Growth Hacking For Dummies

Chapter 2

Building Growth Hacking Skills

IN THIS CHAPTER

Seeing what growth hackers do

Looking at the common characteristics of growth hackers

Listing the skills a growth hacker should possess

Growth hacking is all about aligning your entire company around a process that grows value for its customers. You’re correct to assume that that won’t happen on its own, but you may not have a clear idea of how exactly it will happen.

Your starting point is the person who will be responsible for leading your company’s growth efforts. The growth lead, irrespective of the official title, is the person normally associated with the growth hacker label, but that’s not entirely accurate. (This chapter, as well as Chapter 3, goes into more detail about it.) If you’re on the core team that’s been tasked with growth, by definition you’re a growth hacker as well, at least in my view, but for the sake of simplicity, I’ll use growth lead as the stand-in for the growth hacker label.

Determining the Growth Hacker’s Skill Set

The basic growth process for any company follows the same pattern:

1. Identify your North Star Metric (NSM).
2. Analyze your growth model.
3. Set objectives.
4. Build a pool of ideas to test. ...