Traditional Marketing vs Growth Marketing

Traditional marketing focused on raising awareness and generating insights. They handed over these insights to R&D which provided recommendations to leadership, and so on... A large period of time would pass before insights could translate to product/feature. And, many insights would become meaningless before anything tangible could hit the market. 

Need for Agility gave birth to growth marketing

Digital economy is a different game altogether. To survive companies had to be agile. They need to respond to constant stream of insights generated through endless data. They need to capitalize on short lived trends to achieve sustainable growth. This unprecedented need for agility gave birth to growth marketing. 

Growth marketing = traditional marketing + a lot more 

Like traditional marketers, growth marketers run focus groups, segment population, identify target audience, run campaigns, gather insights and communicate them. Generally, this is where traditional marketers would draw a line. But growth marketers take it further. 

"They are so obsessed with growth that they go out of the traditional boundaries. They impact all other areas of the organization." 

For example, if users are leaving after onboarding, they will identify ways to fix that. And, then they would work with product management to get it prioritized. If users are leaving due to lack of customer support, they will work with operations to fix it. And so on...

Growth marketers also take part in product design and development. They align operations to support new features. And, facilitate release while keeping an eye on market response. They articulate urgency to influence timing of activities across functions. And champion customer needs to bring clarity of scope.  

"Growth marketing is as much an inward facing function as much it is an outward facing function."

Growth marketers bring alignment

Traditional organizational structure has collapsed and has reconstituted itself under the umbrella of growth. It doesn’t mean that other functions do not exist - instead, they now function in tandem under the guidance of a growth marketer, aligning all activities of a company to the sole purpose of the company - growing though constant generation of value for the customer. 

How do growth marketers bring alignment? 

• First, they come equipped with a growth mindset. 
• Second, they use evidence from live data to drive their point. 
• Third, they utilize digital tools to spread the message. 

Growth mindset, data driven, equipped with digital tools

Focus of most of the conversations about Growth Marketing has been on the digital tools and techniques. They are important, but I would like to shift the conversation to the ones wielding these tools and talk about their growth mindset that propels them. They strongly believe that they can improve an organization’s intelligence, ability and performance over time. They embrace new strategies because they see failure as a learning opportunity instead of a criticism of their abilities. Contrary to popular belief, they are not just focused on chasing market trends. 

"They work hard to build deeply entrenched capabilities in the organization."

As they obsess over their marketing funnel, they tinker with other business functions. They bring entire organization in tune with customer needs and more agile. 

They are so unfettered with failures that they promote the culture of experimentation, and entire organization starts working in the A/B testing mode.