Coming soon · Book Profile
Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success
Hacking Growth lays out a cross-functional, data-driven, rapid-experimentation methodology that today's fastest-growing companies use to systematically acquire, activate, retain, and monetize customers.
A profile of this book is on the way.
What it’s about
Written by Sean Ellis, who coined the term 'growth hacking,' and expert practitioner Morgan Brown, Hacking Growth is the definitive, step-by-step playbook for driving breakout business growth. Drawing on case studies from Dropbox, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and many others, the book argues that breakout growth is not the result of a single lucky 'lightning in a bottle' idea, but rather of a disciplined process of high-tempo, cross-functional experimentation. It shows how to build a growth team that unites marketing, engineering, product, and data analytics; how to determine whether your product is truly 'must-have' before pushing for growth; how to identify your key growth levers and North Star metric; and how to run rapid-fire experiments across the full customer funnel. With concrete playbooks for acquisition, activation, retention, and monetization, plus tools for prioritizing and tracking experiments, the book gives any team or company a rigorous, repeatable engine for sustainable growth.
The through-line
- Who it’s for
- A founder, marketer, product manager, or executive who wants to drive rapid, sustainable, cost-effective growth for their product or company.
- The problem
- Their growth has stalled or never taken off, and traditional marketing is too expensive and ineffective to acquire and keep customers profitably. They feel overwhelmed by data and options, anxious about wasting limited resources, and uncertain about which growth tactics will actually work.
- The plan
- Build a cross-functional growth team with clear roles and executive sponsorship.
- Confirm your product is must-have and identify its aha moment before scaling.
- Determine your growth equation, key metrics, and North Star metric.
- Run the high-tempo experimentation cycle: analyze, ideate, prioritize, and test.
- Apply the playbook across acquisition, activation, retention, and monetization, doubling down on wins.
- The payoff
- A repeatable engine of compounding wins that drives breakout, sustainable growth. · A unified, collaborative, data-driven culture across marketing, product, engineering, and data teams. · More customers acquired cheaply, activated quickly, retained longer, and monetized more profitably, fueling a virtuous growth cycle.
See our guide
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Additional reading
- Marketing 3.0: From Products to Customers to the Human Spirit · Philip Kotler, Hermawan Kartajaya, and Iwan Setiawan
The book discusses the evolution of marketing to a more values-driven, human-centric approach, which aligns with the textbook's emphasis on social responsibility and holistic marketing.
- Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind · Al Ries and Jack Trout
Referenced in the textbook as a foundational work on the concept of brand positioning, a core topic of marketing strategy.
- The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference · Malcolm Gladwell
The book's concepts of 'Mavens, Connectors, and Salesmen' are discussed as a way to understand how ideas and trends spread through social networks, relevant to word-of-mouth and viral marketing.
- The Long Tail · Chris Anderson
Discussed in a 'Marketing Insight' box, this book proposes that the internet enables profitable selling of a large number of niche products, challenging traditional retail and market segmentation strategies.
- Marketing Management · Philip Kotler and Kevin Keller
The book mentions this text as the 'most widely used marketing textbook in graduate schools of business worldwide,' co-authored by the primary author of this book, suggesting it as a more advanced follow-up.
- Blue Ocean Strategy · W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
The book explicitly references and explains this strategic framework for creating 'uncontested market spaces,' presenting it as an alternative to head-to-head competition.
- Competitive Strategy · Michael Porter
The book recommends this text for readers who wish to explore the vital subject of competitive strategy in more depth, which is an essential prerequisite to setting appropriate marketing objectives.
- The Marketing Audit: translating marketing theory into practice · Malcolm H. B. McDonald
Mentioned in the preface as a companion text to this book, containing exercises designed to provide a practical bridge between marketing theory and practice for managers.
- Marketing in the Service Sector · John M. Rathmell
Cited frequently throughout the book as a foundational text that helped establish services marketing as a distinct field of study in the 1970s.
- Breaking Free from Product Marketing · G. Lynn Shostack
This seminal 1977 'Journal of Marketing' article is referenced by many authors in the proceedings for its powerful argument that services require a fundamentally different marketing approach and for introducing conceptual tools like 'molecular modeling'.