The tricky part is getting people to understand what really drives their business and at the right level. It's not even just picking the right metrics, it's understanding them enough to take action on them.
My metric for metrics is to track things that will change your behavior. If a metric changes and you don't, then it's a pointless metric.
I've seen many companies track reasonable metrics, only to do nothing about them when they change. They just try to "do more" of whatever they were already doing.
Doing the right things with the right metrics is not a skill that everybody has and not everybody can learn.
This is true. Also beyond these problems, I am going to say something else.
Marketing is not the result of a few actions. It is and should be something woven into all business activities. It should be part of your email signatures, participating on social networking sites, etc. All of the little things build up and the thins which really help with building a presence.
There are legitimate marketing hacks but they don't involve tricking users. They involve living and breathing marketing, and realizing that building your business means a billion little marketing hacks, not a few big ones.
"My metric for metrics is to track things that will change your behavior. If a metric changes and you don't, then it's a pointless metric."
This is exactly what you are supposed to do in high-level RTS strategy. In Starcraft for example, you should know ahead of time what 'tells' you are looking for, and disregard the rest. It lets you focus only on the information that influences your decisions, and minimizes distractions from "scary" things the opponent may be doing.
> In the SV game, it's "Are we attracting attention?" "What sort of things will cause us to get more attention?"
It's not particularly strange if you break down the business models that dominate the SV ecosystem. These companies you speak of are merely procurement channels. Think of them as oil drills that suck up as many attention spans as physically possible. And largely they are all competing with each other to strike the next big oil well. Not unlike the oil industry they put massive amounts of capital into the discovery and refinement of such oil wells. The likes of Facebook, Google, etc are simply refineries who sell this attention (refined by analytics and insight) off to the Fords, Coca-Colas, etc of the world.
The fascinating thing is that this is the norm in business, not the exception.
You may think, how can that be? Wouldn't that cause companies to go out of business all the time?
Guess what, companies go out of business all the time. Most companies are fairly short lived, and a lot of the reason why is because they live in a fantasy land instead of concentrating on the fundamentals. Another fascinating thing you'll find is folks who have the knack of turning businesses around. There are plenty of reality TV shows about this sort of thing too. However, in almost every case turning around a business is mostly a process of concentrating on fundamentals and making pragmatic choices.
I hate when apps ask to post to Facebook or Twitter on my behalf. It's uncomfortable and puts the user in an awkward position. Great article, hope some of these companies take note!
Few people are so stupid that they believe moving some number is the same as doing well. There are lots of times when moving some arbitrary number is rewarded, and we know that humans respond to incentives. It's perfectly logical, and even the best strategy in some situations.
People who pull tactical games like this might be able to get by, or do well, or become captains of dying industries, but fundamentally we can probably agree they are assholes. Plenty go along because they are playing the junior edition same game with the junior edition of the same strategy. When there isn't a risk of repercussions, or when they feel like they have a chance to gain credibility, or whatever motivations big smart apes really act out of, they loudly laugh at and mock the asshole; because of the hurt they feel at wasting the part of their life that was spent doing something so obviously worthless, and because of the shame and regret of compromising themselves, and because it's a good move.
Some people have real problems. Some people don't get enough food to eat. Someone could say that it's a form of privilege to have problems like "I don't believe in my job". It almost certainly is.
Somewhere in some country where people die of things that people just don't die of other places, there are people officially working on things, and money being spent, all kinds of activity done because someone feels like that is their best strategy, and the people involved know it's stupid and pointless and a waste, and they know there are people suffering that could suffer less.
It's easy to play along. It's easy to play a strategy that maximizes personal outcomes. In fact, the people at the top almost certainly got there by playing such a strategy. It seems likely that it's an evolutionarily stable strategy, despite the implication that a lot more suffering is going to happen.
This article is dead on the money. I think this comes back to people having a hard time discovering the value that their product offers customers.
They may hear that 2+ invites, and 3 projects 'activates' the customer - but they don't truly understand what that means and why that provides value.
I have noticed that with some of my clients too, and other entrepreneurs I talk to.
That's one of the reasons I am starting to write more about discovering/understanding value.
The first such post is 'Redefining MVP to Minimum Valuable Product'[1] because I think that's a perfect place to start - plus it is where I have been noticing this issue pop-up more and more in my work.
I think the entire industry does need to take a step back and really start re-evaluating the way we analyze/discover value. It feels like it has been lost with everybody trying to go too fast and 'hack' everything.
