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How Growth Hackers Are Changing the Marketing Landscape

June 10, 2013 | Written by Dusty Dean

There’s a new breed of marketing experts on the planet and they aren’t high-profile executives with fancy MBAs. They’re called “Growth Hackers”, and with a unique combination of highly developed programming skills and their Internet savvy nature, they are completely transforming the entire marketing landscape.

Growth hackers aren’t anything like the typical employee you’d find working in the average marketing department. They’re programmers, data analysts and software engineers and they use their knowledge of networks, databases and user behavior to build frameworks that can reach out and market to hundreds of millions of Internet users.

Unlike normal marketing professionals who focus on developing new and creative methods that can generate user interest in their particular product, growth hackers are more concerned with the end result of increasing sales and boosting revenue by focusing on A/B tests, email deliverability and landing pages. They utilize scenario modeling, database queries and quantitative measurement to increase the virality of their product and get it onto the computer screens of as many users as they possibly can.

The employee-centric marketing process that’s been burdened by teams of VPs, marketing directors and account managers is quickly transforming into a much more API-centric process that is largely driven by programming and big data analytics. With over two billion users, the Internet is bigger than ever, and with powerful networking applications like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, gathering useful data and tapping into the vast pool of Internet users is easier than it’s ever been.

Growth hacking has become particularly important to the expansion of startups. Many large corporations have been in business long enough to know exactly who they need to market to and how they need to do it. Startups on the other hand are young and fragile and because they are still in the early stages of development, a core customer base has not always been identified. Growth hacking helps discover this base with high-volume advertising and sheer computing power.

Conventional marketing techniques require a great deal of hands on work on the part of employees and for the most part they are rather ineffective. Instead of targeting in on specific groups of people that are most likely to be interested in their particular product, they use high-volume advertising in the hopes that a very small percentage of those people are potential customers.

Growth hacking is based on a much different approach. By utilizing A/B testing, demographic targeting, usability tests and analytics, growth hackers can market their products to a very specific audience and as a result, conversion rates are very high. They have a comprehensive understanding of the most effective online marketing tools and they use them to develop highly efficient solutions that can help achieve the ultimate goal of turning visitors into actual customers.

Unlike ad agencies that see every Internet user as a potential sale, growth hacking focuses on generating leads and locating niche markets where product advertising will actually pay off. The ultimate goal of a growth hacker is not to simply spread the word about a certain product but rather to create a largely automated marketing machine that can generate revenue with a minimal degree of human involvement; and as more and more businesses try to develop new and innovative ways to tap into the potential of highly trafficked internet platforms, the importance of growth hacking in the marketing industry will continue to grow.

At BitCadet, we help companies increase sales and grow their business in a very measurable, data-driven way. Unlike most ad agencies that consist largely of copywriters, graphic designers and high-profile businessmen, our team is comprised of eCommerce executives, usability specialists, software engineers and data analysts that know how to utilize high-volume platforms to build a sustainable online marketing plan that gets quantifiable results.

June 10, 2013 | Written by Dusty Dean

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