Marketing Strategy

Growth Marketing: What It Is and Why Your Company Needs It

Anthony Vasser

Anthony Vasser

If you own a business, chances are you are all too familiar with the delicate dance of getting your brand to stand out without:

  • Taking ads out on every marketing channel
  • Sending email after email
  • Constantly shoving your product in a prospective customer’s face 

But simply offering sales or an initial discount for joining an email list is not creating the growth you imagined it would.

Marketing your business is expensive and frustrating –– but not with growth marketing.

This is your essential guide to understanding growth marketing and why you need it for your business.

What Exactly Is Growth Marketing?

Growth marketing is a holistic approach to marketing using out-of-the-box, data-driven tactics that are focused on strategically and quickly scaling your business.

More than just unusual ideas, growth marketing integrates an added layer of data gathered through:

  • A/B testing
  • Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
  • Email marketing campaigns
  • Search engine optimization (SEO)
  • Social media
  • Value additive blog posts; and
  • Content marketing

Employing the scientific method to …

  • Hypothesize
  • Test
  • Analyze; and
  • Optimize

every aspect of a user’s experience, growth marketing uses the data from these experiments to allow businesses to make decisions based on insight and not on opinions or “gut instincts.” 

The holistic approach to growth marketing means it is engaged in every stage of the marketing funnel, also known as pirate metrics (AAARRR), from brand awareness to customer referral.

What Is Growth Marketing vs. Performance?

In performance marketing, a company places advertisements on any number of marketing channels, including: 

  • Social media
  • Search engines
  • Videos
  • Embedded web content 
  • And more 

The value in performance marketing is determined by how well the ad performs based on the number of:

  • Clicks
  • Impressions
  • Shares; or 
  • Sales 

Performance marketing focuses on quickly converting a lead into a sale and optimizing the return on ad spend (ROAS).

Growth marketing incorporates performance marketing, but moves the goal from customer awareness and acquisition to customer retention and referral.

Are you currently using a digital or traditional marketing strategy? 

It’s probably time to switch.

The team of expert marketers at Pretty-Impressive can help you build a unique growth marketing strategy to gain loyal customers as quickly as possible the right way.

Inspire and Engage

At Pretty-Impressive, each client is unique. Which is why we create strategies tailored to the needs of each company. Reach out and we’ll help you get your brand exactly where it needs to be — ahead of the rest.

What Are the Benefits of Growth Marketing?

How has growth marketing helped re-defined the goal of marketing?

Besides asserting the idea that growth isn’t sustainable without retention, tangible data and results signal there are many benefits to applying a growth marketing strategy, including:

  • Cost-effective – Over 200 billion dollars is collectively spent on marketing each year. Growth marketing was created in the face of traditional marketing and other high-cost methods that are based on throwing tens of thousands of dollars at a marketing idea and praying. The core mentality of growth marketing is to save money by implementing cost-effective strategies, and then scale up once you find what works for you.
  • Growth mentality – Understanding what growth means to your business, and proactively seeking it, enables you to discover the methods that work for you and benefit from them faster. This mindset allows you to maximize your potential at all times.
  • Anyone can benefit – Growth strategies are designed to be flexible to any situation at any stage. The key is understanding the goals and steps needed to grow and respond to the data. Businesses of all types can find the most success when growth marketing is implemented across:
    • Marketing
    • Product development; and 
    • Management 
  • Data-driven strategies – In growth marketing, data is the driver and determines whether a strategy will continue to gain growth. Through analytics and data, you can measure your efforts and accurately predict the impact.

What Makes Growth Marketing So Successful?

Growth marketing has become the new value-added marketing strategy because its holistic approach doesn’t just stop at the most creative way to attain visibility.

Growth marketing uses data to identify leads and guide them through each stage of the marketing funnel …

  • Attracting
  • Engaging
  • Converting; and
  • Retaining 

… them to ultimately create champions for your brand that will bring in new customers to repeat the cycle.

When done right, it means long-term success –– reciprocating revenue. 

Why Should You Implement Growth Marketing?

Still not convinced growth marketing is the right marketing strategy for your brand?

