101 guide to learn about growth marketing
Learn what growth marketing is, the difference vs performance marketing, how to decide if it's for you, and practical tips to help you make your career transition.
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Despite of how long it has been around, there is still some animosity towards “growth” itself. Among many, here are some of the most frequent ones I’ve heard:
Aren’t all departments contribute to growth, one way or the other?
Isn’t growth marketing just marketing?
Growth marketing is just digital marketing, right?
At the same time, there has been an increasing demand in this role. Even with the recent-and-upcoming bubble burst, the demand for growth in SEA startups are still ubiquitous. The need for growth implies that growth marketing will still be needed and I agree. Let’s do a deep dive into what it is, how to decide if it’s for you, and what you can do to break into growth marketing.
Q: Isn’t growth marketing just marketing?
False. Whereas marketing is mainly focused on awareness and consideration, growth considers all parts of funnels and it will do various initiatives that are necessary to drive real business impact / relevant metrics.
Growth marketing is a subset of marketing that looks at things more holistically. This means sometimes growth can be focused only on awareness, sometimes it can be focused on leads generation and monetization. This also means that one time growth will spend money, but sometimes it will have to be more frugal if cost-of-failure is higher.
There is no written rule that governs what area growth marketing will need to cover. In the last 2 years, I’ve been involved in either driving acquisition, retention, or monetization.
Q: Oh, so growth marketing is just performance marketing?
Nope. Performance marketing is a subset of growth marketing, not the other way around. This is my favorite explanation about the comparison between the two from hop online:
“We look at growth marketing as encompassing performance marketing but being more holistic across the entire marketing funnel. That would also include organic growth – SEO optimization and content marketing, which is the long-term strategy. It would involve your upper funnel marketing as well – paid advertising with video ads, Facebook ads, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
In a nutshell, performance marketing functions best at the bottom of the marketing funnel, while growth marketing incorporates performance but covers all funnel stages to accelerate business growth.”
Q: How to decide if growth marketing is for you?
My first suggestion is always to try it yourself. The reason is simple: It’s very likely there will be a gap between what you think you’d like, and what you will actually like. When I first started, I thought social media marketing was the one since it felt pretty natural to me. But I had a moment of realization: The moment I stumbled upon a challenge in a project, I lacked the eagerness to keep learning & to figure out the root cause. The problem didn’t excite me as much as I thought it would.
But obviously, the first suggestion won’t be possible for many. Therefore, we will need the second suggestion: Perform a honest self-assessment. Borrowing Lenny Rachitsky’s concept about knowing if PM is the right role for you, I’m making a version for ✨ Growth Marketing ✨.
Growth marketing is for you if:
You’re number-oriented 🔢
You have high curiosity of what’s happening around you 🧐
You like driving alignment ⁑
Budget don’t scare you 🤑
Working with people don’t scare you 🎳
Uncertainties don’t scare you 🌊
You like marketing ❤️
You want to be responsible for important business metric 📊
You embrace pressure that comes with all of the above 🤠
Likewise, growth marketing is not for you if:
You don’t think yourself as a very curious person 😴
Driving alignment is not your strength 👎
Talking about target/metrics/numbers makes you uncomfortable 😥
You’d rather work alone 🛀
You highly prioritizes stability & predictability 🛳
Marketing doesn’t excite you 💔
You don’t want the pressure of being responsible for an important business outcome 🙅🏼♂️
You dislike the concept of managing up ☝️
You’re probably thinking, “do I have to fit all the criteria above?”. Of course not, because neither did I. There were some criteria that I didn’t fulfill when I first started, but I learned to embrace when I was on the job. Similarly, I hope this gives you just enough guidelines to assess yourself, not a set of undisputed rules to discourage you from ever trying.
Career transition into growth marketing
If you reach this point, then I presume that you have quite strong interest to make a career transition into growth marketing. Looking back, I was in your position exactly 2 years ago.
My path was anything but clean and planned. I’d even say, if I weren’t in CoLearn, I wouldn’t have dared to take that leap of faith. But as Steve Jobs said 👇
“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
Now, I can finally connect the dot. So here it is:
Ask for the role
2 years ago, I joined CoLearn as a marketing hire with zero background / knowledge on ads. I was 22. We were still in our infancy phase and were massively affected by the Covid-19 outbreak. So we had to reinvent our product + restructure our team. Then it came down to my then-manager (Head of Growth) trying to fill in roles and built a hiring plan for the team. There were two positions he was looking to fill: social media marketing and growth marketing. Initially, he assigned me to lead social media because I already had 2 years experience in social by that time.
But I had been silently learning about ads and product metrics, and frankly, numbers and strategy excited me more than creative thinking ever was. As much as I loved writing copies, I was more of a bigger-picture guy. So I asked him:
“Hey, thank you for trusting social media on me. I want to discuss with you on this. While I certainly have experience on social media, my primary strength is actually on strategy and numbers. So I’d love to be assigned in growth.”
No jest, but actually I was very scared my request would get rejected due to my lack of experience. If he did, I would’ve understood. We were still in our seed stage with short runway, so it was a go-big-or-go-home situation. The stake couldn’t be higher.
But I knew one thing when I asked: This is a rare opportunity to learn and get a real life experience in growth marketing, and I would really regret it if I don’t try.
I’m glad I asked, because that decision was life-altering.
What you can do:
Ask your manager, but don’t just ask — identify the fundamental skills required to excel in growth marketing, make a case why you have the potential, and let them know about it
Start from the bottom — my path to growth marketing was anything but straight. I was into social media marketing for 3 years, but my love for numbers made me keep learning about it until the opportunity was there
Learn the skill, then apply — If the first 2 don’t apply, then you’ll need to to learn the skill and apply to a company that opens for such positions
I mentioned several times about identifying and learning the skills, but you’re now wondering — “How? I don’t even know what to learn”. Keep scrolling!
Learn the skills & fundamentals
Making a career transition into growth marketing requires you to do tons of home works. I’m trying to make it easy for you to know what’s there to learn. (Bonus: I attached some articles to help you learn some topics)
The fundamentals
Growth loops: Why the fastest-growing products usually use loops over funnel. (link)
Channel saturation: What is it and how to anticipate for it.
Types of virality: Learn 5 ways your product can leverage virality to boost its growth. (link)
Channel evaluation: How to decide which channel is the right distribution channel for your product (link)
Channel prioritization: Learn how to prioritize your channel, based on payback period and potential upside
Experimentation
Experimentation fundamentals: Identifying strategic opportunities, experimentation roadmap, and interpreting results. I joined Reforge’s experimentation program and it was the best course on experimentation I’ve seen so far. (link)
Event-tracking: Get your data in order before thinking about experimentation. (link)
A/B testing: Understand more about when to do A/B test, how to do it, etc. (link)
Evaluating experiments: How to correctly interpret experiment results. (link)
Performance marketing / Paid channels
Channel investment: Learn how to create a budget plan for your growth marketing strategy, balancing between the need for results and the hunger for testing & learning.
Growing on TikTok: Learn how the best brands grow on TikTok. (link)
Growing on Google: Learn how the best brands grow on Google.
Growing on Meta: Learn how the best brands grow on Meta.
Some of my favorite sources to learn about growth marketing (that I know of):
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