What is Growth Marketing?

Growth marketing is data-driven, tech-led acquisition marketing, mostly used by start-ups and smaller businesses (although from experience large multinationals have also adopted this approach). It uses rapid experimentation, ongoing optimisation, and personalisation to achieve scalable growth and is measured using metrics such as customer acquisition cost, conversion rates and customer lifetime value. In contrast, traditional marketing is defined as being more focused on brand building and broad reach strategies and uses a different set of tactics. 

Unlike traditional marketing, which often revolves around isolated campaigns, Growth uses continuous growth marketing techniques, experimentation and optimisation across the entire customer lifecycle. By analysing data at each stage, marketers can tailor their strategies to customer behaviours, ensuring more targeted and effective marketing efforts.

The importance of data in growth marketing cannot be overstated. It provides a clear understanding of customer actions and preferences, allowing businesses to quickly test and validate assumptions. Strategies are refined in real-time based on measurable insights, enabling multi-channel engagement driven by how and where customers interact. This method creates a cycle of continuous improvement, ensuring that rapid growth is not only achieved but sustained.

Table of Contents (This is a long blog! Use the table below to jump directly to particular sections)

Growth Marketing Definition vs Traditional Marketing 

Growth marketing and traditional marketing differ significantly in their approach and execution. Traditional marketing often focuses on broad-reaching campaigns designed to attract attention and drive short-term results. It relies on both offline and online channels, such as print ads, TV spots, email marketing, and paid digital campaigns. Success is typically measured by metrics like brand awareness or immediate conversions. While this approach can be effective, it may lack the flexibility required to quickly adapt to changes in customer behaviours and preferences.

The growth marketing definition, by contrast, is much more iterative and focused on long-term success. It uses data to continuously test, measure, and refine strategies. Rather than just focusing on the top of the funnel to bring in new customers, growth marketing looks at the entire customer journey, from acquisition to retention. This means understanding what drives customers to stay, re-engage, or refer others, and using this insight to adjust tactics accordingly.

Another key difference lies in the flexibility and agility of growth marketing. It is not limited to a single channel or medium; instead, it adopts a multi-channel approach, enabling marketers to meet customers wherever they are. The emphasis is on experimenting with small, measurable changes to identify what works best. As a result, growth marketing is constantly evolving and optimising, in contrast to the more fixed nature of traditional marketing.

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Growth Marketing vs Performance Marketing

Growth marketing and performance marketing share the goal of driving business growth, but they differ in their approach, focus, and measurement. Performance marketing is highly focused on optimising campaigns for immediate impact, while growth marketing is more holistic, aiming to nurture long-term customer relationships and build lasting value.  

• Performance marketing is primarily focused on short-term, measurable results. It often revolves around specific campaigns with clear goals such as generating leads, acquiring customers, or driving conversions. Performance marketers typically rely on metrics like cost per acquisition (CPA), return on ad spend (ROAS), and click-through rates (CTR) to assess the success of their efforts. Channels commonly used in performance marketing include paid search, social media advertising, and affiliate marketing. The emphasis is on efficiency, with rapid adjustments made to optimise campaigns for immediate outcomes.
• Growth marketing, on the other hand, takes a broader, long-term view. It doesn’t just focus on driving quick wins but looks at the entire customer lifecycle, from acquisition to retention and advocacy. Growth marketers aim to create sustainable, scalable growth by continually testing, measuring, and iterating. Their success is measured not just by short-term conversions but by metrics like customer lifetime value (CLV), retention rates, and customer engagement. Growth marketing also involves a wider range of channels, including organic strategies, content marketing, and product-led growth initiatives.

Growth Marketing vs Demand Generation

While growth marketing and demand generation both aim to drive business expansion, they differ in their scope and objectives. Each plays a critical role in developing a successful marketing strategy, but their approaches and focus areas set them apart.

