I’ve been trying to devise a thought framework for Growth that blends Growth Hacking, Digital Marketing, and Foundational Marketing together into some clarity. What came out is a categorization along 4 approaches to think about, related to growth. You might initially focus on one or the other, but eventually, you will have to pull all these levers so you can hit on all the proverbial cylinders. 1. Peer-to-Peer Growth comes from peer-to-peer referrals and user-to-user communicated interactions. It’s typically Organic or Viral growth. This can happen either via a user incentive where you help them (or trick them), or via an emotion where you elicit a voluntary action to share. Don’t forget to also focus on the upper echelon of your users/customesr who are your Advocates. That segment will do a lot more for you than the average loyal user. As the Bruno Mars song goes, they “would die for you”, and you should do the same for them. A lot of the Growth Hacking techniques fall in that category, although there is Growth Hacking that is outside of peer-to-peer. 2. Paid You pay to either promote or place your service within social, online or a physical space, hopefully close to the context of intent to purchase or to click. This part is the easiest way to measure your results, so you can optimize accordingly. Most of the services in this category will give you a Dashboard, but don’t focus on that Dashboard. Rather, focus on the optimization tools they provide you or help you with. It is more important to be able to instrument the cause and effect of a number, than to stare at it. 3. Pulled We’re in the thick of Inbound Marketing effectiveness, as a method of communications. Inbound Marketing is a great way of pulling-in your customers, users or prospects to find you. The goal is to keep appearing on search results, but also to make your content experience so pleasurable for your users, that they will come back for more, on their own. You can measure traffic, clicks, replies, social gestures, conversions, commenting, emails, etc. In addition, you need to complement inbound marketing with other Communications activities oriented towards influencers or media channel who will also contribute to pull interest towards your product or service.