Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday [Book Summary #14]

Rating: 8/10

Growth Hacker Marketing is a thin volume filled with concise insights on how to approach marketing in the digital age.

My Notes

Step 1: It Begins with Product Market Fit

PMF is a feeling backed by information and data. 

Step 2: Finding Your Growth Hack

To be successful and grow your business and revenues, you must match the way you market your products with the way your prospects learn about and shop for your products. 

Not all people--the right people.

Examples:

1. Create aura of exclusivity with invite-only.

2. Create 100s of fake profiles (artificial popularity).

3. You can target a single service or platform and cater to it exclusively (as PayPal did with eBay). 

4. Launch for just a small group of people, own that market, and then move from host to host until your product spreads like a virus (Facebook). 

5. Host cool events and drive users manually. 

6. Absolutely dominate the App store because your product provides new features everyone is dying for. 

7. Bring on influential advisers and investors for their valuable audience and fame rather than their money.

Focusing on customer acquisition over "awareness" takes discipline...At a certain scale, awareness/brand building makes sense. But for the first year or two it's a total waste of money."

Step 3: Turn 1 Into 2 and 2 Into 4--Going Viral

Virality isn't luck. It's not magic. And it's not random. There's a science behind why people talk and share. A recipe. A formula, even. 

Step 4: Close the Loop: Retention and Optimization

Retention trumps acquisition.