Growth Marketing: Definition, Examples & Strategies Explained

Nowadays, people throw around the term growth marketing a lot. Especially in today’s startup culture, growth marketing and growth hacking have become synonymous words essential to scale.

Because a steady group of audience is not only for closing sales but is essential to survive in a highly competitive market. And that is exactly what growth marketing strategies promise. Not temporary spikes in revenue but successful growth that sustains over a long time.

So, let us go deep into the whats and hows of growth marketing and the ways a business can benefit from this marketing strategy.

What is Growth Marketing?

It is essentially a people-first approach to marketing that implements data-driven strategies that guide the growth of a business. Growth hackers conceptualise efficient, multidimensional marketing campaigns that address the pain points of their audience.

So, is growth marketing only for startups? To speak plainly, no. Growth marketing is for anyone and everyone willing to scale in their industry and establish a stronghold in the market.

Recent industry data highlights this shift clearly. By 2025, the AI-driven marketing market grew to USD 47.32 billion, and nearly 9 out of 10 marketers now use data-driven AI tools every day to fine-tune their strategies.

Differences between Growth Marketing and Traditional Marketing

Are you familiar with the jingles that accompanied popular ads once upon a time? That is one of the examples of conventional marketing or advertising strategy. Here, the marketing team had one and only objective, which was to create awareness about the brand and its products and services.

However, there is a fundamental problem with this strategy in the present day. From finding television and radio ads creative and amusing, the abundance of ads has led most people to find them obtrusive and annoying.

We no longer pay enough attention to the ads for them to create the necessary impact. So, the chances of getting conversions are pretty thin with these typical marketing strategies. That is where growth marketing helps:

Conventional marketing strategies encourage direct sales, while a growth marketing team adapts multiple approaches for the overall growth of a business.

In 2026, organic search strategies are a key part of growth marketing. They converted customers at more than twice the rate of traditional paid search. 

Paid ads usually see conversion rates of around 1.8%. Organic growth strategies perform better. They often deliver conversion rates of over 4%.

To elaborate, the term growth marketing refers to a combination of promotional campaigns and marketing strategies that are directed to grow the customer base of a business.

While most marketing campaigns run around specific products to achieve immediate results, growth marketers adopt a holistic marketing approach.

They perform a thorough analysis of the target group, their preferences, and pain points, and conceptualise creative solutions.

Traditional marketing focuses only on ads across different channels and media. Comparatively, growth marketing leverages a lot of options like content, ads, newsletters, videos, PPC, etc.

This allows the marketers to not only attract the users but also inspire and educate them to create a better bond that accelerates the natural growth of a business.

Content marketing helps your brand get organic and sustainable results. Contact our company, Das Writing Services, to get measurable results within the next 3-6 months.

Top 8 Growth Marketing Strategies

One common myth about growth marketing or “growth hacking” is that of is a secret technique. It is not so much a secret technique as a creative and critical endeavour, which is the driving force of customer acquisition.

Each business is different, so they need tailored strategies that cater to the target group. The reason why much of growth marketing focuses on experimental practices, tries multiple strategies that may produce quantifiable growth.

The following are some of the most widely used strategies by marketers:

1. Leverage Full Funnel Content Marketing

Content marketing is vital for any company looking to develop an online presence. It is one of the most effective and sustainable practices to increase your audience engagement and build a loyal community around the brand.

Yet, many businesses fail to use content marketing to its full capacity. Simply because they create content only for the top of the funnel. This results in increased traffic but not enough leads or conversions.

In order to truly hack the growth of your business, opt for full funnel content marketing that guides the user through each step of the marketing funnel, encouraging conversions. A mix of off-page and on-page, along with creating diverse genres of content, helps the customer’s journey through the conversion.

2. Offer Freemiums

If you are a B2B company or trying to create a name in an established industry, offering freemiums is a ‘tried and tested’ method to capture new quality leads. Especially in the SaaS industry, limited time trials or limited access versions of your software and tools are useful to generate awareness about the brand.

Even for D2C for B2C businesses, offering trial packs are a sure-shot strategy to grow business and attract new customers in a saturated market. Trial packs or limited access applications offer the users a taste of the product or service. Further, such freemiums are also a great way for efficient lead generation that you may then later convert into paying customers.

Benchmarks for 2025 show that the average visitor to freemium conversion rate in SaaS is between 12% and 14%. The conversion from a freemium user to a paid user is much lower. 

It usually falls between 3% and 5%. This shows that while the top of the funnel is wide, the product must offer real value to turn free users into paying customers.

3. Run A/B Testing for Landing Pages

One of the primary advantages of online marketing is the extent of customizability it offers. A/B testing is one such tool that allows multiple iterations of promotional campaigns. So you find out in real time about which versions of the campaign are more effective on your target group. Here are some all-around content marketing tips for your business.

Aside from offering multiple versions of ads or promotional content, effective A/B testing allows business owners better control over marketing expenses. It cultivates a deeper understanding of the target group’s preferences for more efficient marketing strategy formulation.

Data shows that consistent A B testing is essential for growth. In 2025, 58% of businesses will actively use it for conversion rate optimisation. 

On average, testing product detail pages leads to a 12% to 28% increase in conversion rates. Even individual successful tests often deliver a 5% to 15% improvement in key metrics.

4. Adopt the Latest SEO Optimisation Strategies

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it is really the most crucial tool for growth marketing. Efficient SEO optimisation across all verticals, like on-page, off-page, local and technical SEO, can offer rapid organic growth like nothing else.

