I see job descriptions every week, and lately, one has caught my attention; “Growth hacker”. This relatively new position sells as the holy grail for companies.
How does it work?
Quoting Wikipedia “It started in relation to early-stage startups who need massive growth in a short time on small budgets, but has since then also reached bigger corporate companies. The goal of growth hacking strategies is generally to acquire as many users or customers as possible while spending as little as possible.”
In summary, you will hire someone that can exponentially grow your business in very little time. This kind of ‘Shamanic’ practices always scare me a bit and believe me, I like shortcuts (better smart-cuts) as much as you do.
What if you could turn your entire company into Growth Hackers?
I want to propose something much more useful than growth hacking. Data-Analytics!
To start, the so-called Growth hackers use data and analytics as their north star to optimize budgets against performance continually.
But wait, is this not the Big Data hype we have been hearing about for the last ten years?. Yes and no.
The hype is part of tech and consultancy companies need to sell more products and services, but the fact is that Business Analytics has been there for many years and the results are not debatable.
But analytics is not the exponential growth that Growth Hacking promises, is informed decisions and gathering facts to build a strategy and tactics.
Your Marketing efforts will see much more fruits when you have accurate information on how they perform. Furthermore, when your team use facts and insights together with their experience and instincts, performance skyrocket.
Is Data Analytics a Crystal Ball?
Definitely not. It works best if you still keep your team’s gut feeling and experience, but collecting relevant insights will help them find the right solutions quicker.
I have for years successfully followed the 40/70 rule of Colin Powell. Collect 40 to 70 per cent of facts and then use your experience and instinct to make a decision.
Analytics Frameworks like GIDAR allows Businesses to run Analytics projects with a solid methodology that eliminates failures.
I don’t think many companies need a growth hacker. I think you need your company to know exactly what is going on. You want them to be informed and be able to make critical decisions based on data.
