Is Growth Hacking same as Viral Marketing?

This question, has been hopping around in many forums, social sites and on plenty blogs. So what really is the new “Growth hacking” phenomenon? Why has it got so much sudden attention?

For some, it’s exactly the same as viral marketing, for some it’s a tad bit more.

Growth Hacking is a kind of a revolution taking place in the world of Start ups. The term defines every little bit a start up should look at and take action in order to grow rapidly. Anyone who understands growth hacking and is following it, surely has a competitive advantage over the rest.

It follows the same principle of viral marketing and that is to get as many viewers, subscribers, clicks, increase user base, etc. as possible. But Growth hacking is just not it, it is an extension of tricks of automation or hackery that help get more out of your customer. It is nothing new or out of box, it is just an expression that describes strategies used by many start up marketers in different ways.

A classic example of Growth hacking is the case of Air bnb’s Craigslist hack, and we are quite sure they will be the last. Air BNB infamously formed a “post to Craigslist” element in their website despite there not being an official API. They did this in order to gain initial traction. It did wonders and worked amazingly well for Air bnb.

So basically Growth Hacking is nothing but a mix of marketing and coding. The growth hacker job title is well getting integrated into Silicon Valley’s culture. Today companies look for marketers who can solve the conventional question of “how do I increase my customers” by using great coding and technical skills.

Growth hacking is not exactly viral marketing but well engineered marketing.

There are some detailed techniques and guides available on many blogs. Here is the list of the top 5 blogs giving away some great and valuable information on Growth hacking.

1)      Jon Yongfook : http://yongfook.com/actionable-growth-hacking-tactics.html

2)      Neil Patel and Brosnon Taylor: http://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking/

3)      Andrew Chen:  http://andrewchen.co/2012/04/27/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an-airbnbcraigslist-case-study/

4)      Examples of Growth hacking: http://www.venturesity.com/blog/5-classic-examples-of-growth-hacking

5)      Aaron Ginn : http://www.aginnt.com/growth-hacker#.U4f9TvmSzBx