Growth Hacking For Dummies®
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Copyright © 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020904218
ISBN: 978-1-119-61213-1; 978-1-119-61217-9 (ebk); 978-1-119-61216-2 (ebk)
Welcome to Growth Hacking For Dummies!
First, a little bit of history. The concept of growth hacking became popular toward the middle of the 2010's, and its ideas have been used by some of the world’s fastest-growing companies to unlock breakout growth. You might already have heard about growth hacking and how it has contributed to the growth of the fastest-growing start-ups over the past decade. You may even have read about how growth hacking has transformed the marketing field as well as how products are developed. What you may still be unclear about is what this growth hacking concept really is.
Growth hacking has always existed, but before the phrase was coined by Sean Ellis, no one had a well-defined way to describe the process — a process, mind you, that was already being practiced with great success in areas of innovation like Silicon Valley. I was lucky enough to find Sean, and then work directly with him, as the popularity of the concept began to explode and helped cement its status as a concept that start-ups cannot ignore if they are to raise the odds of unlocking breakout growth. Start-ups aiming to replicate the success of bigger companies are looking to understand what these successful companies did differently that helped change the trajectory of their growth.
Over the past five years, having been part of (and leading) growth teams and mentoring start-ups on implementing growth hacking methodologies, I found that there was a need to write a digestible guide that someone like me — who previously had no background with start-ups, growth, marketing, or product development — could understand and use.
Growth hacking has now taken its place among other buzzwords among those familiar with the start-up and tech space. In this book, I clear up some of the biggest misunderstandings on what growth hacking is and, most importantly, what it is not. The information in this book will give you the confidence to be successful using the growth hacking methodology. Even if you’re familiar with the core concepts of growth hacking, this book may still introduce you to a different way of looking at growth, marketing, and product concepts and may also provide you with some tips on how best to explain to others exactly what growth hacking is.
This is a book about clarifying growth hacking's intent. The entire point of the practice is to grow the value you deliver to your customers. You do that by implementing a cross-functional process of testing and learning that involves key stakeholders companywide. This book is as much about the process as it is about the people you call on to execute it and the kind of culture a company needs if this methodology is to take root and bear fruit. This is also a book about how important it is to align your goals with those of your customers and develop empathy for their needs and motivations if you’re going to truly find a path to sustainable growth.
When I can, I include real-world examples from my experiences and conversations with other growth professionals.
Whether you’re a founder, an executive, or a marketing/growth/product professional, you'll find something worth reading in Growth Hacking For Dummies.
To get the most from this book, I assume that you
Throughout this book, you’ll see these little graphical icons to identify useful paragraphs:
The Tip icon marks tips and shortcuts that you can take to make a specific task easier.
The Remember icon marks the information that’s especially important to know. To siphon off the most important information in each chapter, just skim these paragraphs.
The Technical Stuff icon marks information of a highly technical nature that you can safely skip over without harm.
The Warning icon tells you to watch out! It marks important information that may save you headaches. Warning: Don’t skip over these warnings!
The book is arranged into four self-contained parts, each composed of several self-contained chapters. By self-contained, I mean that I do my best to tell you everything you need to know about a single topic inside each chapter, other than when I have to reference other parts of the book to connect parts that are legitimately linked.
Here’s an overview:
These early chapters serve as a primer on growth hacking. In this part, you learn to walk before you run, but what you find here lays the foundation for all that comes later. You’ll see my definition of growth hacking (and what it is not) and find an introduction to its important concepts, applications, and options. You’ll also gain an understanding of the most important skills needed to build a growth team and have it succeed.
Many people think of growth hacking as something that is complex or different from what they know. In the beginning of Part 2, you get to see how identifying a customer journey helps you identify potential growth opportunities and lets you see what you can hope to learn from interactions at every step of this journey.
If you read all of Part 2, you'll have examined the different opportunities to provide and enhance value to your customers that you can then double-down on with confidence — versus just going with your gut.
