Software Engineer gone Growth Hacker

[growthhacker_bob]

Hello,

I'm Bob. I'm a developer that learned the world of digital marketing through setting up an own company. I've always been reinvesting the money from that to learn more about how to get nice products to nice people that can make use of them. However at some moment I felt like I hit a skill ceiling (and blew all my money through excessive risk taking for growth) that I couldn't move out of on my own. So I'm currently working for a Growth Hacking agency where we are with a dozen of people like me that share this interest. I've never been learning faster since then.

I'm not sure if Growth Hacking is a term that is looked up to favourably here, but I'm proud to be just that. I'm currently helping meaningful brands increase their results month and month again by sharp data analysis and creative ideas to leverage whatever I can see in the data. My area of expertise is pretty wide from bringing in new customers through content marketing and social advertising to getting more from current users by optimizing product onboardings. In all of this I'm helped a lot by my background as software engineer. Being able to run (mostly Node JS) servlets and scripts to automate whatever task I see value in, in a way that most digital marketeers I meet just can't.

I've been lurking the forums for a while now and have gotten lots of tips and ideas that I use in practice here. Reason I've signed up now is that I feel comfortable and experienced enough now to contribute something of value.

Any questions?

 

[drone6251]

Are your growth hacking techniques more black-hat related, white-hat related, or a mix of both?

 

[growthhacker_bob]

Are your growth hacking techniques more black-hat related, white-hat related, or a mix of both?

Growth Hacking in this refers to "hacking" as in, finding backdoors and unorthodox ways to grow business. Not breaking into systems. I abuse API's and go beyond the TOS sometimes though. I'm never looking to make a gain at the loss of somebody else.

I think a good example of what I do might be that I created an own WhatsApp API to automate WhatsApp reach out for clients so they can automate contact with customers, and for example do promotions of items to client. But only to clients that I was fairly certain would be interested in the offer.

 

[joepapp]

That's the most informative and interesting introduction I've ever read on the forum! Software development plus IM/growth hacking knowledge are an cool combo. Welcome Bob!

 

[karupoiss]

Growth hacking is a marketing term that makes me puke because it is so over used and in essence doesn't mean jack shit - it just means optimizing. However, good luck OP

 

[MlKEY]

welcome to the community hope to seeing you active !

 

[ZeroDefects]

Sounds like you have some interesting insight. Welcome to BHW!

 

[Magna_Carta]

Can you give me advice on how to promote a brand new forum in the sport betting tips niche, by the way, is not for profit just trying to build a community of folks who are betting on basketball. And in general, how can I learn your craft, are there any specific books or articles you would recommend? What would you recommend? Big thank you in advance.

 

[GSERP]

Awesome sharing of knowledge on Growth Hacking. Thanks for the OP.

 

[newbiebewbie]

I can relate to you bob, Sometimes i wish i knew this place earlier as it could be very valuable to me in earlier stages.
Most basics economics/marketing/automation/programming/mindset and all that stuff got in the pocket here aswell. Can be a very interesting combination.

This place does give some more inspo's or motivation aside from the information... Good luck to you!

 

[growthhacker_bob]

Growth hacking is a marketing term that makes me puke because it is so over used and in essence doesn't mean jack shit - it just means optimizing. However, good luck OP

Don't you feel like marketeers should market themselves? Growth Hacking as a term is an easy way to distinguish yourself from the average digital marketeer, which has gone stale due to the massive influx of people. It's something that help sell my service to clients.

With that in mind, I understand why it's out of place on this forum. How would you call a marketeer that constantly evaluates business performance from impression to retention, and works (or briefs) on all of this? Something like "Digital Strategist" or "Head of growth" sounds even worse to me. And "Growth Hacker" has the added value of giving a hint of my grasp on automation and scrapeing prowess.

 

[karupoiss]

Don't you feel like marketeers should market themselves? Growth Hacking as a term is an easy way to distinguish yourself from the average digital marketeer, which has gone stale due to the massive influx of people. It's something that help sell my service to clients.

With that in mind, I understand why it's out of place on this forum. How would you call a marketeer that constantly evaluates business performance from impression to retention, and works (or briefs) on all of this? Something like "Digital Strategist" or "Head of growth" sounds even worse to me. And "Growth Hacker" has the added value of giving a hint of my grasp on automation and scrapeing prowess.

These are all fancy words.. and they are word for customers. In essence they are all BS marketing words that are just made up so the service seems more "special" or a "short cut" when in reality it's what every business in marketing SHOULD do - optimize the campaigns. There is nothing "secret" or "magical" behind it. It's all fluff.

