Determining which digital marketing channel or tactic will actually reach a potential customer and help spark exponential growth can be confusing and stressful. In the face of this challenge, many startup businesses looking to score some quick growth struggle to appreciate the difference between the phrases "growth marketing" and "growth hacking" as they launch.

So how do we properly distinguish between emphasizing growth marketing vs. growth hacking?

Working Definitions

Growth Marketing

The practice of growth marketing takes the traditional marketing model and adds new layers, such as a data-driven technical analysis of all aspects of the customer experience. Marketers move quickly to implement the insights gained from this user experience strategy to achieve sustainable growth.

But your growth marketing effort scarcely ends there. Unlike traditional marketing, growth marketing goes beyond the top of the marketing funnel.

The Driving Forces Behind Growth Marketing

The primary role of growth marketing is to create value rather than extract value from your existing customers. Growth marketing uses a systemic process that builds on adaptable development principles and prioritizes tactics based on their perceived long-term impact.

Growth marketing is a long-term strategy focused on fostering business growth. Its emphasis is on building relationships and loyalty to reinforce brand awareness and also acquire new customers. This growth strategy adds consistent value by attracting users and engaging with them, often while they are out on a product hunt.

Once implemented, you can then focus on retaining customers. Growth marketing, done right, can even turn customers into advocates for your brand. In short, they become cheerleaders, part of your growth tribe. This particular marketing tactic is tough to beat!

Anyone serving on your company's growth team probably knows that it's become increasingly important to have a creative, results-driven, and compelling marketing strategy targeted to the new customer.

Your growth marketing strategy can serve as a new, robust approach to building a loyal customer base. It will prove invaluable as you engineer the desired customer journey and create or edit various aspects of your growth hacking funnel.

Growth Hacking

While we often use the terms growth marketing and growth hacking interchangeably, these techniques have subtle differences.

Growth hacking focuses on creative, often low-cost strategies to help companies quickly acquire new customers. This concept utilizes a cross-functional approach that integrates marketing and technical product development skills.

Marketers use growth hacking to facilitate rapid growth through the use of qualitative and quantitative data, as well as experimentation. They use qualitative and quantitative data to gain insights into user behavior and preferences. This strategy also utilizes an accelerated testing process and specific standards to evaluate and act on the results.

The most fundamental difference between growth hacking and growth marketing lies in their opposing views on brands.

• Growth marketing is all about building the brand.
• Growth hacking is about growth by whatever means necessary.
  • This approach leads to a need for more attention on the brand itself.

The other critical difference is the specific type of growth. Both rapid and sustainable growth would be ideal, but companies often feel pressured to pick one or the other for their focus.

• The primary goal of growth marketing is managing sustainable growth. As a result, we focus every action on achieving growth over time.
• Growth hacking supports fast-paced growth. Therefore, the long-term aspects of the growth plan lose some of their focus.

How the Right Combination Will Work in Tandem

An effective growth marketing process turns the best attributes of growth hacking into a sustainable practice based on solid principles.

Growth marketing emphasizes the importance of understanding people, competition, and the business as it exists in the real world. Growth marketers know that the best marketing tactics result from knowing the ideal customers for each company.

Although there are stark differences, there are also some obvious similarities between growth marketing and growth hacking. Both approaches rely on an adaptable growth model, encouraging experimentation, data-informed decision-making, and constant improvement. Growth hacking and growth marketing rely on access to qualitative and quantitative data to drive revenue growth and customer acquisition.

How Do I Decide?

Deciding which growth strategy will be the most beneficial for your business may seem complicated, but it all boils down to your goals.

If you need more sustainable growth, growth marketing is the better option because it can keep giving for years and years if done well.

• Growth marketing is preferred if there is enough evidence of demand and a clear market for the intended product. Long-term plans suit businesses or products with lasting sales cycles and high customer value.
• Growth hacking is the ideal choice for brand marketing if you are a new startup or business that hasn't launched. Implementing a growth hack is especially needed when we haven't determined the product or market fit. New companies often have limited marketing teams and bare-bones choices. These circumstances allow for experimentation with the product, audience, and pricing standards.

Even though they share the same goal, both techniques pursue different growth methods and complement each other. Businesses are buzzing about these concepts because everyone is seeking rapid yet sustained growth that strives to improve revenues. When you analyze and define the specific roles of growth marketing vs. growth hacking, it's clear that they both have value.

