I’ve had some conversations with clients and prospective clients who think they need a “growth hacker.” I finally did some reading on what a “growth hacker” does and I think Mark Macdonald’s article is one of the readable and rational ones.

It turns out that while “marketers” are interested in things like creating buzz from a large PR push, running Super Bowl ads and growing awareness “growth hackers” are interested in achieving measurable metrics like lower Cost Per Install, higher ARPU, greater LTV and so forth.

Sounds like good old-fashioned direct response marketing to me. I suppose the difference between a “growth hacker” and DR marketer is that the former has no historical awareness of their trade, while the latter tends to focus less on PR and more on delivering the objectives.

Takeaway: I’ve got a silly new way to describe what I do!