Growth Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing: What's the difference?
Companies and organizations looking for significant, rapid growth lean more towards growth marketing.
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Growth marketing is a relatively new type of marketing that has emerged in the last 10-to-15 years.
It emanated from the hi-tech sector, but during the aforementioned timespan this type of marketing has become increasingly more applicable to all types of companies and organizations, larger and smaller.
Today, the companies and organizations that are serious about growing all do growth marketing.
Many companies and organizations think they are doing growth marketing, when in reality they are doing traditional marketing.
There is a simple test to determine that you are indeed doing growth marketing — if you can easily say that your marketing is directly and measurably leading to these results:
✅ Many more new customers and sales
✅ Much shorter time frame to convert new leads into paying customers
✅ Significantly higher customer lifetime value and loyalty
✅ Much lower customer acquisition costs and customer churn rate
✅ Much greater word-of-mouth, referrals, and recommendations
If you can easily say that your marketing is directly and measurably leading to these results, that's great! Keep on keeping on.
But if not, then you are probably not doing growth marketing. You are probably doing traditional marketing, which looks something like this:
❌ Marketing that is ultimately salesy and promotional, instead of customer-centric
❌ Trial and error and guessing games, instead of data-driven decision-making
❌ Campaigns that take a long time to set up and test, instead of rapid prototyping
❌ Marketing that is disconnected from other operations, instead of marketing that works hand-in-hand with sales and business development, product development, and customer support
❌ Marketing that mainly focuses on the "top of the funnel" instead of marketing that focuses on the entire funnel
❌ Marketing that has limited scale, instead of marketing that has exponential scale
In essence, growth marketing is about finding the most efficient and scalable ways to grow a company or organization — and then actually growing the company and organization. There should be no “gray area” here. Either your marketing is obviously growing your company or organization, according to its goals and forecasts, or it is not.
The six main components of growth marketing are:
Data-Driven Decision-Making: Growth marketers rely heavily on data analytics to make informed decisions and understand what strategies are working and what are not.
Rapid Prototyping: Growth marketing involves constant testing to identify the most effective tactics for driving growth. Growth marketers run experiments across different channels and touch-points to optimize performance.
Customer-Centric Approach: Understanding customer behavior, needs, and preferences is central to growth marketing. This approach tailors marketing efforts to meet customers where they are in their journey. The Customer “Jobs to Be Done” and “Elements of Value” are two great places to start.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Growth marketing often involves collaboration between different teams, such as product development and management, sales and business development, and customer support, to drive growth holistically.
Full-Funnel Focus: Growth marketers work on improving every stage of the customer lifecycle, from acquisition to retention, ensuring that efforts lead to sustainable growth.
Scalability: Successful growth marketing strategies are exponentially scalable, meaning they can be expanded to reach more customers without a proportional increase in costs.
The confusion between growth marketing and traditional marketing often arises because both disciplines share common goals: increasing customer base, driving sales, and enhancing brand reputation.
However, the key difference lies in their approach. Traditional marketing is more about building a brand over time, while growth marketing is about achieving fast, measurable results through iterative testing and data-driven strategies.
Another source of confusion is the blending of these approaches in modern marketing. Many companies and organizations use elements of both traditional and growth marketing in their efforts, making it harder to distinguish between the two.
Companies and organizations looking for significant, rapid growth lean more towards growth marketing.
There’s more where this came from at the Growth Marketing Institute.