What Is Growth Marketing?

Growth marketing is marketing that is measured by what it adds to the business, not by how much activity it produces. Instead of asking “did we post this week?” or “did the campaign launch?”, a growth marketer asks “what did this channel return, and should it get more budget or less?”

That sounds obvious, but most marketing isn't run that way. Plenty of businesses pay for SEO, ads and social media for years without knowing which of them actually brings in customers.

#How growth marketing differs from traditional marketing

Traditional marketing often works channel by channel. One team or agency handles social media, another runs ads, someone else looks after the website. Each reports on its own numbers: followers, impressions, rankings.

Growth marketing starts from the other end. It picks one business number — leads, sales, revenue, sign-ups — and treats every channel as a way to move that number. The channels are tools, not goals.

• It sets a target first, such as a cost per lead or a return on ad spend.
• It measures every channel against that same target.
• It moves budget from what isn't working to what is, regularly.
• It tests changes in small steps instead of large, slow campaigns.

#The four steps of a growth marketing engagement

Most growth work follows the same loop, whatever the size of the business.

• Audit: find what is holding growth back — tracking gaps, a slow website, wasted ad spend, pages that don't rank.
• Strategy: pick the channels with the best chance of paying back, set targets and agree a 90-day plan.
• Build: launch the pages, campaigns and content in the plan, with conversion tracking in place from day one.
• Scale: review results weekly and move budget to what returns most. Then plan the next 90 days.

#Which channels does growth marketing use?

Any channel can be part of growth marketing, as long as it can be measured. The common ones are search engine optimisation (SEO), paid search and social ads (PPC), social media, email, conversion rate optimisation on the website, and creator content such as UGC ads.

The point isn't to use all of them. A small business usually does better running one or two channels well than six badly. Channels get added only when the first ones are paying back.

#Does your business need growth marketing?

You're likely to benefit from a growth approach if any of these sound familiar:

• You spend on marketing but can't say which channel brings in customers.
• Your ad spend has grown but your results haven't.
• Your website gets traffic but few enquiries or sales.
• Different agencies or freelancers each report on different numbers.

If you already know exactly what each rupee of marketing returns, you're doing growth marketing — whatever you call it.

#How to get started

Start with tracking. Before changing any campaign, make sure enquiries and sales are recorded in your analytics and ad accounts, so every decision afterwards is based on real numbers. Then pick a single target and judge every channel against it.