My Interview in Business Insider Italia

But in English Language

What skills do you need to become a growth hacker?

The ideal growth hacker is what I call a holistic marketer. A bit of everything, not in a “generalist” way but in a “multi-specialist” way. So, a growth hacker knows a bit about email marketing, social media, SEO, PPC, and more.

But, that said, the one skill that you need to become a growth hacker is not a hard skill. It’s a soft one and in particular it’s: Resilience

A growth hacker tests, analyzes, measures, and adjusts. Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties and be tough in failures. And failures/difficulties go hand-by-hand with a growth hacker. Difficulties in all levels, technical, business, time plans, communication, results etc.

According to recent research, it is a very popular profession. What can a good growth hacker really do for a small business?

A good growth hacker is the force that will drive the business forward. A growth hacker is the modern salesperson, taking care of a sales channel the same way a salesperson does on the field. The digital one. Well, believe it or not, a growth hacker is also doing business development and also pivoting when it is needed (see covid)

Growth hacking is about data-driven marketing that uses low-budget tactics. And this is precisely what small businesses need — not another “creative campaign to raise awareness”.

Compared to traditional digital marketing, growth hacking goes beyond Awareness & Acquisition and examines other marketing stages, too, such as Retention and Referral. Accordingly, a good growth hacker will grow the business at every one of these stages.

You are one of the greatest experts in the world of growth hacking: what advice do you feel you give to those who want to undertake this job?

Learn, learn, learn, and then learn some more.

Read growth hacking books and articles, and enroll in relevant courses.

Also, no matter what specialty you choose in the end, make sure to learn a thing or two about front and back-end development. If your first degree is in business or marketing dig into technical, if it’s in technical dig into marketing. The combination of the two is pure power. The superpower of a growth hacker.

The full interview in Italian can be found here