We have analyzed the world of Growth Hacking, from its origins to the present day: in 6 points we will explain how and why Growth Hacking started, the funnel, the tools, the synergies, and 4 case studies. They're called growth hackers , but the name shouldn't be misleading. They are complete professionals who work with method, discipline and systemic vision. Growth Hackers have young roots and are currently on the rise as their work has resulted in some of the brightest business successes of the past decade. Growth Hackers are masters of digital marketing, products and data. They know the markets, processes and relationships between brands and customers incredibly well. They innovate with specific strategies tailored to individual businesses but guided by one big goal: business growth. Even though this definition may be available to anyone, what they actually do is still unclear to many.
We have dedicated this article to Growth Hacking in order to shed light on its methods, techniques and tools: in 6 points we will explain how and why the practice was created, its tools, the funnel, the synergies with the email channel, and 4 case studies. #1 | The origins of growth hacking The origins of Growth Hacking clearly go back to one name: Sean Ellis . Ellis is a famous American marketer who has worked for some of the most prominent American E-Commerce Photo Editing Service startups such as Dropbox, Kiss metrics, Quaoar and Logging. In July 2010 , he wrote an article on his blog which became the discipline's manifesto: Find a Growth Hacker for Your Startup . This is how the word was born. Sean Ellis Silicon Valley has been the scene of it all, the cradle of innovation and start-ups from which many of today's market players originate. But why the world of start-ups?
Because they operate under conditions of limited resources, time and budget . Therefore, to compete with the giants, start-ups had to come up with alternative strategies . And that's where the Growth Hacker comes in: it takes the competition from an economic playground to a more varied terrain made up of many different aspects. For Sean Ellis, marketing is just one of the tools available to the Growth Hacker, which actually approaches the problem of growth in an unconventional way . #2 | Four case studies: Dropbox, Hotmail, Instagram, Airbnb Even giants were once children. For example, over a period of 12 months, Dropbox saw its number of users increase from 100 thousand to 4 million . This unusual growth would be unthinkable with canonical marketing strategies. In fact, Sean Ellis has something to do with it. When he arrived at Dropbox, Ellis put aside AdWords, the company's most used channel, to experiment with a new strategy: encouraging users to invite an acquaintance to Dropbox in order to obtain more free space. Thus, referral marketing was born. Even if it is considered a good practice today, it represented a formidable Growth Hacking operation at the time.