Beyond the Hype: The Science of Growth Hacking

By this point, you’ve probably heard of growth hacking, but do you really understand what it is? Growth Hacker TV founder Bronson Taylor looks beyond the hype to explain what startups can learn from some of the world’s best growth hackers.

 

For the first few years of founding his software development company, Bronson Taylor was (like many software entrepreneurs) mystified by the seemingly circumstantial process of driving growth. Was it as much about luck as strategic execution? Or was there a process that a company could follow to give it a better chance to scale successfully?

“Honestly, the vast majority of my company’s early projects failed, and it was largely due to the fact that we could build good products, but weren’t sure what to do from there,” admits Taylor. “With every failure, we would get better and it seemed like there was more of a scientific process behind growth. But we still didn’t quite understand it.”

Eventually, that led to Taylor discovering “growth hacking,” a phenomenon that was first introduced by entrepreneur Sean Ellis in 2010 and is now changing the way that many software startups approach scale.

“Basically, growth hacking is a scientific method that requires a full-stack approach to growth — total marketing, engineering, and product integration.”

“If you have a good product and a market that wants it,” Taylor explains, “you can create growth by using traditional internet marketing in conjunction with product decisions and engineering which leverages automated growth methods. It’s looking at the big picture, and creating an end-to-end solution that is solely focused on growth.”

Shedding Light on the Science of Growth Hacking

Once Taylor discovered growth hacking, he couldn’t get enough of it. He continued to read Ellis’ blog and consumed every bit of content he could find on the subject. Then, he hit a wall. “Eventually, we ran out of resources,” Taylor says. “We found that there wasn’t much educational content about growth hacking out there.”

So, instead of continuing to search desperately for that content, Taylor decided to create a resource of his own.

In early 2013, Taylor created Growth Hacker TV, a site that highlights some of the startup world’s brightest growth drivers and tells the story of companies that have leveraged growth hacking to scale. In less than six months, Taylor has published 100 episodes on Growth Hacker TV’s website, featuring interviews with industry rock-stars like Hubspot CMO Mike Volpe and KISSmetrics co-founder Neil Patel.

“It’s incredible how much my thinking around growth has developed since I started this project,” Taylor says. “With our website, you get to see growth hacking in action and understand how it’s executed effectively. For me, it became very obvious right away that businesses like Hubspot and KISSmetrics approach growth in a very scientific way, and it’s been enlightening to learn about that process.”

What Does Growth Hacking Look Like?

So, who’s responsible for growth hacking? CMOs or VPs of Product? And how exactly should a business go about executing it?

Unfortunately, Taylor says, those aren’t questions that can be addressed with a simple answer.

“With some companies, growth hacking is managed by the marketing department, but in the most successful companies it is managed by someone who has a distinct understanding of how the product works and who has root control over the entire product stack,” Taylor explains. “In these companies, the business will actually carve out a role for a ‘growth hacker,’ and that person’s lone responsibility is to integrate marketing, product development, and engineering in a way that drives growth.”

Ultimately, Taylor says, growth hacking isn’t really a groundbreaking new marketing or product development theory. It’s just a mixture of common sense, creativity, and top-to-bottom integration.

For example:

• In an interview with Atlassian Software’s Shaun Clowes, Taylor learned that the business had developed a machine learning algorithm that could be used to better understand what good users look like and what features they use. From that information, Atlassian could build more features like the ones being used by its best customers and market them to prospects who share attributes with those prime users. While the algorithm is very complex, the idea behind it is a textbook growth hack, Taylor says.

• When Thomas Schranz, the CEO of product management software Blossom, began to think about incorporating a new feature into his software, he didn’t just build it and hope that it resonated with Blossom’s users. Instead, he placed a “button to nowhere” on Blossom’s home page that led web visitors to a page where they could discover more about that feature, enter their email address to find out when it might become available, and leave feedback about what they’d like to see from that feature. “It was a great way to assess demand and acquire the information Blossom needed for development, without having to spend a boatload on customer research,” Taylor says.

“For growth hacking to work, you have to combine psychology, science, and creative thinking in a way that informs smart decision making,” Taylor explains. “Growth hacking isn’t a perfect science where you can say if we do ‘A,’ then ‘B’ will happen. But it can change the way you view customer engagement and product development. And if you do it right, it can make fueling growth a much more systematic process.”

Are you incorporating aspects of growth hacking into your approach? Share your thoughts and any other helpful resources below.

Photo by: John Ward