Edition 16: Let's Growth Hack 'Bro' šŖš½
Itās already Thursday! Since last weekās letter was a little longer, Iāll (try) to keep this short & sweet!
Welcome to new subscribers! (Janessa, Tom, Sam & Ravi).
Sara (from Drift) put up a interesting question & there was a flurry of comments on Demand Generation being the same as Growth Marketing (Hacking).
If youāve read my tweets, youāll know where this is going. Some time ago some ābroāsā from the valley likely decided Marketing is too much of a āold schoolā word for what they did so they decided in good SV fashion, they should invent a new term. You know what sounds cool? Growth - because the valley is all about Growth At All Costs. So why the hell not call what they do (marketing) something more aligned with what the valley culture is (growth). They all wrote/read the same ācase studiesā about leveraging craiglist (airbnb) or Facebookās OpenGraph (Zynga) or Address book spam (LinkedIn) and decided they were āGrowth Hackersā. Everyone and their grandmother called themselves a growth hacker. Turn a stone and a growth hacker would pop out asking if you wanted 10X something.
Eventually the markets turned and Growth Hacking became the thing people turned their nose to. Someone say Growth Hacker - run the other way. But as things go, there was a new term invented. Itās not Growth Hacking - no no. We are Growth Marketers or āGrowthā folks.
I mean seriously - whoās job isnāt it to grow the business in some way shape or form. From the Operations Manager to Finance to Marketing/ Product etc - everyone is trying to add value to the business.
Thereās so many layers. But Iāll add this - marketing is a very very broad function. 99% of people think of marketing as acquisition & then by extension most of this noise about Growth (hacking, marketing etc) is focused on acquisition. Acquisition is sexy - look I just generated 10,000 pageviews.
But. Iāve just wrapped up an employer branding campaign for a client (yes thatās marketing too). Product Marketing, Customer Marketing, Corporate Marketing, Content Marketing, Press/Analyst Relations, Events ā¦ the list goes on.
So to answer Saraās question - is Demand Generation essentially Growth(marketing) - 99% of the time yes. In a B2B context, Demand Generation is about moving/generating pipeline (as are other marketing functions but they donāt have a neat line through to pipeline as demand gen tends to have - <insert attribution discussion>. Using Growth & Marketing in the same sentence is like saying Meat Steak. Marketingās core function is to grow the business - this happens via acquisition, customer insights/discovery, expansion, positioning, messaging etc.
I will likely come back to this topic later. Its like a fracking onion with layers and layers of nuance.
Something closer to home (Toronto) this discussion popped up in the Startup North Group on Facebook:
Most founders donāt value/understand marketing & hence donāt invest in it. Investment in the form of š° for headcount or investment into marketing. Most senior marketers donāt want to end up in a company where they wonāt be valued or have the bandwidth to do what it takes without having a CEO/COO breathing down their necks on why their website only got 500 views last month or some other metric and not having the room to hire folks to build an actual time, time to understand the market,customer etc.
Junior hires are less expensive & they can run your Adwords campaigns without actually understanding if people are searching google for a solution, what kind of people are the best fit customers etc etc.
This is one of the reasons Gia & Claire started ForgetTheFunnel & Elevate. (disclosure, Iāve done a workshop with them on FTF).
This thing is another onion folks. Iāll come back to it another time (please send me your thoughts!!)
Iāll say this though - its 2019 and marketing is still seen as a cost center not a revenue driver which just fracking pisses me off.
I promised Wes Iād touch on Product Led Growth & my reservations with the usage of the term.
My main concern with any marketing bandwagon is that the term will be abused & it gives people the impression āYou donāt need marketing, build it and they will come because your product will sell itselfā.
I hope that we can add a bit more of nuance around the PLG conversation - it does not work for every business / GTM (not all software should/can be freemium), you still need marketing to define your audience and help them discover/get value from the product over time & expand. Iāve worked on freemium products, the challenge with freemium is there is a VERY high signal:noise ratio & it can lead to being your team (esp support) being stretched very thin with requests from every direction. Thereās alot of consideration that needs to go in before you wake up and decide to make your product free for all one day.
Lots of things to unpack this week but I tried to keep it short.
Enjoyed this? Disagreements? let me know on Twitter or reply back.
š§ This was written with Dire Straits as the soundtrack.
P.S Mike Isaac (NYT) has an excellent book out about the story of Uber & Silicon Valley/Tech (culture) in general called Super Pumped, The Battle for Uber. Iāve been reading it the past day or so and itās superb. Ofcourse he never looks at the camera when I ask him to.