The growth hacker doesn't make decisions for your company. They help you gather all the data so you can analyze it correctly and make the best decisions for your business.
- The growth hacker doesn't apply all the marketing techniques they know without prior research.
Why do growth hacking? The growth hacking strategy
Growth hacking strategies are tailored for each business and come in various forms. Experiments such as A/B tests, customer segmentation, and marketing automation can be considered types of growth hacking strategies.
It's important for new businesses to understand the value of growth hacking in order to successfully develop an effective strategy that maximizes their reach and results. By employing the right growth hacking practices tailored to their specific needs, startups can achieve rapid success without going broke. Growth hacking is an essential tool for any startup looking to accelerate growth and stay competitive in today's market.
Growth hacking and how to apply it
At this point we're clear on what growth hacking is and what a growth hacker does, so you might be interested in implementing it in your company. The question is: how do I apply it?
It's important to understand that growth hacking is a process. This means that far from having a magic formula you can use to grow your business quickly, the process is quite analytical — it's not a one-off activity you can do whenever you feel like it. In fact, be wary of anyone offering tricks. A true Growth Hacker is someone who launches a continuous, fast-paced process based on a series of marketing and product experiments across every area, until they find the winner.
As mentioned in this article, one of the key characteristics of growth hacking is experimentation. It's important to see experimentation as a cycle made up of a series of phases, which we'll now dig into.
The experimentation cycle
Each experimentation cycle consists of 4 phases.
- Data analysis. Used to see what's working and what needs to change.
- Ideation. Once data has been studied, a session is held to brainstorm ideas for solving the problems and/or opportunities that emerged from the analysis.
- Prioritization. Prioritization techniques are used to rank the solutions identified in the ideation phase. If you want to learn more, there's a post on my blog about how to prioritize with prioritization techniques.
- Execution. A register called the Experiment Bucket holds all current and future experiments. This is the phase where experiments are executed in the order established during prioritization.
The Experiments
What does this Growth Hacking process look like? As mentioned above, it's made up of experiments.
Experiments that involve the entire product, the entire team, sometimes even the whole company. Experiments that are chosen, executed, analyzed, and then compared. Continuously, day after day, number after number, click after click, conversion after conversion.
Experimenting is not blind trial and error — quite the opposite. To be a safe experiment, it must meet three essential characteristics:
- Measurable. It must be closely tied to a metric. It must be possible to trace the cause-effect link between the experiment and the observed metric.
- Repeatable. It must be possible to recreate the same conditions to repeat the experiment. This means it must not be random or based on chance elements.
- Scalable. As we'll see later, scalability is the key to any startup. Therefore, every experiment you launch must be not only repeatable, but also scalable.
not only repeatable, but also scalable.
If any one of these three elements is missing, you're not running experiments — you're flying blind.
Advantages of growth hacking
With the right combination of strategy, technology, and creativity, companies can achieve rapid growth with advantages like:
- rapid experimentation
- growth optimization
- testing and analyzing different strategies, tactics, and tools
- lower customer acquisition costs
- higher engagement rates
- improved ROI
- data-driven insights
- understanding your target audience
How to build a growth hacking team
If you're interested in starting to build your own growth hacking team and enjoying its benefits, let's look at how it's composed, what a growth master is, and above all how much it might cost to set one up, starting with the most affordable option.
How it's composed
To build a growth hacking team in your company you'll need to fill these 4 roles:
- The developer. The person who at a technical level helps with the development of the company's product or service.
- The marketer. The person who handles marketing channels.
- The designer. The person who gives your product a design so it can be used by customers in the best possible way.
- The growth master. The person who directs the entire process — think of them like a conductor.
There are other roles like customer support, dedicated to user experience, but that depends on the size of the company.
In general, the 4 mentioned above are the main ones.
What is a Growth Master?
A growth master is the person who coordinates and facilitates the work of the entire team. In English, Growth Master can also be called Head of Growth or Chief Growth Officer. However, they're not called a Manager because what they manage is not the people but the experimentation process. The growth master's work is fundamental to coordinating all phases of this process — meaning the experimentation cycle mentioned earlier (Analysis, Ideation, Prioritization, and Execution).
How much does it cost to set up a growth hacking team?
This is a very common question and the answer, as always, is: it depends. Specifically it depends on your company's characteristics, because every company is different — with its own setup, organization, and industry. You'll understand that a seasoned growth hacker commands a high market price, with salaries around $200k a year. But if you're in a different environment than Silicon Valley, you can start by taking simple, fast, and affordable actions suited to your budget:
- Train the people already working with you. This is the most affordable option as these are people who know how the company works and can improve it from the inside with the right training. If you don't have the budget to hire a growth master, have someone from your team study growth hacking. In my growth club we hold monthly classes focused on learning and mastering Growth Hacking strategies, and we have a private community where we analyze case studies, network, and support each other. It'll likely be a quick, effective, and affordable way to start implementing growth hacking in your company right away.
- Hire an external consultant only when needed. This is a less affordable but faster option than the previous one because you're paying someone external. The main advantage is that you'll have, when you need it, someone who can manage the growth hacking process. Here's a tip to make even more of the external consultant: during the consultancy, assign someone from your team to work alongside the consultant — this way your team member will learn the basic dynamics, and that knowledge stays in your company. That doesn't mean you'll never need a consultant again — having a professional advisor can sometimes be a turning point for your company's growth. On my website you can also find all the information about my consulting service. Take a look.
The most famous Growth Hacking examples
Some great examples of growth hacking success stories include Dropbox, which reached 10 million users in just three years, and Airbnb, which grew to over 1 million users in just two years. These companies used various growth hacking tactics, such as building effective landing pages, running targeted campaigns, and leveraging viral marketing.
These cases show that, while it takes time and effort to develop successful strategies, the potential rewards can be significant when executed correctly.
