Notes on Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday

I recently finished reading Ryan Holiday's latest book (which I loved!), but before I post my review and notes of it, I wanted to read and post about his prior book that I hadn't mentioned before: Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising. It was a very inexpensive and quick read packed with concrete tips and lessons Ryan learned on the job as Director of Marketing at American Apparel.

This quick primer essentially took the main marketing lessons from The Lean Startup by Eric Ries and packed them all in one easy-to-digest place. It also reminded me of The Startup Owners Manual by Steve Blank and The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki.

In a nutshell, the book explains how marketing has become a science focused on data and metrics, and how product development and marketing should not be separate departments or steps of a sequential process but rather one unified whole. It focused on the techniques used by the most successful recent startups, like some of the guerrilla marketing tactics Ryan discussed in Trust Me, I'm Lying.

I recommend it for someone who wants a nice refresher about the main marketing points in The Lean Startup and a great overview of the many core techniques used by companies like Dropbox and AirBNB to get their start.

---