I just watched a webinar on “Growth Hacking”. I was curious to see how it’s different to marketing.

It isn’t.

(Other than ghastly jargon, like you need to “optimize on-boarding”, and the exhortation to make your pages “awesome”.)

Either someone has knowingly re-branded time-proven marketing methods so they can own the new name and position themselves as the expert… or they simply don’t know direct marketing.

Some of the advice was to ask yourself questions like:

Who are your customers?
How do you reach your customers?

Thanks, guys, I would have never thought to ask those questions.

It’s almost 40 years since Stone and Jacobs wrote the first edition of “Successful Direct Marketing Methods”. It’s over 25 years since Walter Weintz wrote “The Solid Gold Mailbox”.

There’s nothing of substance in “growth hacking” that isn’t covered in those books.

If you want to learn the real way to grow a business, study the direct marketing giants.

Don’t waste your time with these “growth hackers”. By the time their re-invented wheel is half as good as the direct marketing original, your business will have gone bust.

Steve    

PS Coming soon: why “big data” is something else we direct marketers are laughing about…

Categories: Marketing