[allforJesse]

Strongly disagree -- http://www.johnfdoherty.com/seos-growth-hackers/#comment-117...

[for your convenience]: I definitely agree that growth hacking has a lot of overlap with SEO and Inbound Marketing, but I think there are a couple of critical distinctions:

For one thing, Growth Hackers have to be the expert across a huge number of platforms, because of the environment they work in. Growth Hackers are most prevalent in startups, where they wont have the convenience of a larger team of specialists. A 10-man startup (still relatively small) the Growth Hacker has to be able to do the SEO, the Analytics, the CRO, the Social, the PPC, the Retargeting, the Media, and be on the bleeding edge of new customer acquisition technologies as they arrive. New team members may take on some of this work as the startup grows, but for the most part, it’s all Growth Hacker.

The other distinction is implementation. A Growth Hacker needs to be able to code, or it’s a dilution of the term — a Growth Hacker who can’t code at least a little is a Growth Strategist, still a highly valuable team member, but a different animal.

The reason this is so important is that in a startup environment, the team is always going to be maxing out their bandwidth. A Growth Hacker can hatch a new plan, and then start building it, bringing in other team members as they’re available.

A Growth Strategist on the other hand is utterly at the mercy of the other members of their team — if everyone is super busy (and they will be) new growth hacks can take forever to be enacted, and that can spell death for a startup.

I totally agree that the SEO skillset overlaps with growth hacking, but I think it’s a mistake to equate them 1:1 — any SEO worth his salt stands partway down the yellow brick road that leads to Growth Hackerdom, but there are many leagues to go before we reach the emerald city.

[dohertyjf]

Great points, Jesse, but you're also insinuating that: 1) Marketers/SEOs specifically cannot code; 2) SEOs/online marketers can't do all of the things you mentioned (Analytics, CRO, social, PPC, retargeting).

I absolutely agree on the implementation part, but we can build some pretty cool stuff. Though as a consultant you're always at the whim of the client to get it implemented, no matter what.

We're also getting back to the "What is an SEO" discussion, which I'm tired of. SEO is so much more than linkbuilding. It touches content, CRO, social, analytics, email, everything. And we need to recognize that, otherwise we'll be marginalized and made ineffective quickly.

[allforJesse]

Perhaps I mis-insinuated, the implication I'd intended was that most SEOs can't code. There are absolutely many that can, but it seems problematic to imply that SEOs as a rule are growth hackers, when many (if not most) lack a good number of the required skills.

Totally agree on the exhausted subject of what is SEO, so let's not beat a dead horse.

[ZanderEarth32]

"The other distinction is implementation. A Growth Hacker needs to be able to code, or it’s a dilution of the term — a Growth Hacker who can’t code at least a little is a Growth Strategist, still a highly valuable team member, but a different animal."

Is your issue that you're assuming if you can't code, you can't execute? While a good portion of what an SEO would handle is a bit on the technical side and might require some coding, a lot of the execution can be accomplished with zero coding ability.

Maybe the trouble is in the use of of "hacker" which is usually associated with "code".

[allforJesse]

With regard to Coding, I'm not referring to absolutely ALL Growth Hacker skills -- certainly PPC, Media, and Intermediate analytics can be done with no coding skill, but at least half of the GH skillset requires at least minimal coding skill to execute:

CRO, UX, Advanced Analytics Implementations, Advanced Social Implementations, Doing anything innovated with an API -- these are off the table for a GH unless they can code at least a little, and who want's a Growth Hacker who can only do the bare minimum?

SEOs can absolutely get by with minimal coding knowledge, I give you no argument there, but that's part of what makes the who disciplines different.