The best SEO professionals in the world have stopped using the trial and error method for generating traffic to the sites of their clients. They already know the SEO tricks that work and what doesn’t work through deep research, which is why hiring a seo agency can be helpful.

But we can all learn from their smart strategies and gain a reasonably good understanding of SEO before we go on to the hiring stage. The SEO tricks are nothing more than a logical series of methods that sync together to drive more traffic to your website. Today, SEO is more about creating a brand presence, awareness, and brand voice online. You can start with a brilliant logo, complete with branded content on a responsive website design, and optimize it for search engines. However, it can't go further than that if you are looking for results with more leads, more customers, and more opportunities to upsell other services and products. 

That's why we are here to help. Let’s take a look at these marketing hacks professionals use to increase the sustainability of their brands online. 

Change the Way You Write Blogs

Up until a few years ago, the correct way for a company to do blogging was simple. All you had to do was a blog on a regular, consistent basis and add a few key phrases. But this oversimplified method of blogging soon resulted in a plethora of unread content being distributed all over the web, and most of this content wasn’t particularly useful to anyone.

Today, blogging algorithms look for more than keywords. Experts recognize that blogging has to be meaningful if search engines are going to pay attention. If a blog isn’t entertaining, helpful, or interesting, it will almost certainly fall by the wayside—and drag your website ranking down with it. Here’s what professional marketers are doing today.

FAQ Blogs

Blogs must be helpful, and what better way to help your audience than by answering questions? FAQ blogs can be long-form articles that contain interesting content but are mostly made up of questions & answers.

A 2021 Study showed that 8% of Google queries are questions! Chances are, if someone is asking about anything related to your industry, they’ll land up on your site if you’re the one answering their questions.

Blog Pillar Posts

The blog pillar post concept has been a severely neglected method of blogging, but it’s super effective if done correctly.

The premise is that you write one primary blog for your website and continue to update it on a monthly basis. Adding to and tweaking the same blog month after month is something Google relishes, and this will set your website up as an authority on the topic you’ve written about.

Video & Image Content

If your blogs are void of images and videos, you’re probably not going to be too popular with search engines. Images allow you to link your content in a meaningful way to social media platforms, while videos help you to connect with the ever-large YouTube audience. These connections are essential in broadening your outreach over the web.

Learn Call-To-Action Psychology

Marketing professionals are trained to understand the psychology behind marketing. Although this can take years to learn, you can also implement some basic psychological positives into your call to action processes:

• Positioning your CTA on the top right of a page will often make it immediately visible, as this is where most people look first.
• Using certain words and colors for your CTAs can invoke different emotional responses in your audience.
• Implementing a sense of urgency (countdowns, expiration offers, etc.) has shown to invoke that urgency in people who want your product or service.

CTA Psychology is a fascinating subject, and you’ll do your SEO a massive favor if you learn it.

The Importance of Research: Measure Twice, Cut Once

The best SEO experts never presume anything. They test, research, and investigate as much as possible before delving into a digital marketing campaign. They strive to learn the buying habits of their target audience and spend a lot of time planning their marketing strategy before executing it.

Taking the time to perform this SEO trick will effectually improve the results of your SEO efforts because it’s always wisest to measure twice and cut once!

Teach Your Audience

Developing free training courses and online tutorials have become a wildly popular lead magnet for those who want to set themselves up as experts in any given industry. As an expert, you will garner the trust of your target audience and consistently direct them to your site, your services, and your offers.

Create Combination Campaigns

Covering all your bases is a good SEO trick to ensure success. If you’re only focusing on one aspect of SEO, you’re missing out on a myriad of others.

It’s also crucial that these aspects be connected to one another. Here’s a checklist you can use to ensure you always combine your marketing efforts:

• Onsite content (primary place to start)
• External content (showcasing your knowledge on other affiliate sites and connecting them to yours)
• Social media (for sharing)
• Emails (for consistent communication, upselling, and reminders)

Putting all of these together is the best way to ensure the best possible outcome for your SEO.

Final Thoughts

SEO has become the cornerstone of online content. If you want to get the most out of your SEO then follow the tips we’ve provided in today’s article.