Chaos was the law of Nature;  Order was the dream of man.–Henry Adams

Humans invented religion to give order to a Universe beyond our explanation. Why do children get cancer? Why  do righteous people endure  tragedies? We have faith in a divine logic. A place after death makes loss more bearable.

Without structure human life is a meaningless series of events. Religion provides structure. Everything that happens to us–and for us–happens for a reason, even when that reason is to test our faith. Someone or something has a plan for us all.

Growth hacking is the marketer’s religion

Starting a business is test of faith. Uncertainty and self-doubt are constant companions. Amidst the chaos entrepreneurs crave anything that creates structure. Growth hacking is that structure for marketers.

Growth hacking is the marketer’s religion. Growth hacking provides certainty in an uncertain world.

Nir Eyal and the growth hacking gospel

“Habits are who we are,” says Nir Eyal, author of the new book  ’Hooked; How to build-habit forming products,’ ”Habits are evolutionarily-beneficial,” Eyal says.

In Hooked Eyal and co-author Ryan Hoover explain that science behind the success of today’s most popular and most viral apps. They are all built to facilitate habits.

“We have habits to save our brain from having to do all the thinking of the first time we learned a behavior,” says Eyal.

We use  apps like SoundCloud, Tumblr, YouTube without being prompted, and we invite our friends, doing the marketer’s job, because we are hooked. And we love it. Being hooked is a function of successful design. It’s never an accident.

In Hooked Eyal and Hoover lay out four criteria for creating habit-forming apps: Trigger, Action, Reward and Investment.

Photosharing app Instagram is a prominent example of a habit-forming app.

A TRIGGER is something that makes you want to use the app. You walk by a cute puppy, or see a beautiful shop window display. You pull out your phone.

The ACTION happens when you snap a photo, edit it and then share with your networks.

Likes and comments are your REWARD which stimulates the flow of dopamine, and makes you feel good.

INVESTMENT is the collection of photos and comments we’ve created over time. Once we’re invested it’s harder and harder for another app or product to make us switch services. We’ll lose what built.

Makes sense. Doesn’t it?

Taken together, Trigger, Action, Reward and Investment are the Hooked Model. The Hooked Model imposes a logical, testable framework on the messy, unpredictable process of creating a habitual app and growing a successful company. Each component of the Hooked Model–Trigger, Action, Reward and Investment–is a conscious design choice. Each unit can be deconstructed, interrogated and optimized to encourage habit-formation.

Growth hacking is the marketer’s religion

In the chaotic world of startups, growth hacking is a systematic approach to growth.

Growth hacking is a system of scalable repeatable marketing tactics combined to drive user acquisition and revenue growth. What sets growth hacking apart from “traditional” marketing activities is its emphasis on analytics, data-gathering and precise tracking of user behavior that would have been prohibitively expensive for startups prior to the advent of cloud-based web services, and online business tools. Growth hackers are quantitative marketers, and coders who understand how to manufacture compliance.

We’d like to think that our startups do something to improve the world. Some will go on to do truly monumental things. Most won’t survive long enough. Growth hacking imbues the unpredictability of our entrepreneurship with a structure and rules, just as the uncertainty of human life gives religion its power.

Conclusion

All apps are the same: Code, design, and a suite of functionality. All products are not created equally. For a product to be a breakout success, it must be habit-forming, Eyal says.

Hooked is not a step-by-step playbook on how to develop and launch a successful app. There is infinitely more to creating successful products than can be shared in four principles. However, Hooked provides what humans crave, certainty in an uncertain world. Not only do Nir Eyal and Ryan Hoover provide a tantalizing glimpse of structure, they illustrate how this structured approach helped companies like Facebook, Zynga, design community Dribbble become viral sensations.

Hooked is just one way to look at building a successful company. It’s well-researched, persuasive and logical. While our religious observance varies, we all long to understand what unites us as humans, and as a part of the Universe beyond eating, procreation and death. Religion gives us a code to follow, and helps us makes sense of life amidst the chaos. For startups growth hacking is that code.

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