The Differences Between Product Management and Growth Hacking

Which One is Better?

Alexander Lim
4 min readJan 27, 2022
Photo by path digital on Unsplash

Product management is one of the most important roles in a company. A product manager has to deal with different types of products and determine their future direction.

The role of a product manager is vital for the success of a company, because it gives them an opportunity to improve on their business, sell more products and make money.

Product management differs from growth hacking in many ways. However, both are extremely important and successful in their own ways. Product management involves thinking about the business and identifying ways to improve its growth and profitability.

Growth hacking focuses on delivering a specific solution to your customers as quickly as possible by improving on marketing tactics, reducing costs or gaining more access to customers through innovative means. In this article, we will discuss the differences between product management and growth hacking in depth.

Product Management

Product management is a key role that involves setting up your product strategy, developing an idea, organizing and managing team efforts in order to reach business goals while ensuring that they meet customer needs.

It also involves identifying gaps in current offerings and evaluating solutions based on customer feedback before deciding which solutions will be suitable for use by your customers. In essence, it’s all about building products that help your customers in different ways.

As a product manager, you’ll have to find the best solution for your company by doing some research and thinking hard about your market and what needs to be done. In order to create a new product, you’ll have to gather data from different sources like customer surveys, focus groups and market research reports.

You’ll also have to identify key problems that customers are facing, such as poor customer service or poor product quality. After identifying the problems, you’ll be able to develop a new product or improve on an existing one that is already in the market.

Growth Hacking

Growth hacking is not a specific job title; it’s more of a method of approaching marketing. It can be used by any type of person in any industry and can include anything from social media marketing to email marketing campaigns. However, it’s most commonly used by startups who need to quickly grow their customer base while they’re developing their products.

Growth hacking involves using new methods of marketing that are effective at gaining attention quickly and effectively without having to spend much money on advertising campaigns or paying for expensive marketing services like Google Ads. You can try out these strategies yourself by taking advantage of free tools like Google Ads.

A growth hacker focuses on improving your company’s marketing tactics and getting more attention for your product or service. It involves trying out new methods of marketing and testing them out on potential customers in order to see what works best.

For example, if you want to market your app through social media, you can create a Facebook page for your app and post updates about the latest updates or any other information that is relevant to potential customers.

You can also create a website for your app and add content that is useful to people who might be interested in using it. You can use email marketing to get in touch with potential customers by sending them offers that are relevant to their needs.

Product Management vs Growth Hacking

Product management and growth hacking are both important jobs that require specific skill sets. However, the differences between the two can be seen by comparing the tasks that each job involves and how they are used differently in their own way.

Product management is all about building products that help customers by offering different types of services or products while growth hacking is all about attracting attention from potential customers through innovative means such as using new methods of marketing campaigns or creating useful content for your website so people will want to visit it.

Which One Is Better?

Although both product management and growth hacking are vital for any company, it’s important to determine which one is best for your company. In many cases, the best solution will be a combination of both approaches.

It’s also important to realize that product management is more about setting up your business, developing new products and growing your customer base while growth hacking is all about improving on marketing tactics in order to gain more attention for your products.

As mentioned, both roles are extremely important for any company and the one that you choose should be based on the skills that you have and the needs of your company.

About the Author

I hope that my post has helped you know more about Startups. Feel free to leave a comment and tag me and I will answer them. Follow my profile to get the latest content I post to stay ahead of the curve.

I am the Founder of Cudy Technologies, a full-stack EdTech startup helping teachers and students learn better. I am also a mentor and angel investor in other Startups of my other interests (Proptech, Fintech, HRtech, Ride-hailing, C2C marketplaces, and SaaS). You can also find me on Cudy for early-stage Startup Founder mentorship and advice.

Connect with me on LinkedIn if you have further questions. Let me know that you are a reader of my Medium posts in your invitation message.

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Alexander Lim

Founder of Cudy Technologies (www.cudy.co), a full-stack EdTech startup helping teachers and students teach and learn better. I am also a mentor and investor.