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Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising

Ryan Holiday (Goodreads Author)

3.79 · Rating details · 7,873 ratings · 635 reviews

Gmail, Facebook, AirBnb, Evernote. A new generation of multibillion dollar brands have been built without spending a dime on traditional marketing techniques. No press releases, no PR firm, and no billboards in Times Square.

It wasn’t luck that took them from tiny start-ups to massive success. They have a new strategy, called Growth Hacking. And it works.

In this e-special, ...more

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ebook, 56 pages

Published September 3rd 2013 by Portfolio (first published September 1st 2013)

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Start your review of Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising

Dec 05, 2013 Gary rated it liked it

Though I found the Ryan Holiday’s Growth Hacker thought provoking and had several good ideas in it, I also found it frustrating.

My point of frustration may not really be Mr. Holiday fault, but just the same it was my main point of contention with the book. I have spent my career with multiple Business-to-Business (B2B) product companies. In most of these companies the product was complicated and had many parts and aspects to it (including software and hardware components).

Though clearly there ar ...more

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Jan 22, 2014 Jeff Standard rated it did not like it

This book came off as a collection of self-promotional blog posts. About 1/3 of the book is spent trying to justify its own existence by talking up how you can forget everything you knew about traditional marketing. Where "traditional marketing" seems to consist mainly of running billboard or TV spots with expensive celebrities. The book's narrow-minded view of marketing really discredits what "non-growth hackers" actually do, while nebulously outlining what growth hackers actually do.

A positiv ...more

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May 26, 2014 Brad Feld rated it it was ok

Shelves: technology

I figured I’d read the cannon on Holiday so this was next. If you don’t know what “growth hacking” means, this is a good intro. But if you do, this is a waste of time.

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Dec 19, 2015 Kirtida Gautam rated it liked it

Shelves: chakra-3

The book is fine for a complete beginner. But it's quite at rookie level.

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Jan 28, 2019 Laura Noggle rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019, nonfiction, under-200-pages, business

~ Basic and vague, yet still relevant. ~

At 56 pages, the ebook is worth the minimal time investment. This was my 4th Ryan Holiday book, and I'm a big fan, although Perennial Seller and Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator were better.

“Marketing, too many people forget, is not an end unto itself. It is simply getting customers. And by the transitive property, anything that gets customers is marketing.”

"Growth-hacking is more of a mindset than a tool kit."

tl;dr:
Marketing is a s ...more

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Jan 28, 2015 Ola Olusoga rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: marketing

Fantasy overview of what Growth hacking is, and how to apply it to your company. Dives into quick examples of how some of the top companies today applied growth hacker marketing tactics to their business.

Points from the book:

1.) Growth Hacking

Marketing isn't something you do at the end of a product, it's intertwined in all aspects of the creative process (design, engineering, business strategy). The days of taking the "hollywood" approach to marketing ( launching event, billboards, super bowl ad ...more

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Sep 05, 2013 John Konrad rated it it was amazing

As a blogger and early Digg superuser I've had a ringside seat to many growth hacking campaigns and I've even done a bit of growth hacking myself but... the problem with growth hacking is there are countless hacks and a myriad of strategies but little has ever been done to connect the dots. Some books have enumerated some of these strategies and others have focused on individual pieces of the growth puzzle but each makes growth hacking appear chaotic and disorganized. The truth is that growth ha ...more

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Aug 22, 2018 Dipanshu Rawal rated it it was amazing

Book Review in 5 sentences-

1. First step.
Figuring out what people really want from your product.
Because, even if your prototypes are bug-free and flawless, they'll fail if there's no actual demand for them.

2. Don't target everybody.
Target early adopters, or those eager to try new things.
Since most people won't become customers, it would be a massive waste of time and resources to try to reach them.

3. Retain your customers.
Be oriented toward customer retention.
Centre your marketing effort ...more

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Sep 10, 2013 Aaron Goldfarb rated it it was amazing

It's gotten to the point where I simply do not miss a word Ryan Holiday writes--whether it's a Tweet, a blog post, or certainly a new book. I would have never expected his latest--a brief, cheap ($2.99), e-book-only work--to be such a game changer...if not a life changer. Before reading this, I didn't know the term "growth hacker," but now I can't imagine ever doing business without it. I suppose I'd always innately knew I needed growth hacking within the marketing for my own novels, but this is ...more

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Oct 06, 2017 Oleksandr Golovatyi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A very short but useful book about new marketing rules, about sunset advertising on television and new ways of business promotion.
-----------------------
Очень коротенькая но полезная книга про новые правила маркетинга, про закат рекламы по телевидению и новые пути продвижения бизнесса.