I'm glad that I know a good term for "false proxies" now. It seems to be a problem that comes up all the time in wildly different contexts. I sometimes call it "painting a banana yellow", but that doesn't necessarily convey the meaning to someone unless I've previously explained the analogy.
Is this the correct use of the term "Growth Hacking"? I thought it was a person who works on side projects to increase their personal development outside of work.
As far as the meat of the article, I feel like this is spot on. The challenge I think is that a lot of people, including PG, have said they want to see 10%+ growth [1]. Customer acquisition is a very easy thing to hack if you know how to play the social game, but in the end, it comes down to product.
Did you laugh at the bill hicks routine about marketers killing themselves when you were a teenager, but now want to take that highly paid SV position without an existential crisis? Have we got the job title for you!
I don't think I've ever heard Growth Hacking used in the sense you described. I'm sure someone has, but I nearly always see it in the sense of "tricks to increase user acquisition or conversion."
My understanding has always been it's one who "hacks" the "growth" of the company. Which coincidentally is why I've always had a somewhat negative impression of the term.
"Had Google+ focused on a metric of “Users who choose to go to Google+ and share at least 2 updates per week“, they would have focused their efforts on delivering value to users rather than popups that drive numbers."
The Google+ foundation is all there -- they already focused on that: it really is the foundation of a brilliant social network, and I prefer it purely given that they don't decimate photos by the horrid overcompression that Facebook does. Their problem now is purely a network problem in that people don't see the point of sharing updates there given that many of the people they share them with aren't there. I fail to see how this example supports what they are saying whatsoever.
OT My recollection of the G+ scenario is that they stunted it themselves - for whatever reason. By the time the people I knew actually had access I'd lost interest in waiting for my friends to show up. They arrived to find that after a month nothing was going on and they lost interest. I'm not sure how it's doing these days but it felt like a massive missed opportunity.
Google+ deserves to wither and die because of the BS they have pulled.
When I'm forced to create a Google+ account just to use some of the basic features of the corporate Google Apps account which my company already paid for, it becomes quite clear there is no one at Google who gives a damn about customers. They are just trying to inflate their numbers at all possible costs.
It will be a great day when companies are finally forced to stop playing the "number of signups" game and start playing the "number of people who actually like our service and use it willingly" game instead (and no, we're not there yet; not even close).
[+] [-] programminggeek|12 years ago|reply
My metric for metrics is to track things that will change your behavior. If a metric changes and you don't, then it's a pointless metric.
I've seen many companies track reasonable metrics, only to do nothing about them when they change. They just try to "do more" of whatever they were already doing.
Doing the right things with the right metrics is not a skill that everybody has and not everybody can learn.
[+] [-] einhverfr|12 years ago|reply
Marketing is not the result of a few actions. It is and should be something woven into all business activities. It should be part of your email signatures, participating on social networking sites, etc. All of the little things build up and the thins which really help with building a presence.
There are legitimate marketing hacks but they don't involve tricking users. They involve living and breathing marketing, and realizing that building your business means a billion little marketing hacks, not a few big ones.
[+] [-] kevin_rubyhouse|12 years ago|reply
This is exactly what you are supposed to do in high-level RTS strategy. In Starcraft for example, you should know ahead of time what 'tells' you are looking for, and disregard the rest. It lets you focus only on the information that influences your decisions, and minimizes distractions from "scary" things the opponent may be doing.
[+] [-] the_watcher|12 years ago|reply
That's an interesting approach, and seems like a really useful filter for quick sanity checks of the correlation or causation question.
[+] [-] jtbigwoo|12 years ago|reply
In a normal company, the metrics would center around, "Are we making money?" "What sort of things point to us making more money?"
In the SV game, it's "Are we attracting attention?" "What sort of things will cause us to get more attention?"
[+] [-] mbesto|12 years ago|reply
It's not particularly strange if you break down the business models that dominate the SV ecosystem. These companies you speak of are merely procurement channels. Think of them as oil drills that suck up as many attention spans as physically possible. And largely they are all competing with each other to strike the next big oil well. Not unlike the oil industry they put massive amounts of capital into the discovery and refinement of such oil wells. The likes of Facebook, Google, etc are simply refineries who sell this attention (refined by analytics and insight) off to the Fords, Coca-Colas, etc of the world.
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|12 years ago|reply
You may think, how can that be? Wouldn't that cause companies to go out of business all the time?
