If we asked a hundred marketers to define growth marketing, we would likely get a hundred different answers.
And all of them might be correct. Over the last two decades, growth marketing has continued to grow in popularity even though most executives and many marketers continue to maintain a fuzzy — at best — grasp of the concept.
The vagueness of this domain has turned it into an overused buzzword. And it doesn’t help that the nature of growth marketing work continues to change as marketing tools and tactics evolve.
A few years ago, in a blog post titled “The Real Definition of Growth Marketing,” we said that “growth marketing is the engine for growth loops.”
In this same post, we succinctly defined growth marketing:
"Growth marketing uses triggers, channels, messaging, and personalization to bring new and existing customers into the product to experience its value."
This foundational concept still rings true today, but the nuances of execution continue to evolve.
So we turned to a handful of marketing experts to help capture what the growth marketing function looks like in 2022.
MEET THE EXPERTS
Kevin Bechtel - Operator In Residence @ Reforge, Formerly Director of Brand & Comms @ Workrise & Director of Brand @ Upwork
Yousuf Bhaijee - Growth @ brightwheel & Reforge Partner, Formerly VP Growth @ Eaze & Senior Director of Growth @ Zynga
Mark Fiske - Operating Partner - Marketing at H.I.G. Capital & Reforge Program Creator, Formerly VP of Growth & Marketing @ Credit Karma
Dorian Kendal - Marketing Executive, Formerly VP of Publishing @ Unity & VP of Enterprise Applications @ Trulia
Stephanie Kwok - Executive In Residence @ Reforge, Formerly VP of Customer Marketing at FanDuel
Patrick Moran - Executive In Residence @ Reforge, Formerly Head of Consumer Marketing @ Houzz & Global Head of Growth Marketing @ Spotify
What Is Growth Marketing in 2022?
Growth marketing is responsible for bringing a company’s growth strategy to life by powering sustainable, repeatable growth loops.
But growth marketing shouldn’t just be seen as a siloed execution arm of the business.
It’s also a critical component of strategy development that helps inform product, marketing, and engineering teams.
Just like growth loops are cyclical in nature, the outputs of a growth marketing team — especially customer insights — should be shared widely to inform the company’s growth strategy as it evolves.
Over the last two decades, we’ve seen growth marketing move away from disjointed growth hacking tactics, to a more sophisticated approach that’s deeply integrated across the business.
Mark Fiske sums it up well by saying:
“Growth marketing is the set of practices, rituals, and processes rooted in experimentation and understanding of the customer that ultimately results in sustainable, repeatable, growth for an organization.”
Patrick Moran also pointed out that driving predictable growth has always been one of the core tenets of growth marketing. Most of the experts we talked to agreed. Repeatable processes that lead to growth should be the throughline of any growth marketing strategy.
Not simple growth hacking tactics, like we saw throughout the past decade.
Growth Loops are a fantastic example of this idea in practice. Typical marketing funnels only operate in one direction and are unsustainable over the long run. A business cannot continue to grow if it's only focused on attracting new users.
On the other hand, Growth Loops drive sustainable and compounding growth by reinvesting existing users through expanded use, repeat purchases, and more. One Growth Loop feeds the next one, and so on.
Growth Loops push growth marketers to think about how different functions of the business can work together to achieve a goal as well. Instead of being entirely focused on marketing outputs.
One important thing to remember about growth marketing is that it often leads to a lot of cross-functional value that the whole company can benefit from.
Dorian Kendal says that great growth marketers are able to dig up a lot of data-backed insights that provide value to the entire organization. Those insights should be powered by experimentation, intentional bets, and insightful data.
“The value of these insights not only contributes to the success of the marketing organization, but they provide an invaluable feedback loop for other parts of the organization including product, design, and engineering.”
Kevin Bechtel takes this idea a bit further by saying growth marketers shouldn’t focus on “acquisition-at-any-cost” anymore like some have for most of their careers.
“A successful growth marketer needs to collect and strategically share acquisition insights across the business to help guide product development, brand positioning, and even customer experience.”
As we continue to move towards economic uncertainty, growth marketers will need to understand that sustainable growth and valuable insights should be prioritized.
Not quick wins and simple growth hacks.
Stop Calling Everything Growth Marketing
Some of our experts bristled at the term “growth marketing.”
They believe it has become a catchphrase to describe a company's many different functions, tactics, and strategies.
Yousuf Bhaijee had an interesting take on this:
“Growth marketing in 2022 is simply a misnomer for everything other than brand marketing. True growth marketing was a niche of practitioners who figured out the playbook before others. We should drop the term growth marketing for 95% of current industries.”
And he’s not wrong.
If the growth marketing function is solely responsible for delivering ‘“growth” instead of also sharing learnings and customer insights across the business, company strategy will quickly become out of touch with market realities.
When growth marketers are the sole owners of ‘growth metrics,’ the team can be left chasing many different initiatives. The individuals on that team may not have the skills necessary to follow through with all of them too.
According to Stephanie Kwok, who also doesn’t like the term, the vagueness of growth marketing can lead to some unrealistic expectations for a growth marketer too.
Executives who expect growth marketers to “drive growth at all costs” is usually a sign of poor growth strategy.
She goes on to say that pushing all growth initiatives onto one team can drive a wedge between growth and other marketing teams.
“The trend of labeling specific teams as responsible for growth or growth marketing muddies the waters and can actually decrease the overall company focus on growth and responsibility all teams feel. After all, isn't every department, in marketing or otherwise's, job ultimately to drive growth for a company?”
Although it might be tempting to put everything that drives growth under your growth marketing team, the result will likely lead to disintegrated marketing programs and a disjointed customer experience.
Kevin Bechtel condenses this mindset with a nice colloquialism:
“It takes a village to gain new users and sustainably generate additional business from existing customers.”
Reset Your Expectations for Growth Marketing
As you can see, there are a lot of different ways to define growth marketing. And there are some real consequences for overusing the term.
However, the idea that growth marketing in 2022 should drive sustainable, repeatable growth and provide insights to the rest of the team was a common throughline.
Now’s the time to take stock of your own definition of growth marketing. Widen your perspective to ensure that growth marketing activities are fully integrated across marketing programs and that growth marketing has a seat at the table when establishing and evolving company strategy.
Now that we know what growth marketing actually looks like in 2022, the next step is to put some best practices to use.
Thankfully Brittany Bingham, Mark Fiske, and a handful of other marketing pros have already done this in another great growth marketing article.