The Growth Hacking Dictionary

I’ve put together this growth hacking dictionary to provide a common place for the growth hacking ecosystem. Also its help to define the terms we use.

As Growth Hackers, we use uber-cool, sometimes confusing, sometimes buzzword-y terminology while hustling with their growth experiments, speaking in technical marketing events, and running innovative campaigns.

To ensure the ecosystem and budding growth hackers speak the same language, here’s a glossary of terms and definitions. These are related to the growth hacking ecosystem.

List of Growth Hacking Terms:

  1. PMF (Product Market Fit): Foundation of growth. When offerings and audience are in sync.
  2. Growth Experiment: A potential growth hack, currently in the experimental stage.
  3. Growth Hack: A growth experiment which has a good OMTM.
  4. Scalable Growth Hack: A growth hack with a YES output from the ESS which can also be automated using tech (bots, scripts, etc).
  5. Unicorn Growth Hacks: Exceptionally successful hacks (Not the financial unicorn). Example: Airbnb-Craigslist.
  6. OMTM (One Metric That Matters): One goal defined by a single metric which the entire startup should be working towards.
  7. NSM (North Star Metric): Same as OMTM.
  8. ESR or ESS: Sigma equation as a next step after OMTM to make it easier for us to make a YES or NO decision.
  9. User Personas: Detailed definitions of how your target audience looks.
  10. Channel Personas: Detailed definition of how your target channels look.
  11. Growth Triangle: Relationship between Patience, Budgets and Growth explaining the need for growth hacking.
  12. A3R3: The growth hacking funnel (My twist on the AARRR Pirate Metrics).
  13. Triple Peak Effect: Describes the lifetime of any channel potentially used for growth hacking in 3 phases – Early Adopters (Hacks), Early Majority (Organic), Late Majority (Paid).
  14. OPN (Other People’s Networks): Leveraging other people’s network.
  15. OPA: Leveraging other people’s audience (Similar to above).
  16. OPP: Leveraging other people’s platforms. Usually by reverse engineering APIs.
  17. O2I Hacking: Growth hacking by converting a process from Outbound to Inbound.
  18. Influence Hacking: Leveraging influence using hacks.
  19. Lean Analytics: Bare minimum tracking, reporting and analysis.
  20. A/B Testing: Comparing 2 versions to check which performs better. Its usually by changing one element at a time.
  21. AHA Moment: The time it “clicks”.
  22. Churn Rate: Lost customers over time, opposite of retention rate.

Click to get the complete dictionary PDF with the entire list of growth hacking definitions.

11 thoughts on “The Growth Hacking Dictionary”

    • Thanks Prateek, You can also see the complete list of growth hacking terms in the PDF at the end of the article. Thanks for reading!

      Reply
  1. Thanks for the great article, Rishabh!

    I’ve tried to download the pdf file with the complete list of definitions, without success. I’ve clicked on the link several times and it always gives me an error message.
    I’ve enrolled in the course by mail. I can’t wait to receive the content! Thanks a lot!

    All, the best!

    Reply

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