A Primer on the Future of PR - and Advertising

I would model this information for any new startup marketing team. Never liked the term growth hacker but love hustle and the feeling the earth is moving under your feet. Better than traditional growth hacking. Means a lot to have been mentioned.

This book captured a logical process that can be used for any startup company or new product launch. I'm already using the concepts I learned from this book in Growth Hacking my client's HR & Business Solutions company. I'm so excited to use the more advance part of this book in the near future.

Good introductory book. It all seems too tale-like though. I wish he had given more and broader examples.

I can't help thinking this is the kind of book you write to develop a person-brand and that's why he did it: short, vaguely researched, story by story and a few comments in between structure, and self-indulging.

I'll keep looking for a deeper book on the topic.

Unless you're new to marketing your business or just need a tip here or there, not worth it. Made it through the entire book only to learn I should basically just keep doing what I am currently doing or have already written down to do learned from reading online tutorials. The only positive I walked away with is at least I'm on the right path. First the store Top seller I grabbed on a whim that was a total disappointment.
I'll sum it up for you, use your analytics, start an email list, and be creative with your advertising. Oh, and traditional advertising is totally useless and not worth the money. There, just saved you $10. Stick to online tutorials. You'll learn more.

What does it take to create a product that people love in today’s super-connected world?

More importantly, how do you create a product that people love and share?

In Growth Hacker Marketing author Ryan Holiday gives a glimpse into the tactics and mindset that enables a company like Instagram to go from startup to more valuable than Kodak. A journey that took months, not years and was enabled by the principles outlined in this book, such as:

• Merging marketing into product development
• Kicking off growth with early adopters
• Adding viral elements
• And relentlessly repeating cycles, always guided by the data with an eye toward optimization

In this short, jam-packed book Ryan Holiday has written the product launch formula for the internet age.

Showing you a whole new point of view to business development. I spent my whole life working on digital products and business development but I realised I'm a growth hacker with this book. Marketers who consider themselves artists never liked me :) but now we have a fancy title, growth hacker! Oh wait, should we A/B test it to see if it's fancy?

this e-book is really short, if you devote enough time to it you could finish it in about 2 hours or less.
I am a bibalphile so I like physical books but there is no physical copy of the book that I am aware of so I downloaded the kindle edition. The book itself actually uses the technique it talk about. not to spoil it for anyone but being an e-book makes it that much easier to go viral, buying it on the store give you the option to share the news of your recent purchase on facebook. Ohh yeah, for buying the book, you get a 52 dollar deal and transcripts of the interviews and article referenced in the book if you email the author. and once your done with the book, you are forwarded to a link to rate to the book. all these are part of the growth hacking in the book, so the book is actually an example of a product that uses to growth marketing to get you to promote the book and enchage with the author and publisher.

In conclusion, Good read and even if you only got one idea out of it, the price tag wont really make it sting. I might even get his other book 'Trust Me, I`m Lying" .

If you're someone who exercises the ability to see the change and patterns happening around us--from technology, culture, education, media, businesses, and the spreading of ideas--Holiday's book serves as a great basis (almost like a 101 class) to understanding how products and services like Uber, Airbnb, Dropbox, and Instagram became an integral function of how we ultimately lead our lives.

The question most of us never asked is, How did they do that?

How did Uber become über? How did Mailbox make email simpler? And did you know that Instagram was originally called Burbn?

This is exactly what Ryan Holiday does for us. The analysis of how these products and services came about are not only deeply insightful and alluring, but goes to show that maybe, just maybe, the idea you've been daydreaming about may be closer to reality than you think. Stop thinking the entire world and start thinking about 1000 or maybe even 100 people who could truly benefit from using your product or service to facilitate what they do.

At the end of this book, I had a sigh of relief. Starting something is difficult, however it's not the way it used to be. You don't need a billion dollar funding. You don't need to be on the Superbowl ads. The tools we have today allow it to be easier than ever--but this doesn't take away the effort, innovation, thinking, and adversity that comes with all of this.

What Holiday outlines--and I'm glad he does--are the principles, or better, the mindset of a growth hacker. How does one think? How does one react to feedback? What should one be focusing on? What truly matters to the improvement of this thing? What's next?

I've consumed a lot of information on direct response marketing, from the OG stuff by Claude Hopkins and Robert Collier, through The Gary Halbert Letter, on into more contemporary stuff by John Carlton, Dan Kennedy, Frank Kern, and Joe Polish.

One of the first books written on the subject, Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins, was all about traced returns and ROI measurability and, well, scientific advertising. I believe that was written in the 19-teens. So the idea of not pouring money into vanity campaigns and hoping for the best has been around for at least near a century.

With that said, there's still a lot of people doing it wrong, and the idea of only doing things that provide measurable results would crush Christmas for just about every Yellowpages and newspaper ad salesman out there.

Ryan Holiday's first book, "Trust Me, I'm Lying", kicked ass. This one's not quite on the same level, but perhaps only because I didn't find anything new to me, personally.

The info and case studies were all solid though, as are the foundation and mindset of only spending moulah on stuff that provides a measurable result instead of "going with your gut" or blowing budget on vanity advertising that makes you feel good (like slapping your logo on a billboard without a well crafted call to action and a means of tracking response and ROI).

Is it a critical ad to a hardcore marketer's bookshelf? Nah.

Is "growth hacking" some revolutionary new way to market your business? Hardly. But I might put "Growth Hacker" on my business card. :)

Anyway, I still gave it 4 stars because Holiday writes well, and he's a bright dude, and the stuff would probably rock my world if I were new to the concepts... So, if you're new to marketing, I say check it out. If you're a battle-hardened ad pro, there's likely nothing here you haven't already heard.