Here are a few indirect ways that implementing growth marketing can level up your business:

  • Build better products – Growth marketing strategies can help measure and analyze data to understand exactly how your customers use your product. This insight allows you to modify your product if it isn’t performing the way you intended.
  • Develop new products – Use the deeper understanding of your customer base and industry that the growth marketing data provides to your advantage. The insight may inspire you with new business models and product ideas that could take your business to the next level. 
  • Discover growth loops – Any closed system where an input generates an output and fuels growth back into the loop through the power of compounding is considered a growth loop. Growth loops, small or big, can be cost-effective and improve return on investment (ROI) when developed and utilized strategically.
  • Work smarter, not harder – Data is king. Over 500,000 new businesses start in the United States every year. Make yours stand out. With growth marketing strategies backed by data, you can outsmart your competitors who are shelling out cash for traditional “blind” marketing strategies. 
  • Create scalable growth marketing strategies – There is no silver bullet across all businesses when it comes to growth marketing strategies. The key is to utilize the data to discover the marketing strategies that work for your target goal and exploit them until they are no longer productive.

Inspire and Engage

At Pretty-Impressive, each client is unique. Which is why we create strategies tailored to the needs of each company. Reach out and we’ll help you get your brand exactly where it needs to be — ahead of the rest.

What Are Some “Out of the Box” Growth Marketing Ideas?

Yes.  Some of the best ways to have a successful social media marketing plan include:

  • Having a clear understanding of your brand, 
  • Knowing who your audience is, and 
  • Creating a multipronged strategy that will not only capture their attention in a value-based way, but leave them purchasing your products or services

Simply put, a successful social marketing plan gets your ideal clients to stop scrolling and click on your ad because you’ve created content that caught their attention, and they are interested in learning more. Now you can really market your products and services to them. 

The best out-of-the-box ideas for your growth marketing strategy will be developed for your industry and tailored to your product.

Here are five creative growth marketing ideas that have proven effective for other companies:

  1. Send branded food items to target clients
  2. Fly an airplane with a pitch banner over an outdoor event
  3. Buy a stunt at a professional sports game
  4. Paint a street with your logo
  5. Create an influencer-exclusive loyalty rewards program

What Should You Look for in a Growth Marketer?

Yes.  Some of the best ways to have a successful social media marketing plan include:

  • Having a clear understanding of your brand, 
  • Knowing who your audience is, and 
  • Creating a multipronged strategy that will not only capture their attention in a value-based way, but leave them purchasing your products or services

Simply put, a successful social marketing plan gets your ideal clients to stop scrolling and click on your ad because you’ve created content that caught their attention, and they are interested in learning more. Now you can really market your products and services to them. 

If you’ve built a brand that would benefit from quickly gaining loyal, long-term customers, growth marketing may work for you.

But with new technology emerging every day, marketing has evolved just as swiftly, and not every marketer is cut out for growth marketing.

Before you embark on your growth marketing journey, look for these top five qualities of a successful growth marketer:

  • Data-driven – Numbers don’t lie. At the very least, a growth marketer should know how to interpret data to determine which tactics are working and which are not.
  • Product-focused – You can’t sell a product you don’t understand. Pass if your growth marketer is not focused on fully understanding the value of your product.
  • Creative – The best growth marketer knows how to think outside the box, which includes being able to translate quantitative and qualitative data into a compelling story.
  • Jack-of-all-trades – A varied skill set can go a long way when testing to find just the right tactic.
  • Has no fear – Look for someone who believes a failed experiment is not a failure –– it’s the quickest route to valuable information. 

Build Long-Term Customers as Quickly as Possible With Pretty-Impressive’s Growth Marketing Strategies

Why isn’t your current marketing strategy working?

Why hasn’t your business taken off the way you expected?

Try taking an intentional approach to your marketing strategy. 

The marketing pros at Pretty-Impressive can help you …

  • Quickly gain loyal customers
  • Increase sales; and
  • Build your brand’s awareness

… by developing a unique growth marketing strategy focused on running campaigns with proven success that will make your customers want to come back.

At Pretty-Impressive, your growth marketing service will include:

  • Campaign audits
  • Customer persona research
  • Tested ROI strategies
  • Updated data dashboards; and
  • Regular campaign updates

Through our data-driven strategies, we work to understand the type of customers that you want your business to gain — and tailor your marketing to engage them to take action.

Contact us today for a free, no-obligation 30-minute strategy session to see how your business can get the growth and loyalty it deserves.

Let’s work together and make the buyer’s journey as efficient and profitable as possible.

Houston based performance marketing agency with clients of every size, in every vertical. Blending demand gen with intent-based optimization, we appeal to the human motivations and goals driving every click.

From strategy to implementation, we’re here to help your brand scale.

Further Reading

Pretty Impressive | Full Stack Marketing