This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Oh, hey, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. This is your host, Chris Guillebeau. It is now the middle of summer, at least in the United States, or the Northern Hemisphere, I should say. And we are just cruising along, episode 2017.
If this is your first episode of Side Hustle School, welcome. If it is your 2017th, you are amazing. Well, everybody else is amazing too, but I just really appreciate people who've been here for a long time, maybe the beginning. And if you're somewhere in between, well, hey, that's awesome, because I do my best to keep every episode relevant, helpful, short, because I respect your time, and I wanna help you grow your Cytosle or your business, whatever it is you're trying to create. Now, today's listener wants to know about growth hacking.
You ever heard that before? If you haven't, it's okay, because we're gonna define it. Is it just a fancy marketing term? Is it something only startups can do? Or is it something that anyone can actually apply and be helpful, to go back to that word again, helpful?
So I'm gonna give you a definition and also a few tips on how to grow your Cytosle. And by that, I mean, make more money. That is essentially what we're talking about one way or another. So detailed question from our listener, and then my answer after this quick message from our sponsor. Thanks, sponsor, and thank you, listeners.
[Music]
- Hey, Chris, this is Lauren, and I have an interesting question for you. I've heard of growth hacking recently and was wondering if you could define it for Cytosle. Is this something that applies only for startups and large businesses? If not, how do we do it without a lot of money? And how is it different from general marketing and promotion?
Thanks for your help. [Music]
All right, so I think the joke among, you know, some people who are a little bit skeptical of new terms or new marketing terms that are kind of created to describe what's already been existing, the joke is it's not that different. You know, growth hacking is the new marketing. But I think what a growth hacker would say is that it's marketing on steroids, that it's effective, scalable marketing. Because a lot of what passes for marketing is really speculative, unmeasured tactics that don't have real impact.
And so if you're trying to grow your business, you want to hack that process. You want to make it as efficient as possible. You want to have as much impact as possible. And so with growth hacking, what you're doing is like a series of activities where you hone in on what really makes your business grow. If you're starting a new project, you know, you can apply the same mindset.
Is it more customers? Is it existing customers spending more? Is it developing new products? Could be a combination of them. But then figuring out what's truly effective in increasing those metrics that you decide upon.
From there, you basically focus your efforts on those things, effectively hacking your way towards growth. So we can also just call it smart marketing, right? Marketing that's not just, you know, wasting time, wasting effort, putting something out there that doesn't actually produce a return. And I think really understanding, you know, the answer to that question, what is going to cause my business to grow? How then can I focus my efforts on those things?
How can I choose a couple of metrics to, you know, measure, right, to follow, to track over time? And only do the activities that increase those metrics, or I guess decrease if your metric is successful, if it goes down. But let's not get too into the weeds. The point is, how can you do what is truly effective? That's, as I said, smart marketing, whether you call it growth hacking or something else.
So that's how you should focus your time. And I hope you'll do that today. Choose one thing you can do to make some progress. And then of course, come back tomorrow for another short, brief, and again, helpful episode. Thanks for tuning in today.
My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." From the Onward Project.
