The role of the the Growth Hacker and how to become one

Although the term is not new - Growth Hacking was coined back in 2010 by Sean Ellis and later popularized by Andrew Chen - the Growth Hacker role and subsequent practices have been slowly making their way from the startup community into wider corporate acceptance in recent years.

A Growth Hacker is part marketeer and part software engineer. A growth hacker comes up with ideas to grow and retain customers and sell products. They do this by setting up growth experiments using data and technology. They live, breathe and constantly think about ways to grow their user base.

Responsibilities

This person is responsible for designing, implementing and analysing strategies that can yield the highest conversion rates at the lowest possible cost, working towards long term sustainable growth.

The core aspects of the job include:

1. Designing and optimising customer acquisition processes
2. Management and optimisation of multiple digital channels, platforms and campaigns
3. Continuous testing and experimentation at scale

Tasks

Looking into the tasks in more detail, a Growth Hacker is busy...

• Planning, executing and optimizing multi-channel growth strategies
• Implementing A/B and multivariate testing
• Measuring and analysing key performance indicators such as LTC, CAC, Churn rate…
• Developing automated growth processes and marketing initiatives
• Building reports and dashboards

Profile

Optimism, passion for digital businesses and an entrepreneurial spirit are all valuable qualities for this position. Being comfortable around data is also increasingly important.

Companies hiring for this position look for previous experiences in marketing, building and launching products in fast-paced high growth environments such as startups and scale-ups.

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