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Growth Marketing vs Growth Hacking

Category : Growth Marketing Author : Team Amura Date Created: 03 Oct 2019

By now, you have a fair idea about growth marketing and what it can do for your business. If not, feel free to revisit our introductory blog on growth marketing and how it’s different from the traditional marketing approach. In this blog, we are going to introduce you to another term - Growth Hacking, which is almost annoying for those who’ve heard it thousands of times, and confusing for those who don’t know what it is.

What is Growth Hacking?

Growth hacking is probably THE buzzword for start-ups. It’s used as an umbrella-term for achieving massive growth on small budgets in a short time, hence ideal for businesses that are just starting out. The goal here is to acquire as many customers as possible without spending much. Growth Hacking was coined by the founder and CEO of GrowthHackers, Sean Ellis, in 2010. Growth hacking has contributed to the success of many companies like Spotify, Hotmail, Dropbox and more.

Take Facebook, for example. The growth of this social media giant in the last half-decade can be attributed to their on-the-feet strategies fuelled by the developing world. Even after hitting 1 billion global users, Facebook has been relentlessly optimizing its app for low-budget Android smartphones and low-bandwidth internet connections. By doing that, the company has additionally acquired 746 million more users in Asia and the Rest of the World market. Since its inception in 2004, Facebook now has over 2.5 Billion users.

Growth Marketing vs Growth Hacking

Growth hacking involves a certain mindset, while growth marketing is a long-term plan. Think of growth marketing as a broader concept for growing your audience by testing various channels, whereas growth hacking entails executing a specific tactic on a particular channel or making modifications on a product that grows that specific audience, usually on a small budget.
Growth hacking involves fast spurts of spontaneous growth (i.e. the rabbit) while growth marketing is slow and steady, in a holistic sense (i.e. the tortoise).

Growth marketing is different from growth hacking in the following ways:

Growth marketing vs growth hacking
 

Taking that Step Forward

As companies scale, they add marketing strategies and tactics that work to their marketing repertoire. The strategies that succeed become part of their long-term marketing plan. They are further modified, expanded and improved upon with time. And when these strategies form the key components of this larger plan to retain existing customers and also move onto acquiring new target audiences, it becomes growth marketing. In this way, hacking in the long term will lead to an effective marketing strategy.

One thing is for sure; growth marketing is the future. A well-thought-out growth marketing strategy can help marketers use real-time data to identify which efforts are working and which aren’t. At Amura, we have been doing just that for the past ten years. Being the pioneering growth marketing agency in India, our team of dedicated experts has helped over 500 businesses grow by catering to the entire funnel. We try newer hypotheses, put them to the test and quickly zero in on what works.
 

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Comments (27)

  Sampada posted over 3 years ago

Hello Sir. I found this article really inspiring so I wanted to thank you for that. What is the difference between t-shape marketing and growth hacking? Can you explain it?

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  Sylvia posted over 3 years ago

The downside of growth hacking is that everything can fall apart in an instant. WeWork is a good example of that.

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  Storm posted over 3 years ago

Growth marketing just looks better planned and executed. If I had to choose I would go for growth marketing over growth hacking.

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  Anderson posted over 3 years ago

Is there a reason why many new tech companies experience growth hacking. Looks like they experience it unproportionally more than in most other sectors.

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  Shantel posted over 3 years ago

It's the first time I am coming across the term 'Growth Hacking.' It does apply to a lot of successful startup companies nowadays.

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  Louis posted over 3 years ago

Growth hacking is a concept that I am not fully in support of. The idea behind it seems rather fragile and prone to failure.

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  Teddy posted over 3 years ago

Growth hacking is not easy to pull off. That's why most companies go the route of Growth marketing.

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  Daphne posted over 3 years ago

I much prefer Growth marketing over Growth hacking. It is more organic and takes into account the bigger picture.

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  Oliver posted over 3 years ago

Inasmuch as it sounds lucrative, growth hacking does have its dangers. It doesn't quite take into account the long term scenario.

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  Patricia posted over 3 years ago

I had no idea Spotify was as a result of Growth hacking. That's very interesting.

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  Meg W posted over 3 years ago

It's insane the number of growth hacking cases we have seen in recent times. The most recent one was definitely WeWork.

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  Rajaé Powell posted over 3 years ago

This article was quite informative. I have never thought of marketing in this way before. I definitely see how growth hacking can be used to spontaneously grow a company in the short term, then growth marketing complements it afterwards. Facebook was a good example that can be easily understood. Thank you for a new perspective.

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  Rajaé Powell posted over 3 years ago

This article was quite informative. I never thought about marketing in that way before. I can definitely see how growth hacking can be used first to spontaneously grow the business in a short time, then growth marketing working to reinforce the insightful gains made. The example about Facebook is interesting and I see how that can work. Thank you for the new perspective.

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  Roy posted over 3 years ago

Growth hacking is indeed all the buzz nowadays. So many startups are achieving incredible growth in a relatively short period of time.

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  Susy R posted over 3 years ago

What I do understand about this is that in fact, the best growth hacking strategies are actually effective marketing. If you intend to pave the path of growth you should have strategic thinking about the business.

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  May posted over 3 years ago

Though growth hacking is great way of marketing but I will prefer growth marketing, it will be good for the future

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  Oyeyipo Oladele posted over 3 years ago

The comparison of the two is so detailed. This is an exposure article. Thanks for this good post.

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  Danielle M posted over 3 years ago

I guess both, grow Hacking and Grow marketing are very helpful depending on the strategy that you want to build. The grow hacking sounds very attractive for small business because there's not very much money at the start but all business wants to succeed.

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  Gillian posted over 3 years ago

Interesting article. Learnt more about growth types.

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  conrad pranze villas posted over 3 years ago

I never really thought that I will learn so much from you. Thank you so much for sharing this information to us.

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  pauline posted over 3 years ago

I believe growth hacking is just okay for small businesses if I'm to go with the explanation here. it's a good idea for any young business

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  Alex posted over 3 years ago

The way I see it growth hacking can be combined with growth marketing. A quick spurt is fine but in the long run you may have to go to a plan. Being reckless can only go so far.

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  Joan Clarke posted over 3 years ago

One aspect is certain. Growth marketing is going to play a great role.

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  Suchita posted over 3 years ago

This has opened up a whole new way to look at digital marketing. Thanks

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  Sakina posted over 3 years ago

Growth hacking is the rage in India today. Now I see that growth marketing is the future.

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  Prasad posted over 3 years ago

Yes from your article it seems that growth marketing is a much the more extensive and planned-out version of growth hacking. I think for long-term business growth marketing is the way to go.

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  Kirshnan posted over 3 years ago

If we follow most strategists in the west we will see that growth marketing is becoming more and more popular for business. Thanks for the detailed article.

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