Is growth an art or science? Some praise the creativeness of new growth hacks. Others praise the quantitative maneuvering of analytical growth geniuses. That question has been debated. But are we asking the right question?
The creative juice brings new ideas around story telling, great copywriting, unique ad creative, and never tried before growth tactics. But the quantitative science helps us measure the largest friction points, validate areas of opportunity, and understand how users behave at scale.
It seems the better question is how do we balance both? Truly brilliant growth teams are ones that figure out how to combine the nature of art and science to accelerate growth.
There is a cycle that plagues a lot of companies.
It typically works like this:
1. XYZ startup wants some press, so they look for some bloated number to give the writer (downloads, registrations, visits, etc)
2. XYZ startup then celebrates that press article internally supporting the message that the bloated metric is worth pursuing
3. In order to get additional press hits, XYZ startup needs to increase that bloated number, so they focus on increasing it (back to Step 1)
If there could only be one principle among our growth team, it would be this one. This one principle runs through everything that we do day in and day out. It guides our day, our ideas, our strategy, our hiring, our team.
When I meet new companies to advise them on growth, the number one question I get is “what tactic should I use to grow my business?” At first I would try to give an answer. But it never felt right. After all, I just met this person and knew next to nothing about their business. Even more important though I started to realize that the question typically stemmed from the search for a secret, hack, or tip about a growth tactic that was going to unlock all of their growth problems.
The following is a guest post by Justin Mares, Co-Author of Traction: A Startup Guide To Getting Customers. Choosing how to get traction can be an overwhelming process. The Bullseye framework helps organize all the options and drive toward a decision.
I have come very close to a few very big wins in my career. Close, is the key word in that sentence. My first company was a college specific social network prior to Facebook existing. My second company was in virtual goods a year before social gaming really existed. Both were in the right place at the right time, but neither turned into “home runs.”
I could probably come up with many reasons for the wins. Intelligence, ambition, luck? I could also probably come up with a lot of excuses for the misses. Lack of knowledge, wrong environment, bad investors, competitors?
Honestly though I think that it was none of those reasons. In hindsight, everything boiled down to one factor...
The topic of growth has been more polarizing than I would have ever expected. The animosity largely surrounds the use of the term “growth hacking.” It is so high in fact that I debated whether I should even publish this post. Growth is a maturing topic though. I think the way that we progress is by having this conversation and focusing on the right things.
As growth continues to become a popular subject, more content on the topic is being published. I think this is great. The more quality content out there on the subject, the better for the startup community. But as I read a lot of this content and watch others react to it I cringe on the inside because I know many of the readers are going to start chasing down incorrect paths. Let me explain...
I was recently in my home state of Michigan for a wedding with all of my college buddies. One night we went to the casino downtown Detroit. I’m a sucker for playing Blackjack. Unfortunately I did not win. But while playing Blackjack and “earning” my free drinks my nerd brain started to churn and I realized that Blackjack strategy and Growth strategy have something in common.
There are key differences between the traction phase and the growth phase of a company. Understanding what stage you are at, helps you focus on the right goals, metrics, channels, and team structure. But how do you know when you are ready to transition from one phase to the other?
