We will start with defining growth:
Growth marketing is the sum of user-focused, tactical activities that are both experimental and constantly evolving. Growth marketing takes the traditional marketing and adds multiple valuable layers such as A/B testing, SEO, data-driven campaigns, engaging blog content, etc. The focus of growth marketing is on maximizing all growth opportunities for the business throughout the entire funnel.
This is why growth marketing is the preferred strategy for businesses looking to position themselves on the market and scale quickly as it delivers performance-based ROI.
Growth VS Marketing:
If we consider traditional marketing, it serves two primary purposes:
1- Raise awareness
2- Acquire potential buyers
Subsequently, the focus of these activities is external. It’s about attracting individuals to you, but once they’ve arrived, they’re not part of marketing’s responsibility anymore.
Growth includes what marketing does but also activating them i.e. to engage them in your product or service, after that you should also retain them i.e. to make them come back to use your product by building the right product that answers their needs.
Listening to your customers’ needs continuously then changing your product’s features, user experience (UX), and customer experience (CX) accordingly is the key to retain and activate your customers.
After retaining them, the revenue stage comes and is led by a sales team, a campaign or any channel that closes a deal and generates revenue. Lastly, and most importantly, comes the advocacy/referral stage where customers become advocates of your brand and that’s when your growth starts to kick in because your cost of customer acquisition (CAC) starts to decline. Advocates means happy customers who are promoting your brand, product or service for FREE.
In a more technical and specific definition, your growth occurs when you spend less to acquire a customer aka cost of customer acquisition (CAC), and that customer is increasingly paying more and returning to buy several times aka lifetime value (LTV). We will cover CAC:LTV ratio benchmark with more details in a separate article.
The critical role of data in growth vs marketing:
One of the key characteristics that sets growth apart from marketing is its reliance on data. While marketing has always relied on data to some extent, growth takes data analysis to a whole new level.
In order to achieve sustainable growth, businesses must be able to measure, analyze, and optimize every aspect of their operations. This includes everything from customer acquisition and retention to product development and distribution.
To do this effectively, businesses need to have a solid data infrastructure in place, with the ability to collect, store, and analyze large amounts of data. They also need to have the right people and tools in place to turn that data into actionable insights and strategies.
Why should you pursue growth, not marketing as a business owner?
Many business owners will focus only on performance marketing, inbound marketing, or any other marketing type and later complain they couldn’t reach their marketing and sales objectives.
The reason for that lies in the limitation behind each of these approaches. While focusing only on growing your business, growth marketing combines all fields to find the best strategy for scaling your business and producing lucrative results.
Businesses that need growth marketing will typically be in one of these situations:
1- You own a startup but have no marketing experience,
2- You drive impressive organic traffic to your website, but there is almost no growth on your pillar channel,
3- You’re launching a new product and need a go-to-market strategy,
4- You’re experiencing a growing product demand but lack the resources to establish meaningful relationships with potential customers,
5- You have a big paid marketing budget but don’t see a lot of ROI,
6- Your company is looking into improving the branding across all platforms,
7- You have so much valuable content, but don’t know how to market it well,…
Simply put, if your business struggles with any metric of the AARRR (acquisition – activation – retention – referral – revenue) framework, growth marketing is the end-to-end strategy that you need.
Conclusion:
Ultimately, growth goes beyond driving awareness and acquiring users, by connecting the external activity to the internal focus of user activation, retention, and referral.
Users that experience a positive and consistent experience are more likely to refer others, thereby contributing to organic growth.
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