Growth hacking

Growth hacking is the use of a combination of digital marketing, data analysis and technology in order to dynamically increase the company's turnover and sales revenue.

"Growth hacking" means "breaking" patterns leading to revenue growth and exploiting them in good faith. The word "hacking" refers to trying to achieve growth by using different methodologies and patterns. The goal is to discover and introduce cheaper or faster solutions.

The origin of the concept comes from the early startups of Silicon Valley. Originally, e-commerce providers, webshops, and web providers used the opportunity of growth hacking. Today, uncertainty and unpredictability force even larger companies to adopt an operating model based on data-based marketing and data-based decision-making. 

By definition, growth hacking lies at the triple border of marketing, engineering and data analysis. This is seasoned with some thought. Many different combinations are possible, but the common feature is the goal to grow the business. Since the field is relatively new, there are few proven recipes or patterns for now. Growth hacking is all about experimentation and thinking outside of the norm, but in all cases the solution is strictly data-based. 

First of all, it is necessary here that all business processes of the company are also digitally trained. Secondly, the company should be able to determine from an almost infinite number of options those points that are worth measuring and which help to make the right business decisions in a timely manner. 

Finding the right key performance indicators (KPI) is essential for this. (In the case of Facebook, one of the basic KPI can be, for example, the number of monthly active users. For a chat program, KPI can be, for example, the number of messages sent. And in the case of YouTube, the number of minutes spent watching videos can be the KPI. It is important that KPI are measurable and countable facts in all cases.)

The ultimate goal is to find predictable, repeatable and scalable growth patterns and processes. It follows that growth hacking is not an occasional thing, but rather a fixed, repetitive process.

Growth hacking processes should be started primarily with very new startups, as well as with already very advanced, complex companies. The advantage of the solution for startups is that even with limited financial and human resources, this solution can generate significant growth and helps to validate early ideas.