• Demand generation is primarily concerned with creating awareness and interest in a product or service. It focuses on top-of-funnel activities designed to educate potential customers and build brand awareness. The ultimate goal of demand generation is to generate qualified leads by nurturing customer interest. This approach typically involves tactics like content marketing, webinars, email campaigns, and social media outreach to attract attention and inform potential buyers. Success is often measured by metrics like lead volume, engagement rates, and brand visibility.
• Growth marketing, on the other hand, takes a broader approach that extends beyond lead generation to cover the entire customer lifecycle. While demand generation seeks to bring customers into the funnel, growth marketing ensures they are retained, engaged, and turned into loyal advocates. Growth marketing is highly data-driven, with a focus on testing, iterating, and optimising every stage of the customer experience, from acquisition to retention. Metrics like customer lifetime value (CLV), retention rates, and referrals are key measures of success in growth marketing.

Growth Marketing vs Lead Generation

Growth marketing and lead generation are often seen as complementary strategies, but they serve distinct purposes within a broader marketing approach. In essence, lead generation is about getting prospects through the door, while growth marketing ensures that once they’re in, they stay, engage, and grow with the brand. 

Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting potential customers into leads, typically at the top of the sales funnel. The main goal is to gather contact information—such as names, emails, and phone numbers—so that these leads can be nurtured into paying customers. Lead generation relies on a variety of tactics, including landing pages, gated content, paid ads, and email sign-ups. Success is usually measured by metrics like the number of leads generated, cost per lead (CPL), and conversion rates.

Growth marketing, however, takes a more comprehensive view. While lead generation focuses on the initial step of bringing prospects into the funnel, growth marketing is concerned with optimising the entire customer lifecycle. Growth marketers work to attract, engage, convert, retain, and ultimately turn customers into brand advocates. This involves continuously testing, measuring, and improving strategies at every stage. Instead of just driving leads, growth marketing focuses on building long-term value by increasing customer retention, lifetime value, and satisfaction.

Growth Marketing And Sales

Growth marketing and sales organisations are increasingly intertwined, as both functions aim to drive business growth, but with different focuses and methods. Traditionally, marketing would generate leads through awareness campaigns, and the sales team would convert those leads into paying customers. However, with a growth marketing team, the relationship between marketing and sales is much more collaborative and continuous throughout the customer lifecycle.

A growth marketing strategy doesn’t stop at lead generation; it also looks at how to nurture leads and retain customers after the initial sale. Through data-driven experimentation and personalised engagement strategies, successful growth marketers ensure that customers remain engaged and satisfied long after the first transaction. This approach reduces reliance on cold outreach by sales teams and allows for a more organic, inbound flow of leads that are already primed for conversion. Growth marketers work closely with sales teams to share insights on customer behaviours, which can then be used to inform more tailored sales strategies.

On the sales side, growth-driven insights can significantly enhance the sales process. Armed with data from growth marketing experiments, such as which campaigns or content resonate most with different customer segments, sales teams can tailor their pitches more effectively. The integration of CRM tools, which track customer interactions, enables both growth marketers and sales teams to follow the customer journey closely, ensuring a seamless handoff from marketing to sales and improved alignment on goals and targets.

By breaking down silos between marketing and sales, growth marketing ensures that both functions work together to drive not just acquisition but retention and long-term value, ultimately leading to sustainable business growth. This close collaboration allows businesses to optimise every stage of the customer experience—from lead generation to sales conversion and beyond.

What Are Growth Marketing Frameworks?

Growth marketing frameworks provide a structured approach to testing, measuring, and optimising various strategies across your marketing funnel. These frameworks help ensure that all marketing efforts are data-driven and focused on long-term success, rather than just quick wins. 

The AARRR Growth Marketing Framework:

One widely used framework in growth marketing is the AARRR model, also known as the Pirate Metrics framework, which breaks down the customer lifecycle into five stages: acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue.

Each stage of the AARRR framework focuses on a specific aspect of customer engagement:

• Acquisition: How does a potential customer find your product or service? This stage examines which channels are most effective at attracting new users and driving traffic.
• Activation: What is the user’s first experience like? At this point, marketers focus on ensuring that customers have a smooth and valuable experience when they first interact with your offering.
• Retention: Are users coming back? Retention is key to building long-term growth, so understanding how to keep users engaged and returning is critical.
• Referral: Are your customers referring others? Referral is an essential growth lever, as it involves turning satisfied customers into advocates who bring in new users.
• Revenue: How do you monetise? This stage examines how effectively your marketing efforts convert users into paying customers or generate value for your business.

