When we talk about strategies to grow quickly in digital, we can opt for a more classic path, identified as 'growth hacking' (associated with one-off ways to increase growth that involve creative marketing, automation, and data analytics) and another more innovative one: 'growth engineering', which is a process that focuses on constant optimization and growth centered on each company's product.
The way a venture chooses to define its strategy will certainly have an impact on its business and results.
Today, the way companies think, when it comes to their strategic growth, is to quickly achieve profitability and ensure the company's survival. And traditionally speaking, growth in markets can be achieved through new products in existing markets or in entering new markets with existing (or new) products.
When the business world began to take the contours we know today, the executives were taught that there were three important variables for a successful business:
- Position themselves uniquely in an industry (by developing a coherent business).
- Create something that would set themselves apart from the fierce competition.
- Find a blue ocean to avoid cutthroat competition.
Of course, these strategies are still valid and relevant, and work for the implementation or growth of a company. However, they are slower, more costly, and somewhat antiquated strategies for today's digital enterprises. These days, we have a plethora of other tools that can help us grow and create companies - and this is where the term 'growth hacking' and 'growth engineering' come in.
Growth hacking and growth engineering - what are they?
Growth hacking is a new approach in this "new digital age", meant for fast growth of various business initiatives. This is not exactly a new term, in fact, it has been talked about since 2010, however, there is still debate about the viability of this term.
Thinking in a more classical strand of thought, and as much of the academic world holds, this term is identified as the intersection of creative marketing, data analytics, experimentation, and software automation engineering.
When we talk about the second term in question, 'growth engineering', this is actually a topic that receives more and more traction in the business world. This philosophy focuses more on the product itself, continuous experimentation and not so much on one-off creative marketing strategies that are meant to enhance the growth of an existing product.
This second school of thought, let's call it, is, so to speak, product and business development combined with data-driven marketing and, in parallel, actions based on that data, considering the product itself, on an ongoing basis. The big difference between the two perspectives is that the former is based on a model of one-off marketing actions, without detailed planning of the product development, and the latter thinks of product development based on data marketing, constantly and continuously.
Is there’s a right or wrong? No, but there are specific timings for it. Growth hacking is most suitable for startups that do not yet have product-market fit. Scaleups, i.e. companies that found product market fit should focus more on growth engineering. And how can traditional companies benefit? They should explore the toolkit and start to learn how to experiment in the digital ecosystem.
The Digital+Sustainable Innovation Lab is the place that can help you better understand this dynamic, helping your business grow and succeed based on its knowledge and digital innovation and sustainability.