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Role of a Growth Hacker

The role of a growth hacker is rather unclear because it is a fairly new position in the corporate world. There is some confusion about whether a growth hacker is just another title for a marketer and about what a growth hacker does. The role seems vague because the details are not clear. So let us begin with that.

Who is a growth hacker?

Simply put, a growth hacker is someone who can provide hacks for the growth of a company or brand. Their job is to provide creative, low-cost solutions to help businesses develop a consumer base and also retain them. The interesting thing about growth hackers is that they can have varied backgrounds since there is no one way to growth-hack for a brand. They could previously have been a marketer, a manager, an engineer, etc. Anyone who has experience building a product or a service can be a growth hacker. The key is their experience rather than their functional role.

There isn’t one department the growth hacker can fit into and work under. What they do requires them to work closely with the marketing, sales, engineering, and the product management departments.

What does a growth hacker do?

Their job is to grow the business. And they focus on developing strategies to do just that. They develop and test creative and innovative growth strategies. They are tasked with identifying the target audience, developing channels to attract those customers, and measuring success in order to keep driving more growth.

Responsibilities

  • Working with other departments to choose which KPIs to focus on.
  • Identifying, with in-depth research, the different channels to drive revenue.
  • Developing those revenue channels and optimizing them to increase growth.
  • Present creative ideas to grow the business through those KPIs through digital marketing, gamification, brand partnerships, on-ground activation, and more.
  • Analyzing the data and customer feedback and testing the ideas before implementing them.
  • Sharing the data from the tests with other teams and departments involved in the growth of the product or brand to work towards creating a more wholesome brand.
  • Providing expertise to other departments about campaigns.
  • Driving traffic to all digital platforms to extend the brand presence.

Growth hacking is multi-faceted and demands certain requirements from the position. It is preferred that the individual has a relevant marketing, computer science, business administration, or software engineering degree. Growth hacking is not yet a position you study for at the traditional college education level. It is one of those positions that an individual grows into with the required work experience in relevant fields.

And even with a degree, here are some of the skills and experience that are required to be a growth hacker.

  • Being extremely data-driven and performance- and results-oriented.
  • Having an in-depth understanding of analytics, metrics, statistics, and of course data.
  • Having an in-depth understanding of consumer behavior.
  • Understanding the importance of customer experience.
  • Having a keen understanding of startups.
  • Some experience with A/B testing and data analytics.
  • Flexible with the ability to change direction.
  • Having some experience in growth hacking tools such as Expandi.io, Zapier, CrystalKnows, GrowthBar, etc.

The continuously changing consumer behavior in a continuously changing market has brought about the need for the growth hacker. Whether or not this role continues to be a permanent position in the corporate system is yet to be seen, but the skills will definitely be needed in an increasingly competitive, global, and digital market.

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