Growth marketing is changing how marketers and business owners tackle their growth goals to earn more revenue, faster – but what exactly is it? How can you implement these strategies in your own company? And does it actually work?
Below, we’ve collected some of the best guides, books, and resources to answer these questions and start you on your journey to understand, utilise, and grow faster with growth marketing.
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Introductory Guides & Explainers
The Growth Marketing Handbook by Julian Shapiro
A no-fluff handbook used widely within Silicon Valley to develop effective growth strategies.
Growth Marketing Primer: 30+ Growth Marketing Strategy Examples by Venture Harbour
The ins and outs of growth marketing, plus the best examples and tactics based on global brands who nailed it.
Growth Hacking Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide by Neil Patel
An in-depth guide to growth hacking. Easy to read for growth marketers of any level and full of real-world examples.
The Startup Growth Playbook by Hubspot
An interactive guide to creating a growth marketing plan customised for your business. This was the playbook Hubspot used to grow from a startup to a public company.
Books
Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Ries’ unique approach helps founders build startups that are capital efficient and effectively leverage human creativity.
Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing and Advertising by Ryan Holiday
A playbook for companies and entrepreneurs who want to build and grow through testable, trackable, and scalable growth hacking.
Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares
Serial entrepreneurs Weinberg and Mares emphasise testing lots of channels and focusing in on a handful of those that are highly-effective.
Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself by Wes Bush
Learn the fundamentals of PLG and how to turn your product into a growth engine.
Hacking Growth: How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success by Sean Ellis
An innovative playbook written by the creator of the term “growth hacking” to help teams increase their customer base and market share.
People to Follow
Andrew Chen (Twitter, blog) – Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, known for Uber and Reforge, author of The Cold Start Problem.
Brian Balfour (Twitter, blog) – Founder/CEO @ Reforge, Venture Partner @ Long Journey Ventures, previously VP Growth @ HubSpot.
Brianne Kimmel (Twitter, blog) – Founder and managing partner of Work Life Ventures; previously Zendesk, Expedia; creator of invite-only program called SaaS School.
Julian Shapiro (Twitter, blog) – Founder of Demand Curve, a Y Combinator startup that grows other companies; startup investor; previously writer of TechCrunch’s growth marketing column.
Neil Patel (Twitter, blog) – Co-founder of Neil Patel Digital, CrazyEgg, KISSmetrics and HelloBar; New York Times bestselling author; named top 10 marketer by Forbes.
Noah Kagan (Twitter, blog) – Chief Sumo at Sumo.com and AppSumo.com, employee #30 at Facebook, and #4 at Mint.
Sean Ellis (Twitter, blog) – Author of Hacking Growth; led early growth at Dropbox, Eventbrite, LogMeIn and Lookout; coined the term “growth hacking” in 2010.
Courses & Resources
The Growth Series by Reforge – A 6-week course covering systems and frameworks to help you solve growth problems and achieve results for your company. Note: They tend to only let in growth marketers working in large teams.
Growth Mentor – An active community where you can book calls with other expert growth marketers and mentors to diagnose and get an outside perspective on your growth challenges. We’re members, so you might spot us in there!
Growth Tribe – Learn in-demand digital skills like growth marketing, data analytics, UX design, and more.
DataCamp – Self-paced learning for data skills, from non-coding essentials to machine learning to data science.
CXL – Advanced level marketing training and “Minidegrees” with the world’s best practitioners as your instructors.
Podcasts
Growth Marketing Toolbox with Nicholas Scalice (GrowthMarketer)
The #1 growth marketing podcast. A weekly show exploring growth marketing tools and technology.
The Breakout Growth Podcast with Sean Ellis & Ethan Garr
Interviews with leaders from the fastest growing companies around the world. Get ideas to take your business’ growth to the next level.
The Growth Show with Meghan Keaney Anderson (VP of marketing at Hubspot)
Inspiring stories behind how people grew a business, an idea, or a movement.
Tools
We’ve written about the top growth marketing tools in more depth here, but as a TLDR here are some of our team’s favourites:
- Testing tools: VWO, Google Optimize, Optimizely
- Personalisation tools: RightMessage, Proof
- Message testing: Wynter
- CRO & landing page tools: Unbounce, Instapage
- Product analytics: Amplitude, Mixpanel, Heap, Hotjar
- Growth automation: Dux-Soup, Zapier, GrowBots
Have a suggestion for our growth marketing reading list? Drop it in the comments!
