Don’t “Growth Hack”

Can we lay this term to rest? It just feels… tainted.

To be clear, growth in and of itself isn’t a bad thing. But somehow “growth hacking” has earned itself a bad reputation. Why is that?

To figure this out, let’s journey back to the very beginning.

Doomed by definition

When Sean Ellis coined the term growth hacker in 2010, he stated that:

A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth.

And therein lies the problem…

Growth for the sake of growth has never been a good LONG-TERM business strategy. Growth for the sake of growth may appear to work wonders in the short-term, but long-term it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Long-term, growth should be centered around people not numbers or percentages.

The simple truth:

Everything that a “growth hacker” fights tooth and nail to optimize can be improved across the board by focusing on one thing:

Just focus on making your users lives better

Instead of having your north star be growth, what if instead you focused on the success of your users as your primary objective? Once your primary focus shifts to making your users lives better, everything else that you used to wrestle with as a “growth hacker” will begin to fall into place:

  • Activation – By focusing on your users, and their needs, you’ll have less friction in your new user flow, so more people will stick around.
  • Revenue – With more people sticking around, chances are you’ll make more money.
  • Retention – By definition, if more people stick around, your churn decreases.
  • Referrals – If people find your app remarkable, they’ll spread the word.
  • Acquisition – As people tell others, you’ll acquire more users.

By focusing 100% on users you likely won’t see as many short-term benefits as you would if you continued growth hacking. Unfortunately, one side effect of aggressively optimized short-term growth is that it often comes at the expense of long-term losses. Only, you won’t see the long-term effects for years to come, and by then it’s often too late to do anything about it.

Comments

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