Growth Hacker Marketing, Ryan Holiday

GROWTH HACKER MARKETING

2/5/2018

"Once you break out of the shackles of antiquated notions
of what is or isn't marketing, the whole field becomes cheaper, easier, and much more scalable.
The game changes forever."

— Ryan Holiday, Growth Hacker Marketing

Growth Hacker Marketing weighs in at a featherlight 111 pages. That includes the Intro, 4 chapters, two bonus content offers, Afterword, Glossary, FAQ, Next Steps, Further Notes, and Acknowledgements section. But it used to be even shorter.

What started for bestselling author Ryan Holiday as a minimum-viable-product, that is a 1,000-word article on Fast Company, quickly struck a nerve too deep for internet surfers—and Penguin's publishing scouts—to ignore. It didn't take much convincing from Penguin to expand the article into an e-book (or as Ryan calls it, "a digital single," and sold it for $3.

Since the 2013 release, I've personally lifted some of its heavy-hitting tactics right from the page on behalf of Huckberry as their Head of Affiliate Marketing, which have directly resulted in over $100,000 in sales.

This is not, though, a here-today-gone-tomorrow-type book. It's an exceptional primer on a paradigm shift in digital marketing that I've experience firsthand in the E-comm world. I was definitely skeptical at first, and have witnessed my fair share of eye-rolls when the words 'Growth Hacker' get mentioned, but the tweaker, tester, bootstrapped, unconventional mindset is too successful not to embrace.

Like the book trailer above, the perfect 'tweet-sized' video for bloggers, journalists, book reviewers, and Ryan Holiday fans to watch, like, comment on, and share with others. [JG]

This Book Summary video is incredible. I still recommend getting the book though. :)

FAVORITE QUOTES

3. "One first idea is a grand opening, a big launch, a press release, or major media coverage. We dafault to thinking we need and advertising budget. We want red carpet and celebrities. Most dangerously we assume we need to get as many customers as possible in a very short window of time—and if it doesn't work right away, we consider the whole thing a failure (which, of course, we cannot afford). Our delusion is that we should be Transformers and not The Blair Witch Project."

2. "...I love the idea of Dropbox rewarding users with 250 megabytes of extra storage if they take a tour of the basics of Dropbox. The idea is to teach members how to use the service and motivate them to get past potential hurdles. It's also why the site offers a 125-megabyte bonus to users who send Dropbox just ninety characters of feedback about the service—now they're involved and participating."

1. "The thing about marketers—and, well everyone—is that we're wrong all the time. We think we make good gut decisions, but we don't. The old model makes being wrong incredibly expensive. Who can afford to learn that the product isn't resonating after they've spent months planning a campaign? Growth hacking doesn't make our instincts any better, but it fundamentally reduces the costs of being wrong, giving us freedom to experiment and try new things."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ryan Holiday is a bestselling author of books on marketing, entrepreneurship, ancient Stoic philosophy, American culture, and the human condition. His work has been translated into twenty languages and appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, Fast Company, The New York Observer, and others.

"Enormous services launched from tiny
but incredibly explosive ideas. That's what
we're going to study in this book."

— Ryan Holiday, Growth Hacker Marketing

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