What is growth marketing?

Growth Marketing is a type of data-driven marketing with the objective of achieving consistent business growth in adopted key performance indicators (KPIs) through available marketing tools, research and analysis.

The definition of growth may vary depending on the goal and the chosen metrics (KPIs). It’s essential to remember that scaling a business can occur not only through direct revenue increases but also through the reduction of certain costs, contributing to the company’s growth in the bigger picture.

However, it is not enough to define a few metrics and claim that you are operating in accordance with the tenets of growth marketing. Before we start planning the implementation of our marketing strategy using various channels, let’s establish the fundamentals.

What are the fundamentals of Growth Marketing?

Here are the three fundamental principles of growth marketing:

1. It’s Data-Driven, not based on assumptions – In today’s world, assessing the scale of growth requires precise measurement of success metrics. Taking care of detailed data analytics using available tools is necessary for growth marketing to even exist and for the fulfillment of subsequent principles.
2. Utilizes Various Means and Channels but Doesn’t Have to Use All Available – In essence, growth marketing focuses on utilizing tools and channels that offer the greatest chance of achieving growth. It is not necessary to use all available options but rather to concentrate on those that are most effective.
3. Aligns with the Brand Strategy and Serves its Execution – Therefore, planning growth marketing from the very beginning should be strategic, oriented towards achieving overall goals and the brand’s development. The tools of growth marketing should be an integral part of the brand strategy, supporting it in the pursuit of success.

Strategy is key in Growth Marketing!

Knowing that Growth Marketing requires careful preparation to create an environment for achieving goals, building a marketing strategy is crucial. Marketing strategy is not a new concept, but it has gained interest in recent years, especially since AI has entered our daily, manual solutions. The role of an advertising specialist is gradually diminishing as AI takes on generic tasks like ad writing, graphic creation, and basic data analysis.

To develop their abilities, marketers need to look beyond simple actions within one medium. Hence, the current emphasis on marketing strategy – something AI can’t do well (yet). Especially when hundreds of thousands of dollars are at stake.

So, what does a growth marketing strategy look like?

To cut a long story short, a strategy aims to move us from our current state to our goal. It starts with a question: “What needs to change to achieve those goals?”

It comes down to two elements:

• Diagnosis – analysis of the current state and ideation of the desired state
• Solution – formulation of a method that will help us reach the desired state

Even if these two elements are defined correctly, they remain theoretical and need to be translated into a practical plan. A plan is a compilation of all actions, ideally time-bound, designed to effectively lead us to the desired point.

In practical terms, the Growth Marketing strategy looks like this:

In Growth Marketing, strategy and planning form the basis of all activities. Defining how to achieve goals properly is impossible without an in-depth analysis of data from all marketing channels and an understanding of the correlations between them. At .mta, this forms the foundation of our core product, Growth Navigator, which combines these three elements – diagnosis, solution, and plan.

Implementing the right strategy helps avoid unnecessary expenses on ineffective marketing channels, freeing up funds for those that bring incremental profit. The key in marketing is not to apply all possible solutions at once but to use an effective mix tailored to achieving the goal. And to do the “effective” part, you’ll definitely need a plan!

Putting strategy into action – how to properly plan your Growth Marketing?

Remember the core of growth marketing strategy? It’s supposed to be a solution that gets you from point A to point B.

A proper growth marketing plan is what jumpstarts your strategy.

At first, it’s important to make your goal a SMART goal, using the following methodology:

• S – Specific
• M – Measurable
• A – Assignable
• R – Realistic
• T – Time-bound

If any of the above fail, or you’re not able to define at least one of them, you’re at risk of failing the entire strategy.

By this point you should know everything about your strengths, weaknesses, what works and what doesn’t. You also have defined your goal. You have all the tools to make this journey happen. Now is a good time to create a timeline of your actions – a roadmap to your destination.

It’s important to plan ahead all actions that are required to achieve your goal. At .mta, we struggled for many years until we adopted the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) methodology, that helped us structure our tasks in a proper order. OKRs are easy to adopt and present a clear way of reaching your target, that is written as a main Objective. Key Results are a step-by-step path, based upon your earlier diagnosis of the current state, and the whole strategy that’s supposed to get you to your goal.

Knowing what the strategy is and planning it ahead, it’s crucial to know what metrics will tell us about the scale of our success.

Growth Marketing Metrics and popular KPIs

There’s an extreme number of digital marketing metrics that are available when thinking about a measure of growth of a company. Depending on its size and the stage of development, chosen metrics may vary, but they should still indicate certain progress towards growth.

