Growth Hacking: what it is and how not to be duped by moldy marketers

To stay up to date, my advice is to participate in events such as the Web Marketing Festival which manage to inform and train on all web marketing topics with the intervention of authoritative people who are able to bring real and successful use cases.

In 2010, in a post by Sean Ellis (American Web Marketer from Silicon Valley), the term "Growth Hacking" appears for the first time.

What is Growth Hacking and what does it mean? Like many definitions made in the USA, this one cannot (could) be translated, even if we Italians like to translate anything because it makes it feel more "ours". We could literally say: a growth pirate, someone who triggers growth through unconventional mechanisms, compared to traditional marketing.

Wikipedia reports a very sober definition, in my opinion the most sober of all:

Growth hacking is a process of rapidly experimenting across a variety of marketing channels to identify the most effective ways to grow a business.

I would like to underline the word "process", Growth Hacking is a process, it means that it is not an action or a set of actions to be performed "every now and then", when it happens, but it is a real company process that has a very specific purpose: to grow the business.

What's different between doing Growth Hacking and Marketing? Nothing, growth hacking is a way of marketing, the term "hacking" was inserted because unconventional methods and ideas are used, different from the usual ones which allow you to achieve more important growth objectives in less time and with a different distribution of the spending budget compared to the simple purchase of advertising space.

Do I already have a Growth Hacker in the company? In my opinion, yes, all micro, small and medium-sized businesses have a Growth Hacker in the company and today, thanks to the introduction of this brand new "buzzword" we will all be aware of it.

Our growth hackers are none other than:

entrepreneurs, those who trigger growth mechanisms within their company thanks to their passion for their business

the collaborators, everyone in the company, does growth hacking, every day, when customer service responds to a customer and tries to recommend a new product, upselling, automatically triggers hacking mechanisms, aimed at improving that process, call after call

those who do marketing, I challenge a company that works on the web not to think differently and trigger alternative growth mechanisms compared to traditional campaigns

So? Let's not be influenced by trends, from today we will do Grow Hacking and wipe out the competition, no... the correct thought is: from today we will do Marketing and what's more we will try to defeat the competition with innovative products and doing things that no one has ever thought of before.

Let's not be "duped" by moldy marketers who try to sell us new consultancy only by introducing new buzzwords

We value the people within our organization, they are the best Growth Hackers on the market

I leave you a link to a content that could whet your desire to learn more about the topic: the definitive guide on growth hacking (I said that someone is still writing them)