Cue the Growth Hacker. Like a magical mix of market guru, product manager, and distribution expert, the growth hacker is all about distributing an idea to the market with growth as the singular metric of success. The digital era leaves users exhausted as the attempt to sift through every new software product or platform. Growth hackers work to pull customers in by weaving together behavioral economics, UX/UI, and gamification...to name a few.
The key is to develop a strategy that is both scaleable and repeatable. Growth hackers strive to build a well oiled machine - a marketing method that self-perpetuates. Software product and digital platforms have an inherent ability to spread themselves. The growth hacker sits in the driver seat working to steer this self-perpetuating potential into actionable strategy.
Airbnb's meteoric success can be traced back to growth hacking. Leveraging Craigslist, Airbnb created inbound links - Airbnb posts could be linked to Craiglist, so they essentially appeared twice. May seem obvious, but without an API, Airbnb growth hackers had to reverse engineer Craiglist's forms to find the hidden door allowing them to link their postings, so that Airbnb users never had to leave the platform.
Why this takes a growth hacker? Traditional marketing degrees don't begin to offer the conceptual framework needed to understand how to make the product the primary source of the product's distribution. Would a marketer have thought to integrate the Airbnb platform with Craiglist? Would the traditional marketer have seen the horizon beyond a platform without an API? Growth hackers have full command of tech talk, while traditional marketers are merely conversational.
New platform looking to grow the user base? Get a growth hacker.
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