Depending on the complexity of the goals, three types of metrics can be distinguished:

1. Basic Metrics

These metrics do not necessarily represent a measure of business success but often form the basis for defining and understanding more advanced goals. Examples of such metrics include:

1. Impressions
2. Clicks
3. CTR – Click-Through Rate
4. CPC – Cost Per Click
5. CPM – Cost Per Mille (cost per thousand impressions)

2. Marketing Efficiency Metrics

Various metrics indicating the effectiveness of a particular marketing channel but not necessarily signifying unequivocal business success. These may include metrics such as:

1. Conversions
2. Cost per Conversion
3. Engagement Rate (especially for Social Media)
4. ROAS – Return on Ad Spend
5. CPA – Cost Per Acquisition

3. Business Efficiency Metrics

Metrics that incorporate business data, such as customer and financial information. When combined with marketing data, they provide a complete picture of the effectiveness of activities. Examples of these metrics are:

1. ROI – Return on Investment
2. CLV – Customer Lifetime Value
3. CAC – Customer Acquisition Cost
4. Market Share
5. MER – Marketing Efficiency Ratio

Some example KPIs and associated metrics defining growth:

• Achieving annual revenues of $1,000,000
• Attaining a 15% market share
• Reaching 1,000 monthly transactions

Each implies that the company will grow from point A to point B.

However, there are metrics and goals whose achievement can lead to a reduction in costs:

• Reducing Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) from $200 to $180
• Decreasing the annual advertising budget by 10% while maintaining the same profit
• Reducing Cost per Acquisition (CPA) by 20% while keeping the same number of conversions over the year

Now that we know what our KPIs might look like, let’s dive into how to choose proper channels of acquistion to achieve these goals.

What channels can you use in Growth Marketing?

What media, tools, and processes contribute to the company’s growth in marketing? Essentially, they are the same as the ones we’ve known for years:

1. Paid Traffic (PPC – Pay Per Click) – advertising platforms with advanced audience targeting options, such as:
   1. Google Ads
   2. Meta Ads
   3. TikTok Ads
   4. Pinterest Ads
   5. LinkedIn Ads
   6. Programmatic (e.g., Display & Video 360).
2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – activities and processes to increase website visibility in search engines, contributing to increased traffic and conversions.
3. Content Marketing – various forms of content, including text, video, or audio, delivered through social media or search engines.
4. Social Media – large platforms gathering people with similar interests, including Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter), Pinterest and TikTok.
5. Web Analytics – collecting data (traffic and events) on websites and apps using tools like Google Analytics, Piwik Pro, or Matomo Analytics.
6. CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) and User Experience – processes that help understand user behavior on the website and optimize for higher conversion rates, using tools like Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity, or Crazy Egg.
7. E-mail marketing – a way to access your desired audiences by direct messaging them using e-mails.

As we can see, there are many popular channels that are well-known in the digital marketing world. It begs the question – what makes the difference between growth and performance marketing, if both are using the same solutions and are focused on data?

Growth marketing vs performance marketing — how are they different?

Growth and performance marketing are very similar — they utilize the same metrics, tools, and traffic acquisition channels to generate specific results. What sets them apart?

Several key differences can be identified:

1. Alignment with the company’s strategy – Performance marketing tools can be used as tactics to achieve business goals defined in the company’s strategy, but they can also be a separate component unrelated to it. Growth marketing is always focused on overall business development (e.g. growing a certain product or a service) and is linked to the company’s strategy.
2. Omni-channel synergy – In performance marketing, each channel can effectively function independently, responsible for achieving specific performance metrics. In the case of growth marketing, the synergy of all marketing channels is much more important to achieve a single, global business goal, even if some channels could perform better individually.
3. Place in the marketing funnel – Performance is much easier to achieve and evaluate in the context of bottom-of-the-funnel activities. This involves generating a greater number of transactions or reducing the cost of lead acquisition. Growth marketing, by its nature, must also think about appropriate tactics for the middle and top of the funnel because sustaining regular company growth is impossible when solely focusing on closing sales.

As the saying goes: all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. The same goes with growth vs performance marketing dilemma: every growth requires good performance, but not every performance is equal to growth.

Perfect examples of successful Growth Marketing campaigns

As a growth marketing agency, we have plenty to showcase! Over the years, we’ve combined many channels and actions to make our Clients grow their companies. You can see all of these stories in our Case Studies section. Among the most interesting you can find:

• Novakid’s path from a small online school for kids to one of the biggest brands in their industry across the globe: read more here!
• GymBeam’s successful expansion to the Polish market, thanks to efficient profit-based optimization of their campaigns: read more here!
• Audioteka’s way to climb to the #1 spot on TikTok in their industry: read more here!

As a team of marketing strategists, we are also capable of creating the whole Growth Marketing Strategy with a plan of action. These are the core elements of our product: the Growth Navigator. See how we were able to develop it on the example of ladymakeup.com: read more here!