I’m very excited that the community of people interested in growth marketing is growing.
Before diving in, I want to note that I have been working in growth marketing for years, and my experience is 100% on the job. This is what I looked for in these books:
- Does the book provide relevant information about growth marketing?
- Does it provide any strategic frameworks that support my thought leadership?
- Does it provide any case studies that help spark new ideas for my growth experimentation pipeline?
Based on these questions, here are my reviews:
1. Growth Hacking by Raymond Fong and Chad Riddersen
This book was definitely a waste of time.
Published in 2019, the book was the least relevant to any concepts of growth marketing. The authors promoted a generic marketing framework called ASP (Automated Sales Process™) and listed out several winning case studies from their own clients. This was a typical lead-gen book that helps drive branding and sales for authors who also have a consulting business.
2. Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday
This was just OK.
Although the content was more relevant and spoke the language of growth marketing, the book heavily focused on creating a “viral loop” (how to make your product go viral, hence driving massive sales).
I want to stress that growth marketing is NOT all about creating “viral loops” at a low to zero cost. As Sean Ellis has said, “Viral user acquisition … has become closely associated with the growth hacking process. Sometimes growth hacking has even been described, mistakenly, as being all about creating ‘viral loops’ for bringing in users, meaning mechanisms such as referral programs.”
Reading this book won’t give you a full picture about growth marketing, but hey, if you’re interested in writing a book and selling it fast, then Ryan provides some great tips for you.
3. Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown
This is a must-read.
This is the go-to book for the startup founder, the corporate leader, or the aspiring growth marketer in setting up a growth team and learning about the growth marketing process. You’ll be guided step by step with relevant frameworks and best practices created and tested by Sean Ellis, who coined the term “Growth Hacking” in 2010 and, together with Morgan Brown (VP of Growth at Shopify), was behind the success of Dropbox’s referral program.
The book was written in 2017 but offers a system still used by top tech companies today. Aside from some minor outdated information, the book remains relevant and helpful.
Here are some key highlights that make the book a must-read:
- How to build growth teams and the roles of each team member
- How to build a product market/language/channel fit
- How to design growth levers, including a growth strategy, and how to define North Star metrics and identify aha moments
- How to set up experimentation and test at a high tempo
New to the growth marketing process? Here are some other resources to explore:
Unfortunately, there is not much free growth marketing content that is also of high quality. However, these two free blogs are highly relevant:
- Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing by Andrew Chen
- Grow with Ward by Ward van Gasteren
I also recommend the following courses. They aren’t free, but you can sign up for a complimentary trial of LinkedIn Learning to get access for a month:
- Growth Hacking Foundations and Growth Hacking Tips (2019); Growth Marketing Foundations (2021) by Madecraft and Brad Batesole
My next newsletters will cover the following:
- Why we should use the term “Growth Marketing,” not “Growth Hacking”
- Why the famous growth framework “AAARRR” (Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, Revenue, Retention, and Referral) is no longer applicable, and which growth framework we should adopt instead.
Disclosure: What I’m sharing here is my personal point of view and does not represent the views of my current and former employers.
This post contains some Amazon affiliate links (ebooks), and I may earn a small commission when you click and purchase on the links at no additional cost to you. Being an Amazon Affiliate does not affect the quality and fairness of my book reviews and recommendations but is indeed a way to help me invest in more books and provide more future reviews.
This newsletter was previously sent on July 18, 2021
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