The Growth Loops or Growth Wheel Framework:

Another popular framework is Growth Loops, which focuses on creating a self-sustaining loop of growth. In this model, each action a customer takes feeds back into the loop, generating new users or encouraging existing users to take further action. Another popular approach is the Growth Flywheel, which centres around the idea of building momentum. By focusing on areas like acquisition, engagement, and retention, you can create a self-reinforcing cycle that compounds over time. Each positive interaction feeds into the next, leading to exponential growth. For example, a growth marketing campaign featuring a referral program would be using the growth loop framework, where each referral brings in a new customer who, in turn, can refer others, creating a compounding effect over time.

What are Growth Marketing Functions?

Growth marketing functions refer to the various roles and responsibilities that contribute to the overall success of a growth strategy. These functions are collaborative and cross-disciplinary, often blending skills from traditional marketing, data analytics, product development, and customer success. Each function works together to create an ecosystem that drives sustainable growth.

• One of the primary functions is data analysis, typically led by roles like Data Analysts or Growth Analysts. These professionals interpret large volumes of data to understand customer behaviour, campaign performance, and market trends. Their insights help inform which tactics are effective, where opportunities for optimisation lie, and how to adjust strategies for maximum impact.
• Another key function is experimentation, often driven by Growth Managers or CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) Specialists. These individuals design and implement controlled tests, analyse the outcomes, and refine strategies based on the results. Their role is critical for fine-tuning the approach and ensuring that decisions are grounded in real-time data.
• Content creation plays a central role in growth marketing, with Content Marketers, Copywriters, and SEO Specialists handling the development of materials such as blog articles, social media posts, email campaigns, and product marketing messaging. Their work ensures that content is both engaging and aligned with customer needs at every stage of the customer lifecycle.
• Finally, multi-channel management is overseen by Channel Managers or Digital Marketing Managers, who are responsible for overseeing efforts across various platforms—such as email, SEO, paid ads, and social media. Their job is to ensure the strategy remains cohesive and consistent across all channels, delivering a seamless customer experience.

Growth Marketing vs Marketing Roles and Responsibilities

While growth marketing and traditional marketing share the same overarching goal of driving business success, the roles and responsibilities within each differ in several key ways. Traditional marketing roles tend to focus on tried-and-tested strategies that promote brand awareness and generate leads through channels like advertising, events, and public relations. In contrast, growth marketing teams are responsible for a more dynamic, data-driven approach, prioritising experimentation and continuous optimisation across the entire customer lifecycle.

Traditional marketing roles are typically structured around specific functions such as brand managers, content marketers, and advertising specialists. Their responsibilities often involve executing large-scale campaigns aimed at building brand awareness and generating leads. Traditional marketers focus heavily on outbound strategies like print media, TV ads, and digital campaigns, using standard metrics like impressions, reach, and click-through rates to measure success.

On the other hand, growth marketing roles are more cross-functional and agile, often blending skills from various departments such as product development, data analytics, and customer success. Key roles in growth marketing include growth managers, data analysts, and conversion rate optimisation (CRO) specialists. These professionals are responsible for testing hypotheses through A/B tests, optimising conversion funnels, and making decisions based on real-time data. A growth hacker’s primary focus is not just on acquiring new users but also on retaining and engaging customers through personalised, iterative strategies that are continually adjusted based on data insights.

How Do You Use Data And Analytics In Your Growth Marketing Efforts?

Data and analytics play a central role in growth marketing, guiding every decision and helping to optimise strategies for maximum impact. By leveraging data, growth marketers can gain insights into customer behaviour, campaign performance, and market trends, enabling them to create more informed, effective strategies that deliver long-term results.

The process starts with data collection. Growth marketers gather data from a variety of sources, including website traffic, social media platforms, email marketing, and customer interactions. Tools such as Google Analytics, CRM systems, and marketing automation platforms provide a wealth of information on how users are engaging with your brand, allowing you to track key metrics like conversion rates, bounce rates, and customer retention.

Once data is collected, data analysis helps to uncover patterns and insights that inform growth strategies. By segmenting customers based on their behaviours, preferences, or demographics, growth marketers can identify which tactics are driving results and where there are opportunities for improvement. For example, analysing customer acquisition data can reveal which channels are the most effective at bringing in new users, while examining retention data can highlight factors that encourage customers to stay engaged with the brand.

