Rise Growth Hacker Marketer, Rise

Episode #384 of Six Pixels of Separation – The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

Is the future of marketing going to be owned by engineers and hackers? Brands like Uber, AirBnB, Dropbox, Instagram and many more Silicon Valley startup darlings have built magnificent and defendable brands without any of the traditional advertising fare and relying only on word of mouth within the social media channels as a form of awareness and validation. It would lead some traditional marketing practitioners to wonder if these brands have uncovered the true secret to viral marketing, or if there is something much more substantive underneath the hood? There has been a lot of attention on the idea of Growth Hacking. Some call it Growth Hacker Marketing. That is the title of Ryan Holiday‘s latest business book. These Growth Hackers are engineers, coders and entrepreneurs who don’t know (or follow) the traditional marketing path (because it’s not something they have studied or practiced). They don’t sit in the marketing department or have optics into the CMO’s office. Instead, these people spend their entire day testing acquisition strategies and leveraging technologies like split A/B testing, web analytics and social listening tools to get people to try, share and loyally use their products and services. Holiday (who is also the author of Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions Of A Media Manipulator) took some time to discuss this new form of marketing and what it all means. Enjoy the conversation…

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation – The Twist Image Podcast #384.