“Growth” is the key word in both the terms you have used- “Growth Hacker” and “Growth Marketer”. So, before we go into the difference any further, we will understand growth.
A growth story begins with “Growth Mindset”. A growth mindset, as opposed a fixed mindset, describes the underlying belief that people have about learning and intelligence. If people realise that the effort of learning makes them smarter and that this ultimately leads to higher achievements, then they put the effort in. They will understand that they can develop themselves. Like EQ, growth mindset is about attitude and belief. Carol Dweck, a leading researcher in the field of growth mindset, shows the power of our most basic beliefs. Whether conscious or subconscious, they strongly affect what we want and whether we succeed in getting something. Much of what we think we understand of our personality comes from our “mindset.” This both propels us and prevents us from fulfilling our potential. Successful people want to improve every day. They want to constantly better themselves, whether that is in a hobby or at work, or any area of interest. They are keen learners, those that move forward courageously and fearlessly. The one weakness most people have is not taking a step forward and being courageous. In more practical terms, a growth mindset to me is when you start monitoring your impact on your environment, see how people react towards you and then you adjust your behaviour. A growth mindset leads to innovation. Innovations have become backbone for the start-ups and entrepreneurs world-wide.
Innovation is defined by Kanter (1983) as involving ‘creative use as well as original invention’ and simply it is defined by Mellor (2005) as ‘creativity plus application’ or ‘invention plus application’. But people do confuse the term “innovation” with another term “invention”. The distinction between invention and innovation was originally owed to Schumpeter and has since become part of economic theory. Freeman and Soete add, ‘an invention are an idea, a sketch or a model for a new improved device, product, process or system. Such inventions may often (not always) be patented but they do not necessarily lead to technical innovations’. Also, ‘the chain of events from invention or specification to social application is often longer and hazardous’.
Now we come to the both the terms of “Growth Hacker” and “Growth Marketer”. The job of a growth hacker is generally to acquire as many users or customers as possible while spending as little as possible. A growth hacking team is made up of marketers, developers, engineers, and product managers that specifically focus on building and engaging the user base of a business. Growth hacking is particularly prevalent with start-ups, when the goal is finding product/market-fit or achieving rapid growth in the early-stages of launching a new product or service to market. Those who specialize in growth hacking use various types of marketing and product iterations to rapidly test persuasive copy, email marketing, SEO and viral strategies, among other tools and techniques, with a goal of increasing conversion rates and achieving rapid growth of the user base. Therefore, growth hacking has no scope for invention but innovation. Growth Marketing is the process of designing and conducting experiments to optimize and improve the results of a target area. If you have a certain metric you want to increase, growth marketing is a method you can utilize to achieve that. Growth marketers use the scientific method to design and carry out these experiments. Within an organization, growth marketing is an analytically minded function that focuses more on the data side of marketing than the creative aspects. Thus, there is a scope of invention in the growth marketing and not innovation.
I have worked with companies that did hire both growth marketers and growth hackers. If you want to encourage invention in your company growth marketers are the best option available for you but if you encourage innovation growth hackers will help you to a great extent.
Besides if you do have any questions contact me: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath