[aginn]

Actually they are not just "marketing people". They top growth hackers are often full-stack developers (Jesse Farmer, Matt Humphrey, Jim Young, Mike Greenfield, Dan Martell, Danielle Morrill, Ivan Kirgin etc).

This is not inbound marketing but building product that, at its core, is focused on growth. LinkedIn, Zynga, Quora, Twitter, and Facebook all have growth teams.

Do you know Dropbox's brilliant referral strategy? That was the brainchild of Sean Ellis (growth hacker), Ivan Kirigin (growth hacker), and Dropbox leadership.

[dchuk]

The goal of a marketer is to grow a customer base. That's what these growth hackers are doing, they're just doing it in a more technically advanced way via data confirmation and split testing.

Referral strategies have been around for decades, the Dropbox guys didn't hack anything they just applied an old principle to a new technology.

Growth hacker and marketer are synonymous titles.