How to Become a Growth Hacker
Essential Education, Skills, and Job Interview Prep
The goal of most companies is to acquire and retain more customers. To do so, they must implement different marketing and business strategies to increase their leads, including the purchase of products and services. Growth hacker marketing is a growing field in business.
A growth hacker is someone who designs and implements those plans to meet a company’s growth expectations. This article will show you how to become a growth hacker. This isn’t a straightforward path like most careers, so you can tailor your experience to suit your needs.
What Is a Growth Hacker?
A growth hacker is a professional whose responsibility is to increase a company’s sales. They implement a specific digital marketing and business strategies. The growth hacker’s final goal is to get more customers.
A growth hacker may work with a growth hacking team, which can include developers, product managers, marketers, and any professional who can engage users on a large scale.
Growth Hacker Salary and Job Outlook
According to Salary.com, the average growth hacker salary is $71,853 per year. However, it can be between $65,406 and $79,473 per year. Growth hackers are valuable to companies, and that’s why they tend to have higher wages when compared to other professions.
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Entry-Level Growth Hacker Job Requirements
You don’t necessarily need a degree to become a growth hacker. However, you need to prove your skills. You must be experienced in content marketing, product development, PR marketing, or advertising. You should be familiar with search engine optimization (SEO) strategies and algorithm updates.
Having user experience/user interface (UX/UI) skills is also beneficial as you start your career as a growth hacker. Keep in mind there isn’t a particular education requirement, but if you have a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing or Business, you might have more career opportunities.
How to Ace Your Growth Hacker Job Interview
When applying for a growth hacking job, you need to highlight your skills. Speak about the possible marketing strategies you’ll implement and how they can benefit the company. Do some research before attending the job interview. This way, it’ll be easier for you to come up with a plan.
Common Growth Hacker Job Interview Questions
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- Do you have experience with Google Analytics? How would you use data analysis with this tool?
- What is the best growth framework that you’ve used?
- What can you do for this particular organization? What are the strategies you’d implement to increase the number of customers?
- How do you make long-term growth in the company?
What Degree Should I Get to Become a Growth Hacker?
You should get an associate or bachelor’s degree in a subject related to computer science, marketing, or business. It’s important to have a deep understanding of computer science fundamentals and marketing and product management.
Associate Degree in Marketing
An Associate Degree in Marketing will give you the foundational principles you need to become a growth hacker. You will learn about audience segmentation, marketing strategy implementation, and other marketing concepts.
Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing
You may not work as a traditional marketer, but a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing will help you develop the fundamental skills to become a growth hacker. Remember that the idea is to have a strong foundation in SEO, content marketing, and analysis.
You can specialize in other complementary career paths like computer science or business after you master marketing. Programmers are usually close to becoming growth hackers because they already have programming skills, making the analysis process smoother.
Master’s Degree in Business
Obtaining a Master’s Degree in Business is a great way to develop crucial growth hacking skills like product strategy, promotion, product pricing, and digital analysis. This path can take up to two years to complete, but it will provide you with more job opportunities. You can also complete your master’s degree online is a flexible program.
What Does a Growth Hacker Do?
A growth hacker designs, implements, and oversees marketing and business strategies to increase sales and customer engagement. Their tasks include conducting market research, doing data analysis, identifying industry trends, and working with UX/UI teams to improve a company’s website.
Designs Marketing Strategies
The primary role of a growth hacker is to design marketing strategies from scratch and ensure they are scalable and efficient enough to attract and retain customers. However, before they do this, they must evaluate current market trends to identify the best paths to follow.
They work closely with other professionals such as traditional marketers, web developers, and web designers. They also work with social media managers and UX/UI designers to implement strategies across all channels.
Monitors Strategies
Once a strategy is up and running, growth hackers must monitor its performance. This is to ensure everyone is following instructions and delivering on time. Growth hackers are in a leading position since they are responsible for giving instructions and making sure everything is on track.
Analyzes Data
A growth hacker must be familiar with data analysis. They should know how to evaluate data from company websites, social media, and inventory platforms. A growth hacker must identify issues, trends, and potential threats in their growth strategy by using raw datasets.
Conducts Market Research
Market research is one of the most essential tasks that growth hackers have. Market research includes evaluating competitor strategies, market trends, and business opportunities to promptly implement the best methods to increase leads.