In this part, I dive deep into the growth hacking methodology. The key ideas you’ll walk away with are the importance of a North Star Metric (NSM), building a growth model, and using the growth model to set objectives that you can run tests around. You’ll read about how to establish and manage a growth process that allows you to learn rapidly where the biggest signal for growth may be coming from. And though implementing a growth process is a great start, getting companywide adoption of the growth mindset is how you truly lay the foundation for unlocking growth, which you’ll also learn how to do.
If you have ever read another book in the For Dummies series, this part of the book is like seeing an old friend again — the friend might be wearing a different outfit, but you will recognize the person right away. The Part of Tens is a collection of interesting growth hacking insights, advice, and warnings broken out into ten easy-to-digest chunks. This part offers ten benefits, ten things to watch for, and the like. These chapters crystalize some concepts you get a chance to read about in the rest of the book, or a way to dig right in to the concepts that matter if you haven’t.
Although this book broadly covers the growth hacking methodology and process, I can cover only so much in a set number of pages! If you find yourself at the end of this book and thinking, “This was an amazing book — where can I learn more about growth hacking?” check out Chapter 14 or head over to www.dummies.com for more resources.
Cheat Sheet: If you’re looking for the traditional For Dummies Cheat Sheet, visit www.dummies.com and type Growth Hacking For Dummies Cheat Sheet in the Search box.
Growth hacking is a vast domain where you’re continually challenged to learn something new, given how fast things change. Unfortunately, one book cannot do justice to all these topics, but, fortunately, that’s why you can find more than one book in this world (and people to help write them).
Aside from an introduction to a topic you may not have known much about before, what I aim to do in this book is cover that area of knowledge necessary for a successful application of growth hacking not already covered by other books. I provide a unique (if not sometimes strange) point of view about what really matters, honed over many years of practical experiences in the field. What I have to say isn’t often what people thought they would find, and I stand by what I think is important enough to share in this format. If you’re looking to obtain more depth in a specific technical domain, you can turn to plenty of resources in order to go deeper — not the least of which are other For Dummies books.
You can use a number of related books to drill down into topics I could only briefly touch on in this book — for example, Data Driven Marketing For Dummies, by David Semmelroth; Digital Marketing All-in-One For Dummies, by Stephanie Diamond; Marketing For Dummies, 5th Edition, by Jeanette McMurtry; Writing Copy For Dummies, by Jonathan Kranz; Web Analytics For Dummies, by Pedro Sostre and Jennifer LeClaire; SEO For Dummies, 7th Edition, by Peter Kent; Advertising For Dummies, 2nd Edition, by Gary Dahl; AdWords For Dummies, by Howie Jacobson, Affiliate Marketing For Dummies, by Ted Sudol and Paul Mladjenovic; Content Marketing For Dummies, by Susan Gunelius; Customer Experience For Dummies, by Roy Barnes and Bob Kelleher; E-Mail Marketing For Dummies, 2nd Edition, by John Arnold; Facebook Marketing All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition, by Andrea Vahl, John Haydon, and Jan Zimmerman); Social Media Marketing For Dummies, 4th Edition, by Shiv Singh and Stephanie Diamond; Inbound Marketing For Dummies, by Scott Anderson Miller; Lead Generation For Dummies, by Dayna Rothman; Mobile Marketing For Dummies, by Michael Becker and John Arnold; New Product Development For Dummies, by Robin Karol, Beebe Nelson, and Geoffrey Nicholson); Public Relations For Dummies, 2nd Edition, by Eric Yaverbaum, Ilise Benun, Richard Kirshenbaum; and Selling For Dummies, 4th Edition, by Tom Hopkins — all published by Wiley. Any and all of these books can produce valuable knowledge, skills, and abilities that can be used to become a more effective growth professional and leader.
You don’t need to read this book from cover to cover. You can, if that strategy appeals to you, but it’s set up as a reference guide, so you can jump in wherever you need to. Looking for something in particular? Take a peek at the table of contents or index, find the section you need, and then flip to the page to resolve your problem.
Part 1
IN THIS PART …
Seeing what growth hacking is all about
Developing your growth hacking skills
Building a growth team from the ground up