I read this book on Scribd by
Readlax Chrome Extension ...more

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Jun 29, 2017 Maciek Wilczyński rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Must-read position for traditional marketers and good compulsory read for start-up related people. The book presents the foundation, philosophy and key principles of growth hacking - the new way of attracting and maintaining clients in the long run. Few actionable tips, some great case studies. If you're looking for a book, which will tell you what to do, it's not the one. But if you're looking for a book, which will tell you how you should be thinking about marketing your product - go, run to t ...more

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Jun 26, 2017 Amanda Munday rated it it was ok

Shelves: business

I'm sure this book was valuable in 2013 - It was a little too basic for me in 2017. Yep, data driven is essential. But, let's come up with some amazing strategies for how to build off just calling out data as important.

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Jan 08, 2020 Mati rated it liked it

It's like a 50 page blog post. If you know nothing about growth, it may point you to some basic topics.

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Oct 18, 2013 Heather rated it liked it

A growth hacker is a software or computer engineer leading another team of engineers for the purpose of marketing. The concept of a growth hacker (and the point of Ryan's book) is that 'coding and technical chops are now an essential part of being a great marketer' (from Andrew Chen who is referenced in the book).

This was an alarming proposition for author Ryan Holiday as he is no engineer but is rather the VP of marketing of a large corporation (in addition to marketing for other well known cl A growth hacker is a software or computer engineer leading another team of engineers for the purpose of marketing. The concept of a growth hacker (and the point of Ryan's book) is that 'coding and technical chops are now an essential part of being a great marketer' (from Andrew Chen who is referenced in the book).

This was an alarming proposition for author Ryan Holiday as he is no engineer but is rather the VP of marketing of a large corporation (in addition to marketing for other well known clients and being an author). The idea that you have to have technical chops to 'make it' in the future of marketing was scary for him...and fascinating.

I feel like this short e-book was informative yet only mildly interesting. The main idea here is that to grow your product you need to continuously analyze the data so that you can continuously evolve the brand to fit the customer's demands. In order to execute such a task you must have the data. Thus, "a growth hacker doesn't see marketing as something one does, but rather as something one builds into the product itself". Examples of growth hacking in use: Groupon offering $10 coupons if you forward the link to a friend who purchases a Groupon; data sites who offer more data bytes of storage if you refer friend. Hotmail was one of the earliest examples of group hacking as they grew their email business by embedding the phrase "PS: I love you. Get your free email at Hotmail" at the end of every Hotmail email sent out thus wildly expanding the brand to the tune of a $400 million sale to Microsoft a few years later.

Hence growth hacking is the vehicle for acquiring customers since users have to be pulled in (rather than bombarded with ads like traditional advertising). This is where the technical skills of programmers and engineers come into play because they are the ones who come up with the different concepts like using a website's API, figuring out how to share codes for the brand with other websites (a la Airbnb's engineers figuring out how to auto post the listings on Craigslist which was a no-no at the time), and even sharing data on sites like Bit Torrent to generate mass appeal ahead of a product launch.

The limitations of such ideas as discussed would be for more traditional brands, or brands that aren't purely digital or always even digitally pushed. I feel like a lot of these ideas Ryan wrote about have been discussed before in various platforms and he just brings them together. Nonetheless for a 50 page e-book it may at least be worth a quick browse to see what's happening in the Silicon Valley world of marketing. ...more

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Jun 22, 2017 Nhung Pham rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: marketing, crap

Concepts and ideas used to define the Growth Hacker Marketing in this book are just a mixture of well-known approaches as Inbound Marketing and Integrated Marketing. Contemporary Mkt has rapidly and profoundly evolved since the rise of technology. It's absolutely not foolish as it was described in this book.

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Oct 01, 2013 Aaron Wolfson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: own-kindle, marketing, non-fiction, business, favorites, reference, web

This books packs a real punch in 56 pages. It gives you everything you need to know to adopt a growth-hacking mindset, which is the way marketing will be done exclusively in the future.

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Jan 19, 2018 Abhijeet Jain rated it really liked it

Shelves: marketing

A nice introduction about "growth hackers". The book is stuffed with numerous tactics used by top companies for the marketing, which obviously I loved.
Who should read this book?
If you want to know about growth hacking or you are just someone who wants to read about marketing.