I understand it helps you sell it and that's ok. Just the word itself makes me puke because it has been so over used .D

 

[Matheus Moreira]

Nice intro mate. Welcome on board.

 

[growthhacker_bob]

These are all fancy words.. and they are word for customers. In essence they are all BS marketing words that are just made up so the service seems more "special" or a "short cut" when in reality it's what every business in marketing SHOULD do - optimize the campaigns. There is nothing "secret" or "magical" behind it. It's all fluff.

I understand it helps you sell it and that's ok. Just the word itself makes me puke because it has been so over used .D

Focussing on optimizing campaigns is exactly the reason I use a different term to differentiate my services from digital marketeers. If I have a 10k ad budget, and I see that we're 30% behind on benchmark on our user onboarding because of an UX/UI problem I've spotted through having my in app tracking setup well, I know that I can for example spent 3k on a UX/UI freelancer for optimisations that might net a +30% increase to all of my ad spent from that point onwards. While if you were just in it to "optimize campaigns" you will be wasting 3k on opportunity cost from that point onwards until someone spots this flaw in the product. Product owners themselves tend to take a long time to spot issues like this since they are often not looking at the business side of things. And especially for start ups that have grown faster then they are staffed for, these hidden opportunity costs really stack up. Sometimes I can come in at a place where there's literally a +50% revenue increase just waiting to be uncovered.

Making this change in process tangible to the customer by rebranding yourself as someone that's specialized in this whole process makes doing stuff like this a lot easier, and for me makes it feel like there's a real difference between a growth hacker and a digital marketeer. I'm having trouble accepting the term because as you say, it's very overused and lots of people are piggy-backing on it to sell just plain "campaign optimizations". But in the industry I am seeing a real difference; I have done multiple jobs where I'm hired alongside digital marketeers, or whole digital marketing teams to bring in this way of work. And even to them it helps to use the term "Growth Hacking" in communication because they then realize I'm doing something different that makes them more acceptive and usually happy to have me supporting the team.

Do you feel like I've just worked with other digital marketeers that are too junior to have this kind of oversight? Or what term would you communicate to make this distinction clear? Another wording I've tried is saying "I do digital marketing with an engineer's mindset.", but I feel that's a bit derogatory because I'm basically saying "Because I have experience in engineering I know how to do marketing better then you".

 

[karupoiss]

Focussing on optimizing campaigns is exactly the reason I use a different term to differentiate my services from digital marketeers. If I have a 10k ad budget, and I see that we're 30% behind on benchmark on our user onboarding because of an UX/UI problem I've spotted through having my in app tracking setup well, I know that I can for example spent 3k on a UX/UI freelancer for optimisations that might net a +30% increase to all of my ad spent from that point onwards. While if you were just in it to "optimize campaigns" you will be wasting 3k on opportunity cost from that point onwards until someone spots this flaw in the product. Product owners themselves tend to take a long time to spot issues like this since they are often not looking at the business side of things. And especially for start ups that have grown faster then they are staffed for, these hidden opportunity costs really stack up. Sometimes I can come in at a place where there's literally a +50% revenue increase just waiting to be uncovered.

Making this change in process tangible to the customer by rebranding yourself as someone that's specialized in this whole process makes doing stuff like this a lot easier, and for me makes it feel like there's a real difference between a growth hacker and a digital marketeer. I'm having trouble accepting the term because as you say, it's very overused and lots of people are piggy-backing on it to sell just plain "campaign optimizations". But in the industry I am seeing a real difference; I have done multiple jobs where I'm hired alongside digital marketeers, or whole digital marketing teams to bring in this way of work. And even to them it helps to use the term "Growth Hacking" in communication because they then realize I'm doing something different that makes them more acceptive and usually happy to have me supporting the team.

Do you feel like I've just worked with other digital marketeers that are too junior to have this kind of oversight? Or what term would you communicate to make this distinction clear? Another wording I've tried is saying "I do digital marketing with an engineer's mindset.", but I feel that's a bit derogatory because I'm basically saying "Because I have experience in engineering I know how to do marketing better then you".

I think growth hacking is fine for customers as it fulfills its purpose but when pitching you could do exactly that - explain what your "growth hacking" really means to the clients. Again, I understand the usage of this word pair and why it works - it's just that for me, as a marketer, I am sick of tired of seeing other marketers use this term and sell their stuff while what in reality they do is like the most basic shit ever.

Your angle could be even just that - explaining why growth hacking is BS term for your competitors and how what YOU do is actually different and brings results! This way you can use the term, educate your clients and build trust as an expert. Basically telling that you don't bullshit them with fancy terms while using the exact same terms to get the eyeballs in the first place - win/win.