Growth Hacker Marketing Comes At A Steep Price For Most Startups
I’ve been chatting with a number of founders for the past couple of weeks. One in particular told me that they either wanted explore …
I’ve been chatting with a number of founders for the past couple of weeks. One in particular told me that they either wanted explore growth hacker marketing by either a) hiring a growth hacker or b) hiring an agency to help them increase her user base and dramatically boost their monthly revenue.
How Much It Costs To Do Growth Hacker Marketing
I asked if they knew how much it will cost. Since they didn’t know, I explained that an agency typically requires a 6–12 month retainer and usually a minimum of $3K-$5K per month. This does not including ad spend. In case your curious, ad spend, depending on your market, could be a minimum of $2K to $10K+ per month.
I know they didn’t believe me and it’s fair to be skeptical plus do some due diligence (respect!). They decided to check out a few agencies on their own.
I can’t say I was surprised when they came back a few days later and told me I was right.
Of course I love being right (who doesn’t?), but that’s not why I’m telling you this story.
Is it worth investing in growth hacker marketing?
I’ve seen far too many tech founders get distracted by shiny objects like growth hackers and agencies, instead of buckling down and doing the foundational work that will actually yield results for your business.
Sure, you could hire a growth hacker, but similar to the agency, you’d need to hire someone on an ongoing contract and set aside funds for the ad spend.
The other BIG issue is that if you hire a growth hacker-slash-agency when you aren’t sure which channels your customers are on, you will blow through a fair amount of money running experiments. Ritika Puri, an instructor in my upcoming GROW IT course, teaches us this in this video lesson.
Of course, the agencies don’t mind.
They are getting paid to run experiments regardless.
And while they do their best, they cannot guarantee results immediately, which is why they ask for the retainer.
What To Do Before You Hire A Growth Hacker
It’s better to do smaller scale experiments like the ones we’ll be covering in the GROW IT course.
Build up your base and THEN go to an agency with the results and learnings from your experiments so they can help you optimize the results.
You don’t have to take my word for it.
Go ahead and do your own research on hiring a growth hacker… and once you’re done, circle back.
