There was a time when television and magazines ruled and marketing meant advertising campaigns. This was the Mad Men era where Madison Avenue advertising firms dominated and success hinged on being able to withstand a three martini lunch.

There were brilliant advertising geniuses like David Ogilvy whose firm Ogilvy and Mather created iconic campaigns. These campaigns relied on big spends on TV, radio, and print.

Now marketing means an entire suite of activities based on product/market fit and customer engagement. It’s no longer about manufacturing desire for a fait accompli product. Customer needs and feedback are baked into the product and the customer experience is integrated into the company.

Growth Hacking is about customer participation in the marketing process and turbocharging awareness campaigns by creating viral products and content about them.

Growth Hacking resides at the intersection of Marketing, Engineering, and Programming. It takes advantage of all the new tools of websites, mobile, analytics, email and social media available to us that help us reach and communicate with customers and measure their behavior in order to provide the best user experience possible. It has gone from one-way advertising to two-way engagement.

Growth Hacking is a process of rapid experimentation across marketing channels, like email and social media.

It’s also about product development focused on enhancing the user experience. Concerns about ergonomics, user interface, and graphic and industrial design are paramount.

The marketing goal is to identify the most effective, efficient ways to grow a business by understanding what is most compelling to customers both in messaging and product feature sets.

Growth Hacking refers to a set of marketing experiments that leads to the rapid growth of a business. The experiments are run by A/B testing features and messaging, and measuring which aspects customers respond to most favorably. Measurement tools like Google Analytics provide the metrics and feedback that help refine awareness campaigns and product features.

We course correct and iterate based on customer engagement and feedback.

Marketing Funnel

It’s about how you get, keep and grow customers. The first stage is Customer Acquisition where we activate customers to do something through Calls-to-Action. Calls-to-Action are designed to activate lead generation and sales. Initially it could be an email list sign up or download of valuable content and ultimately leading to becoming a paying customer.

Next we want to keep them and not lose them to competitors. Then we want to grow them by giving them compelling reasons to spend more or use more of what we offer.

Marketing funnels are developed to measure how many people respond and then convert to being customers. This process is obsessively measured and continually refined and optimized.

Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) are calculated and compared to the Lifetime Value (LTV) of a customer. We obviously are looking to optimize CAC<LTV. Conversion Rates are tracked and optimized along the customer journey.

Growth Hacking includes engagement with customers through delivering content like blogs, digital downloads, and social media posts. Viral Marketing is a method where customers are encouraged to share information about products or services via various Internet channels especially social media. Word of mouth and social proof from existing customers is what drives viral activity. Trusted sources like friends sharing good experiences with a brand are the best advocates for any product or service.

Take a pass on the martinis, especially at lunch. This is Digital Marketing.