With these insights in hand, growth marketers use experimentation to test different approaches and optimise performance. Whether it’s A/B testing a landing page, trialling new messaging, or tweaking a paid campaign, data ensures that every experiment is grounded in evidence rather than guesswork. Results are continuously measured, allowing marketers to refine their strategies and make data-driven decisions.

What Growth Data Can You Use for B2B Marketing?

In B2B growth marketing, having access to high-quality, targeted data is essential for reaching the right decision-makers and driving meaningful engagement. In fact, according to Gartner, 60% of B2B Sales Organisations Will Transition to a Data-Driven Selling Approach By 2025. This is where data providers come into play, offering comprehensive datasets that give businesses detailed insights into their B2B audience. Providers such as ZoomInfo, Clearbit, and Dun & Bradstreet specialise in delivering targeted data, including company size, industry, revenue, and contact information for key stakeholders. This type of data enables growth marketers to tailor their outreach efforts more effectively and focus on accounts that are most likely to convert.

However, simply acquiring data from external providers is not enough. To maximise the potential of this data, data enrichment is often necessary for a growth marketer. By enriching your B2B data, you can add deeper layers of context and intelligence to existing datasets, improving segmentation, personalisation, and targeting. Growth marketers can enrich their data by using third-party tools such as Clearbit or FullContact, which provide additional firmographic and technographic information, or by building custom enrichment models that draw on multiple data sources and identify each growth opportunity. 

For businesses looking to take their data enrichment efforts a step further, building your own data enrichment models can be a game-changer. By developing a custom model, businesses can combine internal data—such as CRM insights or customer interactions—with external data to create a more holistic view of their target audience. Machine learning models can be employed to analyse and predict customer needs, refine audience segmentation, and anticipate which leads are most likely to convert, allowing marketers to prioritise high-value accounts and optimise their sales outreach.

In short, having access to accurate and enriched data is crucial for B2B growth marketing. By leveraging data providers and building custom enrichment models, businesses can develop highly targeted strategies that are tailored to the needs and behaviours of their audience, leading to more effective and efficient growth marketing efforts.

Why is Growth Marketing Experimentation Important?

Growth marketing experimentation is crucial for building sustainable, long-term business growth. At its core, it relies on the process of testing hypotheses to continuously optimise and refine marketing strategies. Rather than relying on assumptions or outdated tactics, growth marketing empowers teams to make data-driven decisions that adapt to real-time customer behaviour.

The experimentation process typically begins with a hypothesis—an educated guess about how a particular change (such as adjusting a landing page design or messaging) might impact a specific metric, like conversions or user retention. Once the hypothesis is set, controlled testing is conducted, often through A/B testing or other methods, to gather data and validate whether the change yields positive results.

This approach is essential because it removes the guesswork from marketing. Instead of launching large, costly campaigns that may or may not work, growth marketing allows for incremental improvements that are backed by data. As experiments are conducted and hypotheses are tested, growth marketers can quickly identify what works and scale those strategies, while discarding or improving those that don’t.

Additionally, testing allows teams to remain agile and responsive in rapidly changing markets. Continuous experimentation means businesses can evolve their strategies in response to customer needs and industry trends, ensuring their marketing efforts stay relevant and effective.

How Do You Measure The Success of Growth Marketing Campaigns? What KPIs Do You Focus On?

Measuring the success of growth marketing campaigns is essential to understanding their impact and optimising results. By using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) at different stages of the customer lifecycle, marketers can track performance and ensure that campaigns deliver positive ROI.

Growth Marketing Metrics: Acquisition stage

In the acquisition stage, the goal is to attract leads and efficiently move them through the funnel. Here are the primary KPIs to focus on:

• Click-Through Rates (CTR): Measures how many users clicked on an ad or link, indicating the effectiveness of the messaging and content.
• Cost Per Lead (CPL): Tracks how much it costs to generate a lead, helping gauge the cost-efficiency of your campaigns.
• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): Measures the total cost to acquire a customer, which reflects the financial efficiency of your marketing strategy.
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): A comprehensive metric that tracks the total cost of acquiring a customer, combining both marketing and sales expenses.
• Conversion Rates: Tracks the percentage of prospects that move through each step of the funnel, helping to identify where optimisations can be made.
• Pipeline Velocity is another important metric that measures how quickly leads move through the sales funnel, combining metrics such as the number of qualified leads, deal value, win rate, and sales cycle length.

