Growth hacking: public relations for the internet era

Growth hacking is the process of expanding a product’s user base through a mix of coding and marketing/communications. The practice as we know it today was born in Silicon Valley’s tech sector startups as a result of the lean-growth culture that is prominent throughout these organizations. The entire premise of growth hacking is that through a process of testing, measurement, and iteration, a growth hacker comes to understand what users want from a product and uses that information in collaboration with other teams to reach an optimal state known as Product Market Fit. ❧ Growth hacking is in essence a rejection of traditional functions like marketing and public relations, which are seen by growth hackers as wasteful practices. Growth hackers attempt to increase awareness of their product and guide audiences through the sales funnel with as little spending as possible and in highly scalable ways. ❧ This paper argues that growth hacking, through its nature of engaging with users and audiences in order to get information, and through its executions which make heavy use of communications tactics, is actually a modern variant of public relations. It outlines the different similarities between the two functions and posits that growth hacking is simply a version of public relations that is adapted to startups and the internet-fueled communications landscape. This paper also discusses prominent growth hacking cases and highlights the specific public relations characteristics of each. Lastly, a set of recommendations is made for more traditional public relations professionals who want to modernize their practices and processes.增长黑客（Growth hacking）是通过编码与营销/传播相结合的方式扩大产品用户群体的过程。如今我们所熟知的这一实践，诞生于硅谷科技行业初创企业，源于这些企业中盛行的精益增长文化。增长黑客的核心前提在于，通过测试、衡量与迭代的流程，增长黑客能够洞悉用户对产品的需求，并联合其他团队将这些信息付诸实践，以达成名为产品市场契合度（Product Market Fit）的最优状态。 增长黑客本质上是对传统营销、公共关系（public relations）等职能的摒弃，在增长黑客看来，这些传统模式属于低效冗余的实践。增长黑客力求以极低的成本与高度可规模化的方式，提升产品知名度，并引导受众完成销售转化漏斗的全流程。 本文认为，增长黑客通过与用户及受众互动以获取信息的本质，以及大量运用传播策略的执行路径，实际上是公共关系的现代变体。本文梳理了二者之间的诸多共性，并提出增长黑客本质上是适配初创企业与互联网驱动的传播环境的公共关系模式。本文还探讨了典型的增长黑客案例，并逐一剖析其中蕴含的公共关系特质。最后，本文为希望实现自身业务与流程现代化的传统公共关系从业者提供了一系列建议。