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Nov 24, 2018 Josh Clausen rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Maybe novel in 2014, but this blog-post-turned-novella was nothing more than pointing out that traditional marketing has changed.

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Feb 19, 2019 Gabriel Lacerda rated it it was amazing

Very good book to show you a lot of another options for marketing.

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Jun 10, 2019 Alexis Chute rated it it was ok

I enjoyed what I read but I wanted more. This felt like only an introduction to what would be a more fleshed out book. For that reason, it felt shallow and superficial. Even short ebooks should aim to be as rich and as helpful as possible, no? My 2/5 stars reflects this, not what I think about the author or the content, but more so the format the information was presented in.

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Jan 07, 2020 Rob Mead rated it it was ok

Read as a B2B in 2020, so lots of it is self evident by now. Very consumer focused, and I disagree with the idea of virality over a flywheel

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Jun 07, 2020 Anna Mezhova rated it really liked it

A short and sweet intro to growth marketing.

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Mar 30, 2019 Mandi Ehman rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is a short-and-sweet intro to growth hacker marketing, and I appreciated both the way it was organized and the examples Ryan Holiday used throughout. Although I've been in this space of growth hacking for awhile, it was helpful for me to see the differences between growth hacking and traditional marketing laid out, and I found it great for idea generation!

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Mar 27, 2015 Ernest Junius rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Wake Up, Advertising
A review of Growth Hacker Marketing

Although the slogan “Advertising is Dead” has been proclaimed again and again by iconoclasts and innovators around the world since the beginning of the millennium, it might not be entirely true—especially in this country (Indonesia) where big companies are still taking advantage of oblivious citizens who are mostly still residing in rural areas away from civilisation and high-speed internet connection. To say advertising is dying is more acc Wake Up, Advertising
A review of Growth Hacker Marketing

Although the slogan “Advertising is Dead” has been proclaimed again and again by iconoclasts and innovators around the world since the beginning of the millennium, it might not be entirely true—especially in this country (Indonesia) where big companies are still taking advantage of oblivious citizens who are mostly still residing in rural areas away from civilisation and high-speed internet connection. To say advertising is dying is more accurate. I, however, prefer it best to call advertising is “less effective” (than it used to be).
Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday is talking about this exact phenomenon. Pioneered by startups the growth hacker phenomena has grown into a worldwide thing—it even has its own conventions, forums, groups, and discussions all over the net. It is the new thing of running (marketing) things: there is no more need of cosmic-scale marketing budgets for TV ads, glossy spread, full-page block in national newspapers, etc., you just need a bunch of growth hackers to run all your marketing needs and see your business proliferate in influence and numbers.
Great. So is it that easy? No.
The first thing, you need to know is what is Growth Hacker Marketing.

“The end goal of every growth hacker is to build a self-perpetuating marketing machine that reaches millions by itself.” —Aaron Ginn

So basically Growth Hacking is a mindset—not a toolkit—that combines marketing and engineering. Rather than doing traditional marketing like we all in big advertising agencies do, they do it differently by making their approach testable, trackable, and scalable. Rather than bombing the TV with pointless beautiful cinematic that runs for a minute for an X brand that viewers might not see anyway (because they switched the channel before the commercial reveals its benefactor), a growth hacker would develop something (most probably an app or a kooky Youtube video) that will grab their target audience attention and make them buy the product almost instantly and also make them the brand’s evangelists who will likely spread the love for the brand by talking it to their peers and writing about it in their blogs.
But in order to do this, there are steps to do and obstacles to clear. First off, you need to make a wonderful product. In other words, a product so awesome people will talk endlessly about it (probably like Twinkies when it first came out, I don’t know), the author put Instagram as an example.
Creating a great product is a marketing decision.
That’s new isn’t it? Well, it had been mentioned before in Purple Cow by Seth Godin, but in case readers forget, yes, the product is marketing in itself. So if the product sucked, marketing efforts are pointless. Sounds familiar? Yes, just what we do every day in advertising agencies—trying to sell tired old products.
After the great product phase, a growth hacker needs to learn from what the consumers think about the product (feedback, suggestions, etc.) and define what could be the best metric for growth. And after he figures that one out, he will need to make it go viral. And finally, he needs to continue make improvements and tweak the product to keep happy customers (cause it is stupid to invite the customers in just to kick them out, right?).
What most satisfied readers (and the ones who expect a god-like transformation happening in their companies) would overlook from this is that to make this growth hacking happen a company needs to have the right, qualified people. And on top of that it will need a ridiculous amount of work and research. And also most growth hackers out there are usually skilled not just in marketing, but also engineering and programming. At this point I would like to say that one would need to prepare these kinds of people beforehand. And not to mention one needs to set up the connections he needs to make things happen—because plans are just plans until they actually pull off. Although growth hacking is just a mindset, it can be very tough to actually pull it off. But when it does, it can be very rewarding (big impact sans big spending).
So if you believe the old way of advertising doesn’t work like it used to be anymore you might want to read this, although sadly I don’t think the tactics in this book aren’t applicable in big advertising agency environment, since big agencies are usually the servants of big clients with big, grand plans in their heads which usually involve big budgets for TV, radio, prints and all those ATL bullcrap that surely will go down the drain.
But don’t get discouraged now. Why don’t just use it for your own good? Apply it to your own venture, and maybe things will work out better than you’d ever hope. ...more