Identifying potential trends will drastically help companies have significant growth. That’s why this responsibility is so important. Companies must act efficiently so as not to miss any business opportunities.
Essential Growth Hacker Skills
Growth hacking is a holistic profession that requires different skills going from marketing to technical skills like programming. Below is a list of fundamental skills that a growth hacker should have.
Data Analysis
Growth hackers constantly deal with data analysis. They should evaluate raw data to come up with actionable insights. Based on their findings, they will create new strategies to increase the number of customers.
Conversion Rate Optimization
Conversion rate optimization means improving the company’s landing page to enhance user experience and eventually generate leads. A growth hacker must perform several surveys and tests based on user interaction with the platform to create a plan to improve the conversion rate.
Search Engine Optimization
A growth hacker must be familiar with SEO strategies to increase company conversions. Having an optimized website that appears on Google’s first page in searches is crucial to succeeding in the market. This is why growth hackers should work with SEO techniques like keyword research, on-page SEO, and link building.
Product Management
A growth hacker should have basic knowledge of product management fundamentals like pricing and quality assurance. Product management is not a mandatory requirement, but it is a plus when it comes to adding new skills to your portfolio.
UX/UI Design
User experience/user interface design is the process of improving the usability of a website. You enhance user experience by developing an easy-to-use platform. UX/UI design also includes creating a digital infrastructure and designing user flows.
Social Media Marketing
Growth hackers should know how to implement marketing strategies on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Being up to date with the latest algorithm trends allows growth hackers to identify potential customers.
How to Become a Growth
Hacker: A Step-by-Step Guide
Growth hacking isn’t a traditional career where you need to follow a rigid path. There are several ways to become a growth hacker. However, all of them have something in common: preparation. You need to study marketing, computer science, and business fundamentals.
1
Get Career Training
You don’t necessarily need to attend university to become a growth hacker. However, most growth hackers have obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Marketing, or Business. If you’re not interested in traditional education, you can also try a boot camp or online courses.
2
Work on Your Technical Skills
Although you don’t need to become a software engineer, it’s important to work on your technical skills like programming or UX/UI design. Having technical skills makes you stand out from other job candidates and make your work a lot easier.
You can obtain these skills by joining a coding boot camp or another type of intensive program. Most coding boot camps are relatively inexpensive and have flexible schedules.
3
Get Work Experience
Try to get some work experience. Most hiring managers will require you to have a couple of years of experience in a marketing or business-related field before applying for a growth hacking position.
4
Find a Mentor
A mentor can guide you through the best growth hacking strategies and help you get job opportunities. This way, it’ll be easier for you to build your career as a growth hacker. You can join online forums and network with others who are interested in growth hacking.
5
Submit Your Resume
Your skills and experiences must be listed on your resume. Remember, it’s important to always build your network and showcase your most relevant projects. This way, you may get more career opportunities.
How Long Does It Take to Become a Growth Hacker?
Becoming a growth hacker can take between four and six years, depending on whether or not you obtain a master’s degree. A bachelor’s degree program typically takes four years to complete, while a master’s degree program will take an additional two years.
You can also attend a short-term program like a coding bootcamp, associate degree program, or certificate program. Doing so may take additional time to complete, but you will be prepared for any entry-level jobs.
Should You Become a Growth Hacker in 2021?
Yes, you should become a growth hacker in 2021. Companies aim to grow their conversions and engagement level with their customers. Therefore, growth hacking might continue to be an in-demand career over the next couple of years.
This is a good profession, considering the high compensation and flexibility when it comes to the use of creativity. This is the perfect occupation for those who are interested in marketing and technology.
Growth Hacker FAQ
What are the four major growth strategies?
There are four fundamental concepts in growth hacking: product development, market expansion, market penetration, and diversification.
Is growth hacking a stressful job?
Yes, it can sometimes be stressful. Growth hacking is a profession meant for open-minded and creative people. However, it is still a leading role that requires you to be on top of the other employees, and it might be stressful when someone is not hitting the desired goals.
Is growth hacking dead?
Growth hacking is currently at its peak. Although it is a relatively new career, the demand for growth hackers will continue to be high because companies will still need to grow their businesses.
Is growth hacking digital marketing?
Although they may be similar, growth hacking and digital marketing are not the same things. Growth hackers use digital marketing strategies to generate leads, but they also incorporate other skills like UX/UI design, business, and programming.