Channel-specific growth marketing metrics

• Each marketing channel requires tailored metrics to assess performance:
• PPC metrics: Cost per click (CPC), click-through rates, and conversion rates help monitor the performance of paid search campaigns.
• SEO metrics: Organic traffic, keyword rankings, and backlinks show the effectiveness of content and search engine optimisation efforts.
• Email marketing metrics: Open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates provide insights into engagement with email campaigns.

Social media marketing metrics

Social media is a vital channel for awareness and engagement, but it has also become a direct sales platform. Some platforms, such as Instagram, have introduced features that allow users to purchase products directly from posts or ads without leaving the app. To measure success in social media, consider:

• Follower Count: Once a very important metric, follower count has recently lost its importance. It is still relevant as social proof and potential reach, but engagement metrics like likes, comments, and shares are far more important for social media success, as they reflect authentic audience interaction and influence algorithmic visibility. Many consider it today as more of a vanity metric. 
• Engagement Rate: Measures the interaction between your audience and your social media content (likes, shares, comments).
• Follower Growth: Tracks the expansion of your audience and the reach of your social content.
• Referral Traffic: Shows how much traffic your social media efforts are driving to your website or landing pages.
• Direct Sales and Downloads: Platforms like Instagram allow users to purchase products or download apps directly. To measure this, track social media conversion rates, direct sales from the platform, and revenue generated from social commerce features. Instagram’s shopping insights and ad analytics can provide valuable metrics on how many users made a purchase or downloaded an app after interacting with your posts.

Growth Marketing Metrics: Retention stage

In the retention phase, KPIs help track how well your business retains and nurtures existing customers. Key metrics include:

Revenue per customer: Measures the average revenue generated per user, helping to assess the effectiveness of upselling and cross-selling efforts.

• Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): Tracks the total revenue a customer is expected to generate during their relationship with your company.
• Churn Rates: Tracks how many customers leave, helping identify issues in the customer experience.
• Retention Rates: The percentage of customers who continue to engage with your business over time, reflecting customer loyalty.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measures customer satisfaction and loyalty based on how likely customers are to recommend your brand.
• Online Reviews Score: Provides insights into customer sentiment and brand reputation.
• Revenue from referrals: Tracks the amount of revenue generated through referral programs.
• Engagement with loyalty programmes: Measures how effective your loyalty initiatives are at retaining customers and driving repeat business.

Good (Real-Life) Growth Marketing Examples

Growth marketing strategies and experiments are built on creativity, data, and the willingness to experiment and iterate quickly. Here are some notable growth marketing examples that demonstrate how successful companies have used growth marketing hacks and experiments to fuel their expansion.

• Slack: Slack is one of the fastest-growing B2B software providers in history. They used growth marketing experiments to capture users by focusing on solving communication challenges within teams. They emphasised customer feedback, improved their product continuously, and adopted a freemium model to attract users. By offering a free version with enough value to engage users, Slack encouraged sign-ups, and their seamless onboarding process allowed new users to quickly invite team members, driving viral growth. Slack also identified that users who sent 2,000 messages were more likely to convert to paying customers, so they optimised their platform to encourage this behaviour.
• Dropbox: Dropbox’s referral program is one of the most well-known growth marketing hacks. They offered free storage to both the referrer and the referred user, creating a viral loop that significantly accelerated their user base. This growth experiment was cost-effective and allowed Dropbox to scale quickly without a heavy reliance on paid advertising.
• HubSpot: HubSpot’s most notable growth hacking experiment was the creation of its free CRM platform, which leveraged a freemium model to drive user acquisition. By offering a free, entry-level version of its product, HubSpot allowed potential customers to “test-drive” its CRM before considering a paid upgrade. This model not only built trust but also encouraged users to explore and value the platform. Many users who started with the free version later opted to pay for more advanced features in the Starter or Professional plans, driving steady revenue growth.

Talk to our team if you’d like to talk more about how to leverage growth marketing for your business.