What is Growth Marketing?
Growth marketing is a collection of strategies focused on the acquisition and retention of new users and customers in a sustainable, scalable fashion. The goal of growth marketing is to achieve rapid growth for a business by attracting new customers, rather than growing through traditional marketing efforts focused on converting leads and optimizing funnels.
The key difference between growth marketing and traditional marketing is the focus. Traditional marketing typically relies on tactics like advertising, PR, conferences, tradeshows and direct sales. While these can be useful for acquiring customers, they tend to be expensive to scale. Growth marketing instead utilizes lower-cost, technology-driven strategies that tap into viral effects, word-of-mouth and network effects to grow. This makes growth marketing strategies more scalable over time.
Some examples of growth marketing tactics include viral loops, referral programs, social media optimization, search engine optimization, content marketing and email marketing automation. The emphasis is on leveraging scalable, low-cost acquisition channels to grow a business quickly. Growth marketers are focused on metrics like customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, virality and retention – which all contribute to sustainable business growth.
Rather than buying attention, growth marketing earns attention by creating things people want to share and recommend. The end goal is to build a repeatable, scalable engine of growth fueled by new user acquisition. While traditional marketing and growth marketing can work hand-in-hand, growth marketing focuses squarely on scalable ways to get new users and turn them into delighted customers.
Why Growth Marketing Matters
Growth marketing focuses on acquiring and retaining customers at scale. For businesses looking to grow, implementing an effective growth strategy is critical. Here are some of the key benefits of prioritizing growth marketing:
- Rapid customer acquisition and business growth – Growth marketing is all about amplifying reach and acquisition channels to maximize the number of customers. This leads to exponential revenue growth vs linear growth.
- Cost effective customer acquisition – Strategies like viral loops, referral programs and optimization of acquisition funnels allow you to acquire customers in a cost-efficient way. Growth marketing provides a better return on investment than traditional marketing.
- Data-driven decisions – With growth marketing, you make data-driven decisions based on analytics to optimize your strategies. This takes the guesswork out of marketing and provides focus.
- Full-funnel focus – Rather than just top-of-funnel brand awareness tactics, growth encompasses the full customer lifecycle. This allows you to optimize acquisition, activation, retention and revenue per customer.
- Cross-functional alignment – Growth marketing requires the alignment of marketing, product, engineering, sales, customer success and leadership. This cross-functional collaboration leads to maximum business impact.
- Future-proofing the business – With the fast pace of change in digital ecosystems, growth marketing gives businesses the agility and optimization mindset needed to continuously adapt and grow.
By implementing a solid growth strategy, companies can rapidly scale up customer acquisition, retention and revenue growth. The data-driven nature of growth marketing provides sustainability and future-proofing as markets change. For any business looking to grow, focusing on growth marketing is a strategic imperative.
Growth Marketing Strategies
Growth marketing relies on several key strategies to help businesses scale rapidly. Some of the most effective growth strategies include:
Viral Loops
Viral loops incentivize existing users to invite their friends and connections to try a product or service. For example, Dropbox offered users extra free storage space when they referred friends to create a Dropbox account. This created a viral loop where existing users drove referrals, leading to exponential growth.
Referral Programs
Referral programs encourage customers to share your product with their network in exchange for rewards like discounts or cash bonuses. PayPal offered users $10 for each friend who signed up and linked a bank account, fueling their early growth.
Social Media
Leveraging social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok can help expose your brand to new audiences and drive awareness. Creating viral, shareable content optimized for each platform is key.
SEO
Search engine optimization ensures your website and content surfaces for relevant searches like “online project management software” or “best accounting app.” SEO brings targeted new visitors from search to your site.
Content Marketing
Creating blog posts, guides, videos, and other content attracts visitors from search and social who convert to customers. Valuable educational content helps establish your brand as an authority.
Growth Marketing Success Stories
Growth marketing strategies have achieved impressive results for many top companies. Here are some real-world examples of growth marketing success:
Example Company 1
Example Company 1, a leading [industry] startup, implemented several growth marketing tactics including [tactic 1], [tactic 2], and [tactic 3]. Within a year, they saw:
- [Specific growth result 1]
- [Specific growth result 2]
The growth marketing strategies allowed Example Company 1 to [highlight key accomplishment].
Example Company 2
Example Company 2, a prominent [industry] brand, focused on growth marketing initiatives like [tactic 1], [tactic 2], and referral incentives. Over a 6-month period, they accomplished:
- [Specific growth result 1]
- [Specific growth result 2]
By prioritizing growth, Example Company 2 was able to [key outcome]. Their success demonstrates the power of growth marketing.
Tips to Get Started
To implement a successful growth marketing strategy, here are some tips to get started:
Set Growth Goals
The first step is to identify your growth goals and metrics. Consider what growth looks like for your business. Do you want to increase website traffic by 25%? Double conversions? Grow monthly recurring revenue by 50%? Whatever your objectives, quantifying your goals will help inform your strategy and benchmark success.
Identify Key Metrics
Once you’ve defined your growth goals, determine the key metrics that will help you track progress. These will vary based on your business model and objectives. Common growth marketing metrics include new customer acquisition, churn rate, viral coefficient, referral rate, and lifetime value. Choose metrics aligned with your growth goals so you can regularly measure performance.
Prioritize Experimentation
A core principle of growth marketing is testing and optimizing through continuous experimentation. Don’t get stuck doing what’s always been done – be willing to try new strategies, messages, channels, and creatives. Set up A/B tests and analyze the data to double down on what works while eliminating ineffective tactics. An experimentation mindset will help you iterate your way to growth.
Leverage Tools and Software
Take advantage of the many excellent tools and software platforms designed specifically for growth marketers. Options like Viral Loops, Referral SaaSquatch, and Customer.io can help you run referral programs, onboard users, send behavioral emails, and more. The right tools will enable you to streamline and scale your growth efforts. Integrate them with your metrics dashboard to optimize performance.
