Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday Summary

Ian Greer -

4 step summary:

  • Step 1: The product has to be great.
  • Step 2: Product-market fit. Prior to release, you have to test and make sure that people want the product.
  • Step 3: Virality is not an accident. Before you post anything, ask yourself: why would someone share this? Ask people to share on social media to get something for free (like a digital copy of your book). Become friends with influencers and give them free stuff to promote your products.
  • Step 4: Always iterate and improve on the product. Retention is better than acquisition (do everything to keep your customers).

Review

5/10. I don't recommend reading this book. But I highly recommend Ryan Holiday's other marketing book, Perennial Seller – I rated it a 9/10.

Notes

Marketing cannot fix a bad product. You have to fix the products, business, and business model before you try marketing.

“At Amazon, for instance, it’s company policy that before developing a new product the product manager must submit a press release to their supervisor for that item before the team even starts working on it. The exercise forces the team to focus on exactly what its potential new product is and what’s special about it.”

Growth hackers don’t make a product and hope someone wants it. They put out previews to see what sticks, get sentiment data from surveys, and analyze other successful products to see what is guaranteed to work.

Start building your network (blog, YouTube, social media, podcast) for your product launch TODAY. Even if you are not making a business or launching a book for a while, it is hugely beneficial to start getting followers today.

Move to the new arena. If one platform becomes too competitive, move to the next upcoming one. Even the big guys like Ryan Holiday and Tim Ferriss have to do this. Startups need to find an “in” — PayPal got their “in” from being the digital payment network for eBay.