A GUIDE TO HACKING GROWTH

I recently dove into the book Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown. Being in marketing for some time now my preconceived notions of a “growth hacker” was someone who spent all their time in google analytics crunching the numbers, finding nuggets of gold and magically scaling those areas to 10x growth.

I’ve on numerous occasions have tried to replicate this idea by spending countless hours in Google Analytics or in front complex spreadsheets, using every available dashboard known to mankind. While I have learned a great deal from my time spent in those areas, I am far too aware of the very truthful anecdote, “paralysis by analysis.”

Hacking Growth describes itself as “the definitive playbook by the pioneers of growth hacking, one of the hottest business mythologies in silicon valley and beyond” (inside flap). Generally, I believe the book does right by this description.

The core principles of the book revolve around two concepts:
1. The structure of Growth Hacking. In other words what you need in a team to hack your way to success.
2. The Playbook. This section is riddled with real life examples the authors experienced and their outcomes.

These two sections put together, give the reader a process to follow and a target to aim for. The underlying description of successful growth hacking is a well-oiled growth team that has the trust and credibility to make quick decisions about what is working and what isn’t. The team has a set of common understandings of how they find and test for areas of growth. And even perhaps, more importantly, the leadership of the company has the buy-in into the growth process, clearing bureaucratic barriers well in advance.

The first section (The Growth Process) of the book helps place the importance of the analysis itself within the process. As any analyst has experienced pouring hours into a detailed report, only to see the report find its way to the trash. Or worse being caught in a continual loop of re-working metrics until magically, the data has been so re-racked that the numbers suddenly fit the exact conclusion the requester was trying to prove. While the structure to the process will seem intuitive for the analyst, it will help the strategist see and plan for iterations of change. It will help not only the analyst and strategist but the whole team adopt a system of testing, execution, and reflection on the data.

The second section is filled with real world examples that actually happened. The authors Sean and Morgan tell you what tactics successful companies used to hack it to billions in revenue. You could almost read the second half in any order because there are so many unique ideas. However, they do incorporate growth from 4 views of hacking business, acquisition, activation retention, monetization knowing that some businesses tend to lean in different areas for growth.

As an email marketer by trade, I can see the value in hacking growth and the concepts they offer. While open and click rates may be my bread and butter I understand that increase either without affecting a “Northstar metric” (such as average revenue per purchase, or lifetime value per customer) can be fleeting. That is not to say that increasing the number of people who open is a bad thing. But open rate or click rate by themselves is just the beginning of the journey. And as the end of the book mentions, there is so much more valuable data to be taken into the consideration once the whole customer journey can be identified and measured.

Company culture I believe is a key concept crucial to the success of growth hacking but is a topic that is not discussed in the book. Growth Hacking is dependent on delegation, trust, and execution. Team members need delegated positional authority to work between the black and white lines of their day-to-day responsibilities. If the leadership behind these groups are not bought into the process growth will be hampered.

Growth teams need to be both credible and trustworthy. They need to be able to question the actions of another department in a way that is well received and not condescending. The team needs to be able to show a track record of success and provide a common score card perhaps. One’s mind must be open to the idea, that everything is on the table for review, and only whats performs best should move forward. And conversely, poor performing activities need to be stopped. Having the green light from above is the assumed prerequisite.

The key to hacking growth is all “about engineering systems of scale and enabling our users to grow the product for us.” In this case “engineering systems” really means creating a team that is systematically observing, measuring, hypothesizing and implementing ideas based on how your users are interacting with your brand.

Growth Hacking takes team centered on common principles, where decisions can be made with speed and accuracy while leaving bureaucracy behind.

Check out the book here.