I underestimated this book. At first, I didn't see the special value in the information provided. The earlier chapters lay the foundation for the hacking process, by concentrating on setting up “Growth Teams.” Okay, good idea, but not particularly startling.

The first part of HACKING GROWTH is a case study of amazing growth at BitTorrent. The author show what happens with marketing teams up with product: “The team fundamentally altered the culture at BitTorrent from one constricted by traditional marketing and product silos, to an open and collaborative one.” As a result, the company experienced a giant blast-off of growth.

Before trying to make your product go viral, you have to first figure out if it is WORTH going viral. That is, is your product a “Must Have.” If not, you’re not going to succeed: “A pernicious misconception about growth hacking is that it is primarily about building virality into products. That is indeed one of the key tactics, but like other growth efforts, it must only be deployed after the product has been determined a must-have.” To figure out the must-haveiness of your product, the authors provide a survey, which asks, “How disappointed would you be if this product no longer existed tomorrow?”

I found the numerous sections on setting up marketing experiments fascinating. At the early stages, design experiments that “will have the greatest impact on growth in the least amount of time.” When designing experiments, figure out the simplest experiment that delivers the metrics you need. This is known as the “minimum viable test,” which is the “least costly experiment that can be run to adequately vet an idea.” This also means that you have to clearly identify your “Growth Levers.” This in turns requires that you figure out “which metrics matter most for your product’s growth.” The author recommends focusing on a single, key metric.

The last chapter of the book addresses tactics on monetizing your site. The author suggests segmenting your customers into different “cohorts” groups, so you can better analyze your results. Start with segmenting “higher-profit versus lower-profit customers.”

This one phrase nicely sums up the book: “Big successes in growth hacking come from a series of small wins, compounded over time. Each bit of learning acquired leads to better performance and better ideas to test, which lead to more wins, ultimately turning small improvements into landslide competitive advantages.”

So all in all, I found HACKING GROWTH to be a practical book, with some really powerful ideas. The suggestions and tactics from Sean Ellis and Philip Morgan Brown on experimentation are excellent. I have actually performed similar experiments that the authors suggest, and I appreciate their insight and experience.

I thought one aspect of the book could be improved: Just as growth hackers want to see the results of their experiments as fast as possible, readers of non-fiction want to glean the information as quick as possible. This process can be improved easily. By including “bullet points” at chapter endings, the reader can much more easily follow and appreciate the key points. The reader can also decide which sections warrant further reading, or which sections are not of interest.

Advance Review Copy courtesy of the publisher.

The first I heard of Growth hacking is on LinkedIn as a Lynda course. So I was curious to read Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis.
Sean Ellis coined the term ‘growth hacking’ in 2010. The author shares the biography filled with stints of growth at different companies and the strategies utilized - Dropbox with its customer referral program (made famous by PayPal), Airbnb with their controversial Craigslist marketing and so on.
As an established expert, Sean Ellis shares how to form the growth team with a focus on three prong approach – Acquisition, Activation and Retention.
In the end Growth hacking boils down to improving customer’s product experience with a faster feedback loop of what worked and what didn’t with surveys and implementing changes.
The playbook for Growth Hacking is detailed to the level of hoe much time to spend on which item. The options available as channels to explore based on the kind of result that you need.
The most surprising thing from the book, is that from the experiments, it was found that products got more conversion rates when they could use contacts from existing service say outlook or single signon that will let you sign into an application from the commonly adapted ones like Google, Facebook. I shy away from them but most users seem to be in favour of it.
Now I know what to expect of the Growth Hacking Fundamental class on Lynda.