I recently finished Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising by Ryan Holiday. Although it’s a quick read, Holiday packs in several techniques for growth hacking your next product launch, business, book, or [insert project of your choice]. Holiday organizes his book into 4 separate steps for growth hacker marketing and provides several real world examples in each chapter.

Here are a few of my top takeaways:

  • “Once we stop thinking of the products we market as static – that our job as marketers is to simply work with what we’ve got instead of working on and improving what we’ve got – the whole game changes.” Keep relentlessly testing, iterating, and improving your product. Even if you think it’s perfect, it can always use improvement.
  • “Look, virality at its core is asking someone to spend their social capital recommending or linking or posting about you for free.” Ah, yes. As creators and sellers, we must always think of our clients’ or customers’ problem first. We must deliver real value to clients and customers (e.g., help them solve their problem) and make it easy for them to share our product or solution with their family and friends.
  • “You’ve got to build a list, because a list is the easiest and most effective marketing tool, period.” Holiday reiterates the power of an email list in the book and in other essays he’s written. Build an email list and your online platform.

This book is worth the read. You’ll not only learn some new techniques but will also realize that marketing has evolved and so must you.