Either way this is more of a mindset book than a guide to tactical application, so consider that as well.

Good luck!

Albeit the content is not something completely new to me, it changed my understanding and priority towards marketing. The book really worth reading. I bought it, however, for almost USD 10 which i think is not equal to the value and knowledge it provided to me.

Ryan beautifully distilled the mindset of growth into an easy read that serves as a great jumping-off point for anybody in the digital space. I think everyone that is even remotely concerned with marketing needs to consider the principles presented in this book.

Picked up the book (pamphlet) based on an appearance on SixPixels podcast. And read it in more or less the same amount of time, almost in one sitting. Just kept getting distracted by typing out emails on how we could test the assorted case ideas and "hacks" for ourselves.

This book is a perfect warm-up or per read to something like Lean Analytics, since it covers the mentality and rationale of growth hacking, sprinkles in a good mix of examples (including the authors own attempts) and gets you going.

Already told 3 people they need to get it, and will probably gift it to a few more. It is ideal for sharing and kicking off discussion related to product, marketing and loyalty.

For someone who is "into" graphs and statistics and all of that kind of thing, who hoovers breathlessly over their latest page rankings and checks their records and all three times a day, this would be a very interesting book. I am not so convinced that graphs and statistics are actually all that valuable; while studying for my BA in Business, I had to take a couple courses in Statistics. I learned pretty quickly that statistics could be skewed pretty much anyway the compliers wished, just by how the data was compiled. And, there are so many variables, particularly when automation is concerned, that truly accurate or viable figures aren't truly possible. HOW many times has Google changed their algorithms? Only human beings are capable of judging human motives for anything. Machines make WAGS with fewer probabilities.

The development team is nearing completion on the project, time to kick the marketing flywheel into high gear - right? This may work for a few well established products and categories (e.g. you are an established brand and you are making a small or an incremental enhancement on an existing product), but otherwise, it's a recipe for disaster! Sadly, that's how most marketing is done.

Well, no longer, and that's what "growth hacker marketing" is all about: get in early on the development of the product, identify the audience, get and iterate on their feedback, build-in features and reasons to motivate your audience to spread your message, measure the results, and so on. This is a short, but hands-on and practical book that will give you a head-start on this quest.

Short book, but very good! It goes straight to the most important points! It is well organized in steps! I found it very easy to understand and to apply the concepts in my projects!! I definitely recommend it!

This is an excellent resource for entrepreneurs. Ryan teaches you the mindset behind a growth hacker and gives many real-life examples of how this mindset works in action. Every business owner should read this - especially if they're whining about a cash infusion.

I love true business success stories. Growth Hacker Marketing is full of real and enlightening information concerning how businesses can think about what they are doing, before they do it, and then make it happen.

This is not old school advertising or marketing. This is not branding.

Truly usable products, business, services from the get go are necessary. Then find a way to build exponential and relevant growth into the product, business, or service.

The book itself gives many examples which have worked, and the way to think in order to make such business growth happen.

I can't see that anyone who is serious about wanting to succeed can possibly be let down by this book.

This was a great platform to introduce me to Ryan Holiday, his writing style is not overly complicated and I found it easy to get through this book. Being analytical in some respects I would love to observe more play by play examples of Ryan's accomplishments

I have often thought about how to gain new readers, customers, even friends, this is it. It's not build it and they will come, it's ask them what they want then build it. I have been going at my writing and product selection all wrong. Not going to be doing this anymore. I will be analyzing and focusing my products, so my readers get what they want. My customers won't be left wanting.

As soon as I read this, my mind was flooded with questions. I thought then, I can do this! Set to launch a new business and now I will be focusing on fewer customers, focused readers, won't be launching a MASS AD! I will be finding the right customers and tailor my business for them, not create my business and HOPE they come to me.

Great read!

Would recommend this to anyone in any facet of business. Even if you have nothing to do with marketing, you can glean some fascinating insights into the rapid growth of the startups that dominate our screens. Fun read, insanely applicable, and conveniently concise.

An amazing book for any marketer to read. It will get you up to speed with the current world of marketing. I say it's a must read for all startup founders and entrepreneurs.

Go get and don't hesitate. You will thank me later.

I started out as a marketing major in college! This book is right on, I love the power in growth having and the results that doing it the right way can yield. This author did an excellent job at conveying that! Good examples provided, good job.

A brochure to the concept more than any lesson. Very short read, huge text, large spacing, and small pages. Probably a 10 page book if normal size.

I don't think any real information was given other than a few tweet size comments about a few companies like hotmail, twitter, facebook, etc.

Don't buy. Find a better book on the subject.

Ryan Holiday has delivered us a timely primer on what "marketing" has become today. In "Growth Hacker," we have the first-hand account from a reformed industry insider. In succinct fashion, he does a fine job at providing us with a new paradigm as far as what it takes to advance our own personal business. It no longer takes massive, exorbitant campaigns - but instead savvy internet maneuvering. For the minimal investments of both time and money required to absorb this book, you stand to profit exponentially from putting its ideas to use. A must read for both budding and well-established professionals. - Luis Herrera

Was getting my feet wet with this Growth Hacking trend as a fresh graduate with a non-marketing major. A fun and inspiring read which makes me constantly ponder how to incorporate this mentality into the products I build.

The book has various case studies illustrating an outside-of-the-box iterative methodology to testing products and low cost growth tactics. Highly recommended for any digital marketer or product focused individual.