I don’t have to tell you who Andrew Chen is.
Sean Ellis might have coined the term growth hacking, but Andrew Chen is the reason you know it.
He wrote all about it in a post you’ve probably read – Growth Hacker is the New VP of Marketing– and years later, people still can’t stop talking about it.
But at the time, growth hacking wasn’t mainstream. It was an exciting new trend – taking Silicon Valley by storm, from AirBnB to Craigslist – but it wasn’t the established way to do things.
It wasn’t your grandfather’s marketing. It wasn’t even your father’s marketing.
Hell, we were doing things differently ourselves just 10 years ago.
So, what changed?
Ultimately, it was data. We got more of it, the quality was higher, and we could act on that data in ways we never could before.
And so the line between marketer and engineer started to blur.
Because fundamentally, the growth hacker is somebody who uses engineering – technical details like page load times, email deliverability, and social log-ins – to fast-track business growth.
Page-load times, email deliverability, and Facebook sign-in integration are his marketing programs. He builds them into the products themselves, so they’re optimized for growth from the bottom up.
Think high-growth products marketed with high-growth strategies on “superplatforms” – like Facebook and Apple – that give immediate access to tens of millions of buyers.
Unsurprisingly, it works.
But, of course, there’s more to growth marketing than short-term success.
We’ve all seen more than a few Silicon Valley darlings go public and crash. Hundreds of millions in valuation lost.
And why?
Those companies were so caught up in user acquisition they forgot about user retention. And user retention is king.
Believe me, it’s not a mistake you want to make.
Which is why at the Growth Marketing Conference last year, Jamie Quint talked about how to avoid making it. It’s a presentation you really can’t miss.
Because, let’s be clear – growth hacking isn’t just hacking. It isn’t just a bag of tricks – little workarounds, cheats, and shortcuts. Growth hacking is a system.
Really, a better term for it is growth marketing. And growth marketing – well, it’s going places.
It’s the future.
And at the Growth Marketing Conference [Advanced] May 5-6 in San Francisco, Andrew Chen is going to tell you just what that future is.
He’s giving our opening keynote – a big, hard-hitting presentation – about the real way to get rapid growth and sky-high retention. And, he’s going to reveal what’s on the horizon for growth marketing in the next few years – and beyond.
Our industry just doesn’t stand still.
So, stop by the show this May and make sure you’re up to speed.