Growth Hacking Gone Bad

Mike Templeman

Back in 2010, well known blogger Sean Ellis coined a new term that would give definition to a strategy that was being practiced by startups all over the world; growth hacking. Sean described a growth hacker as:

“A person whose true north is growth. Everything they do is scrutinized by its potential impact on scalable growth.”

This definition has evolved over the years to include mostly marketing techniques that are free or relatively cheap. Growth hackers gravitated towards SEO and social media, the two most effective free mediums on the internet.

Hacking Success

It wasn’t long after the strategy was defined that people started talking about their successes with growth hacking. AirBnB, one of the fastest growing internet properties of the last five years, utilized craigslist to produce some amazing results. Their model and clientele made them a natural fit for Craigslist, and because of this, the synergy that the pairing produced was nothing short of remarkable.

Another success was Groupon. They were one of the first companies to successfully utilize Facebook ads. They came into the space when very few businesses were using Facebook as an advertising platform. Because of this, the prices for ads were ridiculously cheap. They were getting clicks to their website, from a legitimate source that gave them demographic information on all of their users, for two and three cents. This allowed them to grow incredibly fast at first. But once the secret got out, the ad prices skyrocketed. Their growth mechanism broke down in the middle of the street, and hasn’t been able to restart since. However, they’ve kept innovating and have seen growth in the travel sector, and with their recent purchase of Ideeli, they’re hoping for similar success in fashion.

Rap… Genius?

But there were stories of the dark side of growth hacking. Most notably, would be Rap Genius. It was recently revealed that Rap Genius wasn’t just bending the rules of the Google search engine, they were tying the rules up and beating them with a stick. Somehow, they’d gone undetected until a white knight SEO expert turned them in. The fallout was earth shattering for Rap Genius.

Rap Genius is a venture backed website that was created by a bunch of Yale undergrads. It’s a user-generated site that is dedicated to the annotation and interpretation of lyrics. Or, it’s a site that tells you what the lyrics in songs mean. All of their traffic comes from organic search results. Before December 2013, you could type into Google, “lyrics to Justin Bieber’s song Baby”. You could also throw your laptop out the window for having searched that. After searching that phrase, odds were good that Rap Genius would be one of the top results.

After their Google penalty, they were removed from the search results. You could search “Rap Genius” and www.rapgenius.com wouldn’t even show up in the results. After some lamenting and begging for forgiveness, Rap genius was again allowed back into the Google search results. Jesse Nuttall, president of Foxtail Marketing, pointed out that this was an extremely quick turnaround for a re-inclusion into the search engines. He went as far as to question if there weren’t some favors being called in by the VCs who backed Rap genius.

Begging for Forgiveness

In their letter to Google and the general public, wherein they apologized profusely for their actions, Rap genius also threw the entire lyrics industry under the bus. They claimed that the tactics they used were commonplace and that an audit of the entire marketplace was in order.

Clearly Rap Genius had never used their website and looked up the oft-used rap phrase, “snitches get stitches.” Otherwise they may have been reticent to shine a light on their industry’s dirty little secret.

By exposing the tactics that are commonplace in the lyrics industry, Rap Genius brought up a disturbing trend; growth hacking gone bad. Growth hacking isn’t what a lot of people mistakenly think it is. It’s not the shortest distance between two points, to hell with the obstacles that stand in the way. Nor is it the exploitation of loopholes or rules to achieve your goals. As stated above, growth hacking should not only be about growth, but scalable growth.

What Growth Hacking isn’t

Fooling the search engines or buying social network followers are not methods of growth hacking. It’s just cheating. And startups and established businesses should stop trying to put lipstick on that pig.

So, what is a company supposed to do when it comes to Growth Hacking? I liken this decision to the one a young Luke Skywalker once had to make. Going the route of Rap Genius can provide you with some pretty awesome results in a very short amount of time; not unlike being able to shoot lightning from your hands, if Luke had chosen the dark side of the force. But in the long run, if you go down this dark path, you’ll end up worse off than if you’d simply played by the rules; not unlike Anakin Skywalker ending his life as a half robot and breathing through a straw.

But enough with the Star Wars references. Just take my word for it, if you’re going to growth hack, then don’t forget the most important part of growth hacking; finding a solution that does not impact the long term viability of your company. As Edward Lakatis, president of Idea Design Studio, once told me:

“There are no shortcuts in a job well done. If you cut corners, those corners are going to come back and bite you in the ass.”

What Growth Hacking is

Oftentimes, after agonizing over marketing problems for hours and consulting with their friends Jack Daniels and Johnny Walker, a startup might find a solution they deem fit to call growth hacking. But care must be taken with any growth hacking technique. If it’s simple and has been replicated numerous times before, it probably won’t provide the results that the startup is hoping for. There are seldom times when a low hanging fruit solution hasn’t been exploited to the point where it’s more damaging than beneficial. That’s the nature of marketing. If it’s easy, everyone has already done it.

Growth hacking is finding those uncommon solutions that haven’t been exploited to the point of destroying its efficacy. Because of this, a simple Google search for “growth hacking techniques” may not be fruitful. Instead, a startup needs to examine their unique perspective and position in the market. Then they utilize the resources that are available; be they social media, SEO, web design, affiliate marketing, or any other form of marketing. But the startup just can’t copy what’s been done before, they need to put their unique spin on their marketing campaign.

As mentioned above, when Groupon pioneered user acquisition through Facebook, the time it took for competitors to take notice was not long. Therefore, a growth hacker must continue to innovate. If they find a successful hack, they have to optimize that hack and then utilize it to its fullest before the opportunity disappears.

Hacking Never Ends

A lazy growth hacker is an obsolete growth hacker. Innovation is the key to all growth hacking. If a startup wishes to continue riding the growth hacking wave, they have to continue to evolve their marketing to stay ahead of their competitors. When growth hacking becomes simple—in the case of Rap Genius—it will begin to bear poisoned fruit and end up causing more harm than good.

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