Growth Hacking v/s Digital Marketing
I know lot of people get confused on the difference between growth hacking and digital marketing.
But do both these terms - growth hacking and digital marketing -refer to the same thing?
I mean same wine in two different bottles?
The answer is No.
The main focus of Digital Marketing is as below.
- customer acquisition
- retention
- branding using digital technology.
Digital Marketing is applied to all types of businesses including matured ones, for continuous branding and lead generation and customer retention.
On the other hand the main focus of growth hacking is growth. And growth can come from any channels including digital marketing techniques. Digital Marketing plays a major role in hacking growth. But, apart from Digital Marketing, growth hackers use various other ways including
- product design
- user experience
- psychology
- engineering
- statistics
- analytics and so on to grow the business real fast.
Growth hacking as a function is very flexible and very adaptive and it could take inputs fromany of the above disciplines to hack the growth of a business. Growth hacking is mainly applied tostart up businesses to achieve growth real fast in the initial stages of their life cycle.
Example
A great example of growth hack is what AirBnB did of a simple loophole in Craigslist. In the initial stages of growth, AirBnB reverse engineered and created a system where customers can directly post on AirBnB and Craigslist at the same time. ll they had to do is visit AirBnB site and fill in the form for rentals.
Using a loophole in the Craigslist system the same listing would get published on Cragslist automatically. Later on Craigslist found this and plugged inthe loophole. But by this time, AirBnB managed to build a considerable customer base. This is how AirBnB hacked the growth of its business in the initial stages. Experts reveal that majority of startups fail because they focus too much on cool products and ignore marketing and distribution. The real challenge lies in marketing.
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