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Apr 17, 2018 Ash rated it liked it

I read this more some work related enlightenment, but it was stuff I pretty much knew already. At least it was quick.

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Mar 05, 2019 Aniruddh Sudharshan rated it liked it

Work based reading

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Jun 05, 2017 Rajesh Math rated it it was ok · review of another edition

It is basically an overview of an overview.... not worth the time if you are seriously into the subject

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Aug 24, 2017 M.L. McIntosh rated it it was amazing

I'm a complete and utter beginner. A total noob. I have no ratings, next to no followers, and no idea. All I have are some books I've written (a product) that I think are great, but are ill-suited to a traditional publishing market. I've spent my entire life in the medical sciences, from micro labs to emergency rooms, psych wards, residency...

I can't fill out my taxes without help, you think I'm going to effectively market and indie sci fi novel? Goodnight.

If you're like me, and I suspect some I'm a complete and utter beginner. A total noob. I have no ratings, next to no followers, and no idea. All I have are some books I've written (a product) that I think are great, but are ill-suited to a traditional publishing market. I've spent my entire life in the medical sciences, from micro labs to emergency rooms, psych wards, residency...

I can't fill out my taxes without help, you think I'm going to effectively market and indie sci fi novel? Goodnight.

If you're like me, and I suspect some of you trolling Goodreads are, you're frustrated, pissed, tired, broke, and running out of time in your life to make an impact with whatever product you think you've got to make humanity's collective day better.

This book is not a how-to manual. Go to something more like "Your first 1000 copies" for that kind of work. This is a "Calm down and market on" memoiresque shoulder clap. Holiday basically takes all the self-defeatist things we've all said after our 100th Tweet has resulted in exactly 16 followers and says, "No. These other guys did it. Here's some of the reasons why they made it, and you're not. Now go change."

The most helpful chapter, to me, came at the end when he describes his own book launch scenario. While I felt that Holiday and his client definitely got to "move up to the red tee" on a lot of points, it provided me, a total and utter newbie, some conceptual framework to just start with. I've already made several philosophical changes to the way I approach my two small business, and in one of them, I'm seeing results. You guys make fun of the TV ad, celebrity and billboard throw out spiel? Yeah, my company was seriously considering all of those things and could've sank ourselves financially in them out of ignorance. Now I'm rolling down the interstate laughing at my main competitor as I rack up more new leads, more followers, more views, and more likes. Oh yeah, and more income.

Like I said, this is not a "How to" manual that's going to crack deep, dark secrets of how to make a million bucks tonight using Facebook, it's a "How to think" manual for people who have just suddenly been dumped into this career path, possibly mid-life, and need to do some neurological re-wiring.
It's simple, it's optimistic. Some us need that. ...more

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Feb 24, 2017 Molly Looby rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

An incredible read. Full of amazing tips. Well worth a read!

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Apr 26, 2015 Nicole rated it it was amazing

Shelves: paperback

As someone who used to be in social media and who likes to stay current on the latest trends, applying them to my own current and future projects, I am always on the lookout for great, inspiring business books. Enter Ryan Holiday’s new book.

Growth Hacker Marketing details Holiday’s strategies for ‘hacking’ business growth during the creative/production process and ways innovative companies (start-ups) have combined PR, Marketing and Advertising…Giving case studies presented in fact-filled conver ...more

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About Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday

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Ryan Holiday is media strategist for notorious clients like Tucker Max and Dov Charney. After dropping out of college at 19 to apprentice under the strategist Robert Greene, he went on to advise many bestselling authors and multi-platinum musicians. He is the Director of Marketing at American Apparel, where his work in advertising was internationally known. His strategies are used as case studies ...more