Growth Hacking Tools

I see your frustration, but as someone who has been exploring the digital marketing space (well outside of Silicon Valley in Cleveland, Ohio), I can say that your assumption that marketers "know" about things like A/B testing might be a bit presumptuous. I put "know" in quotes to differentiate between "knowing" as in having heard of it, and "knowing" as in fully understanding it. I recently had a an accomplished and successful traditional marketing person tell me that A/B tests on his website were off-limits, like they were toxic voodoo. I understood the basis of his fears ("we can't afford to lose customers because of an A/B test") but they were totally unreasonable.

I've also seen a sort of clumsy bum-rush into the digital marketing career space. I think lots of people realize the shift to this pace and it's now attracting swarms of people who come from non-technical backgrounds. My personal beliefs (which may be selfish due to my background), is that the winners in this frenzy will be the "growth hackers", as in the people who understand both marketing and hacking. For this purpose, I think hacking means people who look at system and the furthest level back that they can, figure out how the internals of the system work, and then use that information to get what they want out of the system. You don't necessarily have to be able to program (you certainly have to be able to communicate what you want to a programmer though, as you can't do things at scale without some programming help), but programmers typically tend to have the mentality of making systems work in their advantage.

So why does the term bother us so much?

Let me reiterate what you said in the other thread:

"I have a huge respect for both Ellis and Chen, and stated that on several occasions in the blog post. The same goes for what 'growth hackers' do, in fact, I could call myself one since I do both marketing and coding! I just don't like the term growth hacker, as this is just another buzz word for something that just isn't new."

I think the real reason we distaste this new buzzword, isn't because it is 'new' or a 'buzzword', but the PEOPLE that are now calling themselves growth hackers. Basically anyone who was previously a digital marketer, seo specialist, page optimizer, inbound marketer is jumping all over the term. Posts like this one, where it feels like it is equating people who use Geckoboard with growth hackers starts to become disturbing. Just using these tools doesn't make you a hacker.

The definition of growth hacker is solidifying, but it seems to be getting more generic by the day. If I could throw my hat in the growth hacker definition ring it would include these things:

1. Can Code

2. Integrates growth at the product development stage (e.g. AirBnb using Craigslist)

3. Comes up with innovative/clever new techniques

For #1, I think it IS essential. People will probably argue that point, but if you can't code you don't really know what is in the realm of possible. #2 is just marketing: growth hackers are marketers and product development is marketing.

The problem I see, is that there will be job descriptions for growth hackers used as band-aids after a product has been developed. People will just hire them hoping to grow their business, yet a growth hacker should be a position from the early stages of development.

Sadly, it looks like the new buzzword is taking a death spiral that will ultimately make it a meaningless differentiator for people who can actually do #1,2,3.