To Succeed, Growth Hacking Has To Focus More On Product Than Marketing

[zht]

in business school (or any Marketing 101 class) marketing doesn't actually mean strictly promotion/advertisement. one of the traditional four ps is product, but I guess the term marketing has been overloaded

[jkw]

I didn't want to be pedantic but I felt the same way. The term marketing means much more than just promotion. It also encompasses word-of-mouth, branding, positioning, amongst others, which are the other valuable things the author recommended.

[rsobers]

"Find someone who’s a great product person and who really knows user experience and understands user value..."

I think the author is missing the point. Even the best products can falter if the company doesn't know how to get distribution. Unless you're an extreme outlier, you'll need both great product and great marketing. And that's really hard to get in one person.

[mjffjm]

I think this video by Chamath Palihapitiya about FB growth strategy is super interesting (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raIUQP71SBU).

Relentless focus on building the thing the customer wanted vs focus on viral marketing strategies. That said, they had an inherent viral growth strategy by targeting their initial user base to a very sociable/vocal college crowd. That wasn't a growth hack, it was merely solving a problem that most college kids had.

[enigmabomb]

Growth hacking is largely gimmick driven. It's about quick wins. Here's an article I wrote about why gimmicks have to work with the product: http://joshuaziering.com/on-marketing-gimmicks/

[timwut]

An evolution of the term 'growth hacking'? Interesting take.

[easy_rider]

I thought "growth hackers" were media buyers and blackhat SEO'ers.