Hacking Growth: Summary Review
This is a summary review of Hacking Growth containing key details about the book.
What is Hacking Growth About?
"Hacking Growth" by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown is a practical guide to growth hacking, providing strategies and tactics for businesses looking to accelerate their growth. The book outlines a five-stage process for growth hacking, including understanding the customer journey, developing growth hypotheses, creating and prioritizing experiments, running and measuring experiments, and scaling successful experiments. The authors provide real-life examples and case studies throughout the book to illustrate the effectiveness of growth hacking strategies, covering topics such as acquisition, retention, monetization, and referral marketing. "Hacking Growth" emphasizes the importance of data-driven decision-making, cross-functional teams, continuous experimentation, and using customer feedback to drive growth.
Hacking Growth is an accessible and practical toolkit that teams and companies in all industries can use to increase their customer base and market share. This book walks readers through the process of creating and executing their own custom-made growth hacking strategy. It is a must read for any marketer, entrepreneur, innovator or manger looking to replace wasteful big bets and "spaghetti-on-the-wall" approaches with more consistent, replicable, cost-effective, and data-driven results.
Summary Points & Takeaways from Hacking Growth
Some key summary points and takeaways from the book include:
* Growth hacking is a process: Growth hacking is not a one-time event or a set of tactics, but rather a continuous process of experimentation and optimization. The growth hacking process involves identifying areas of opportunity, developing hypotheses, testing those hypotheses, and then analyzing the results to refine your approach.
* Growth hacking requires a data-driven approach: To be successful at growth hacking, you need to be able to measure the results of your experiments and use that data to guide your decision-making. This means setting up metrics and analytics systems that allow you to track user behavior, engagement, and conversion rates.
* Successful growth hackers focus on customer acquisition and retention: The two key areas of focus for growth hackers are customer acquisition and retention. By experimenting with different acquisition channels and optimizing onboarding and activation processes, you can attract new customers and convert them into loyal users.
* Growth hacking is a team effort: Growth hacking requires the collaboration of different teams, including product, marketing, and engineering. By working together and sharing data and insights, teams can identify opportunities for growth and experiment with new approaches.
* Continuous learning is essential for growth hacking success: Finally, the most successful growth hackers are those who are constantly learning and adapting. By staying up-to-date on the latest trends, technologies, and tactics, you can stay ahead of the competition and continue to drive growth over the long term.
* Overall, "Hacking Growth" provides a comprehensive guide to the process of growth hacking and offers practical advice for anyone looking to accelerate the growth of their business. By emphasizing the importance of a data-driven approach, collaboration, and continuous learning, the book provides valuable insights for entrepreneurs, marketers, and growth hackers alike.
Who is the author of Hacking Growth?
Sean Ellis is the author of several novels. He is a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom, and has a Bachelor of Science degree in Natural Resources Policy from Oregon State University. He lives in Arizona, where he divides his time between writing, adventure sports, and trying to figure out how to save the world.
Morgan Brown is a growth product manager at Facebook and a startup marketing veteran with more than 15 years helping early stage companies find traction and breakout growth. With his MBA from the startup school of hard knocks, and a passion for uncovering what makes some companies grow and others fizzle, Morgan puts his expertise in digital marketing to work for businesses of all kinds.
What are good quotes from Hacking Growth?
“Growth hacking cultivates the maximization of big data through collaboration and information sharing.”
“commerce store’s business model revolves around driving the highest volume of potential shoppers to its site, and so search ads and SEO are obviously vital channels, while marketplace businesses like Uber and eBay must divide efforts between channels for bringing in suppliers and those aimed at shoppers (or riders).”
“map all of the steps that get users to the aha moment; create a funnel report that profiles the conversion rates for each of the steps and segments users by the channel through which they arrive; and conduct surveys and interviews both of users who progressed through each step where you’re seeing high drop-offs, and those who left at that point to understand the causes of drop-off.”
“There is no question that stalled growth is one of the most pernicious and pressing problems for today’s businesses, and that’s not just true for start-ups, but for just about any business, large or small, in just about any industry you can think of.”
“failed, close up shop. They had considered employing several growth hacks to drive more adoption. For example, they thought about requiring people to whom users sent photos to also sign up for the app in order to download the photos. But they decided against that because they were afraid it would annoy people. But remember that growth hacking involves more than picking from a menu of hacks; it is, rather, a process of continuous experimentation to ensure that those hacks are achieving the desired results. If they were truly practicing growth hacking, they would have run a test to determine whether or not their assumption was true. Instead”
“To determine your value metric, Campbell recommends asking yourself three questions: Does the value metric align with where your customer perceives value? Does the metric scale as the customer uses the product more? Is it easy to understand?”
“handy chart of types of user behavior that you can use as a guide”
“The more information people put into the product, the more their commitment increases, through a concept called stored value. Much like putting money in a safe deposit box, putting information into service instantly creates a sense of ownership for users and an inclination to a commitment to add to and maintain that value.”
“Reciprocity—whereby people are more likely to do something in return of a favor, regardless of the favor done and the ask now presented to them Commitment and consistency—people who have taken one action are likely to take another, regardless of the size or difference in action Social proof—in a state of uncertainty, people look to the actions of others to help them make their own decisions Authority—people look to those in the position of authority to decide which actions to take Liking—people will do business more readily with people and companies they like over those they don’t or are indifferent to Scarcity—people will take action when they are worried that they will miss out on the opportunity in the future”
Book details
- Print length: 320 Pages
- Genre: Business, Nonfiction, Entrepreneurship
What are the chapters in Hacking Growth?
Chapter 1: Building Growth Teams
Chapter 2: Determining if Your Product is Must-Have
Chapter 3: Identifying Your Growth Levers
Chapter 4: Testing at High Tempo
Chapter 5: Hacking Acquisition
Chapter 6: Hacking Activation
Chapter 7: Hacking Retention
Chapter 8: Hacking Monetization
Chapter 9: A Virtuous Growth Cycle
What do critics say?
Here's what one of the prominent reviewers had to say about the book: "A terrific book [that] belongs up there with Geoffrey Moore, Eric Ries and Steve Blank’s books as a fundamental part of the canon of StartUpLand" — Jeff Bussgang, Harvard Business School Lecturer, and general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners
* The editor of this summary review made every effort to maintain information accuracy, including any published quotes, chapters, or takeaways. If you're interested in enhancing your personal growth, I suggest checking out my list of favorite self-development books. These books have been instrumental in my own personal development and I'm confident they can help you too.
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
