Growth hacker, a term coined by Sean Ellis in 2010 is the new buzz word catching on. This role is now being fully understood and will be in demand for the next five years at least. There is absolutely no doubt that it will be among the top three highest paying professions.

Ellis describes this subject as someone whose true north is growth. Everything they do is scrutinised by potential impact on scalable growth. This is not a new concept and some people who were brave enough to experiment using scientific data were called as innovative in their organisations.

The term growth hacking also brings clarity to the CEO of a company. He can now clearly communicate to his teams on building their thought processes and to think out of the box. Kaizen, the theory of lean also is in sync with growth hacking theologies, as it aims to achieve better results /output via lean business practices.

A Google Ad words pro will tell you to get the best and the highest cost key words to drive maximum traffic to your websites. However a growth hacker will rather look for low traffic key words, which may drive “very specific” traffic to your websites.

The difference here is in the thought being applied. The strategy is to scientifically use logic and statics, study the environment in totality and find one to two key differentiating factors. A small leverage applied at the right time would result in exponential growth and solidification of the business offerings.

The critical to success factor for a growth hacker is creativity. For the last 20 years in social media we have been brain washed over what we should be eating and what not. Gathering data and conducting interviews plus logical analysis brought out the following facts- at the back of our minds.

Growth hackers need to be able to think through, look at the holistic picture and delve into the value chains to connect with the consumers and positively impact revenue streams. We spend a huge amount of time talking of what we have seen, bought or heard, they aim to use these communications to their benefit.

Hence leveraging customers to build a bigger base is another imperative and delivering an incredible experience the key driver to motivate strategies.

A growth hacker’s line of attack could be on multiple fronts, he may strategically intervene in products at the development stage, get creative with communications, use the elements of fun, sadness, persona, bias, sarcasm, threat, fear all to his advantage- the goal being to make the masses respond positively.

Direction and mis-direction could be successfully deployed as a deal altering strategy. Students of psychology are the best fit for such a role. The only thing they need to do is apart from their theories of Eros and Thanatos, positive and negative correlations and such, they need to build understanding of industry segments.

The writer is vice-chancellor, Rama University, Kanpur