Growth Hacking and Magic Potions

What does Growth Hacking exactly mean?

It is a complex marketing technique that requires creativity, a touch of analytical thinking, and web metrics and social networking to sell a product. Simplifying the most, it is a set of marketing techniques based on advertising and buzz about a product with a low budget. In many cases, growth hackers are known as strategist’s positioners, but must also provide a great deal of creativity. It is a figure consolidated in start-ups, since they are companies that should launch a new product with a low budget in advertising.

The father of this magic potion lives in California and his name is Sean Ellis, founder and CEO of the company Growthhackers and first marketer of Dropbox. In 2010 was the first time the term was used.

A growth hacker must have a very specific profile, having to comply with the following skills:

• He should be flexible and open-minded to new ideas/trends.
• Must be creative.
• Addict metrics.
• His goal should always be focused on growth.

Actually, there are many start-ups that, convinced on this fantastic mix or magic potion, use this type of profiles to increase their sales and improve their online positioning. Experts and connoisseurs of Social Media, UX, Product Management, deliberaty, A/B Testing ...

To understand the meaning exactly of the growth hacking, we will show you two examples of companies that use this strategy: Twitter and Dropbox.

Twitter chose not to advertise itself and focus its product on its own platform. In each of the existing profiles, it prepared a recommended space for people to follow other users and thus grow the user activity on its website. It's like the traditional word of mouth but through online. Much easier and faster. Twitter managed to grow exponentially with no external marketing. Brilliant idea!

For its part, Dropbox, possibly under the direction of the father of the term growth hacking, began offering 125 MB additional storage to users who follow it on Twitter or Facebook profile.

These are ideas that, today, it may seem obvious ... But being the first to have them, is not easy. As always, we recommend you to go to experts in the field because although it seems simple, has its own intringues. Things do not just happen.