Guess what, companies go out of business all the time. Most companies are fairly short lived, and a lot of the reason why is because they live in a fantasy land instead of concentrating on the fundamentals. Another fascinating thing you'll find is folks who have the knack of turning businesses around. There are plenty of reality TV shows about this sort of thing too. However, in almost every case turning around a business is mostly a process of concentrating on fundamentals and making pragmatic choices.
[+] [-] sbierwagen|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r0h1n|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 7Figures2Commas|12 years ago|reply
So trying to "hack" metrics that appeal to investors is an entirely rational endeavor.
[+] [-] calinet6|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] untilHellbanned|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlebron2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justin_vanw|12 years ago|reply
But, what's the point of articles like this?
Few people are so stupid that they believe moving some number is the same as doing well. There are lots of times when moving some arbitrary number is rewarded, and we know that humans respond to incentives. It's perfectly logical, and even the best strategy in some situations.
People who pull tactical games like this might be able to get by, or do well, or become captains of dying industries, but fundamentally we can probably agree they are assholes. Plenty go along because they are playing the junior edition same game with the junior edition of the same strategy. When there isn't a risk of repercussions, or when they feel like they have a chance to gain credibility, or whatever motivations big smart apes really act out of, they loudly laugh at and mock the asshole; because of the hurt they feel at wasting the part of their life that was spent doing something so obviously worthless, and because of the shame and regret of compromising themselves, and because it's a good move.
Some people have real problems. Some people don't get enough food to eat. Someone could say that it's a form of privilege to have problems like "I don't believe in my job". It almost certainly is.
Somewhere in some country where people die of things that people just don't die of other places, there are people officially working on things, and money being spent, all kinds of activity done because someone feels like that is their best strategy, and the people involved know it's stupid and pointless and a waste, and they know there are people suffering that could suffer less.
It's easy to play along. It's easy to play a strategy that maximizes personal outcomes. In fact, the people at the top almost certainly got there by playing such a strategy. It seems likely that it's an evolutionarily stable strategy, despite the implication that a lot more suffering is going to happen.
[+] [-] destraynor|12 years ago|reply
I've read your 5 paragraphs and I can't really understand what you're saying.
[+] [-] marcamillion|12 years ago|reply
They may hear that 2+ invites, and 3 projects 'activates' the customer - but they don't truly understand what that means and why that provides value.
I have noticed that with some of my clients too, and other entrepreneurs I talk to.
That's one of the reasons I am starting to write more about discovering/understanding value.
The first such post is 'Redefining MVP to Minimum Valuable Product'[1] because I think that's a perfect place to start - plus it is where I have been noticing this issue pop-up more and more in my work.
I think the entire industry does need to take a step back and really start re-evaluating the way we analyze/discover value. It feels like it has been lost with everybody trying to go too fast and 'hack' everything.
[1] - http://5kmvp.com/blog/2013/09/17/redefining-mvp-minimum-valu...
[+] [-] mistercow|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sirtel|12 years ago|reply
It is just like a math expression: Google+ growth-hacked.
If "Yahoo!" can be inserted in this sentence, it would be funnier.
[+] [-] joeblau|12 years ago|reply
As far as the meat of the article, I feel like this is spot on. The challenge I think is that a lot of people, including PG, have said they want to see 10%+ growth [1]. Customer acquisition is a very easy thing to hack if you know how to play the social game, but in the end, it comes down to product.
[1] - http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html
[+] [-] JonnieCache|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cdmoyer|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pc86|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hawleyal|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calinet6|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corresation|12 years ago|reply
The Google+ foundation is all there -- they already focused on that: it really is the foundation of a brilliant social network, and I prefer it purely given that they don't decimate photos by the horrid overcompression that Facebook does. Their problem now is purely a network problem in that people don't see the point of sharing updates there given that many of the people they share them with aren't there. I fail to see how this example supports what they are saying whatsoever.
[+] [-] aidos|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grbalaffa|12 years ago|reply
When I'm forced to create a Google+ account just to use some of the basic features of the corporate Google Apps account which my company already paid for, it becomes quite clear there is no one at Google who gives a damn about customers. They are just trying to inflate their numbers at all possible costs.
It will be a great day when companies are finally forced to stop playing the "number of signups" game and start playing the "number of people who actually like our service and use it willingly" game instead (and no, we're not there yet; not even close).
[+] [-] losethos|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]