An independent study suggests, an effective SEO strategy with proper keyword optimisation can maximise your growth up to 4 times. And it all begins with periodically tracking your page rankings. Refresh the page content, include LSIs, and add footer content and secondary keywords to nudge your SERP ranks.

We would suggest performing a thorough SEO audit periodically and adopting new strategies to keep the organic marketing campaigns up and running.

The value of focusing on organic growth is clear. Data from 2024 shows that organic search delivers a close rate of 14.6%. Outbound marketing methods perform much lower. 

Channels like cold calling or print ads close at just 1.7%. This strong efficiency is why SEO continues to be a key driver of long-term and sustainable growth.

5. Target Zero Volume Keyword

Every keyword is important when you are trying to get more users. But with high competition, ranking against popular high-volume keywords proves quite difficult.

Enter: zero volume keywords. They are not visible on tools, so they tend to have less competition than popular high-difficulty keywords. But the downside of zero-volume keywords lies in unpredictability. You cannot guess their volume, whether they will bring 10 users or 10 thousand – you never know.

For example, a recent case study looked at a sustainable clothing brand. The brand targeted the keyword organic bamboo sleepwear benefits. 

Even though SEO tools showed no search volume, the strategy worked well. It led to a 45% increase in niche traffic. Conversion rates were also higher than average because the search intent was very strong.

6. Run Email Marketing Campaigns

An effective email marketing campaign is essential when you are aspiring for a full funnel marketing campaign. Your leads are not going to convert themselves!

Make good use of your email list by sending newsletters and promotional offers. Encourage quality conversions by highlighting the benefits of your product or service. At Das Writing Services, we believe in creating knowledge among your potential customers to create loyal clients. When adopted with email marketing, this approach has enabled several companies to nurture long-term relationships with clients.

Even with the growth of social media, email still delivers the highest ROI. In 2024, businesses earned an average return of USD 36 – USD 42 for every USD 1 spent on email marketing. 

Segmented email campaigns perform even better. They can generate up to 760% more revenue than non-segmented bulk email campaigns.

7. Introduce Referral Program

Referral programs are one of the everlasting strategies to boost the growth of your business! Reputed brands all over the world, like Uber, PayPal, and Airbnb, run some sort of referral programs.

The goal is simple: to attract new customers from the network of established customers. They are mostly free of cost and require virtually no infrastructure to run a campaign.

The value of a referred customer is very high. Research shows that referred customers have a 16% to 25% higher lifetime value than non-referred customers. 

People are also four times more likely to make a purchase when a friend refers them. This makes referrals one of the most cost-efficient ways to acquire new customers.

8. Adopt Disruptive Marketing Strategies (With Example)

Last but not least, aggressive growth marketing requires some type of disruptive marketing strategy. These are innovative, out-of-the-box measures that require a thorough understanding of your target group.

A contemporary example of such out-of-the-box disruptive marketing is leveraging social media comments. As short videos gain (aka: reels) popularity on platforms like Instagram and Facebook, brands use witty captions in the comments to drive user attention and engagement – creating a positive social media image around the brand.

A strong example is Duolingo. The brand moved away from regular language ads. Instead, it focused on funny and unexpected short videos on TikTok. 

These videos featured their mascot Duo. This shift helped Duolingo grow its following to over 10 million.

One viral campaign called the Death of Duo led to a huge spike in attention. Social mentions increased by 25,000%. This shows that changing your brand voice can drive massive organic reach.

Want a strategy for your company’s online success and visibility? Contact Das Writing Services and get your content strategy and planning within the next 3 business days.

Examples of Growth Marketing

While most brands use product marketing to increase sales, global brands use a robust marketing plan that engages users while driving the growth of the brand at the same time. The following section discusses the growth marketing efforts of LinkedIn and Google to get more customers and increase revenue.

Uber Referral Program

Uber has created a benchmark of growth marketing with its referral strategy that allowed the cab-hailing service to emerge as a global giant with a staggering 150 million monthly active customers. The brand has ensured its market position by constantly acquiring new customers through referrals.

As a part of this marketing strategy, Uber effectively turned each customer into an affiliate marketer who could get benefits from successful referrals. It allows each Uber user to get discounts on the next ride for each successful referral. The long-enduring strategy of Uber is later adopted by other start-ups to quickly increase their consumer base by incentivising users for each new referral.

The financial results of this program were impressive. Analysis of Uber’s referral loop showed it delivered around a 12x return on investment. 

The lifetime value to customer acquisition cost ratio was also very strong at 12.28 to 1. This is far higher than the industry benchmark of 3 to 1.

Google One Cloud

While Apple Cloud has been a long-standing phenomenon, it took some time for Google to popularise the One Cloud Storage service in India. Especially with Android OS catering to all income groups, getting people to pay for storage was a long-standing obstacle to growth for Google.

The company used this opportunity by making Google One an in-built app for Android devices. After building some brand awareness about the features and benefits of the service, Google started collaborating with manufacturers to bundle trial access to Google One Storage. Aside from this, the company also offers discounts on Google One for new subscribers in India to encourage conversions.

With this strategy, Google accelerated its growth in a completely new vertical of the paid subscription model in India. Recently, the company declared that it will bundle the Gemini AI with Google One subscriptions, which are expected to be another growth opportunity for the tech giant.

This strategy has delivered strong results. By May 2025, Google One crossed 150 million subscribers. This reflected a 50% increase in just 15 months.

Adding AI features like Gemini pushed adoption even faster. Millions of users upgraded their plans mainly to access these AI tools. Here are some tips for you to adapt the Google AI overview for your website.

Tips to Create a Growth Marketing Campaign

A growth marketing campaign is essentially an all-hands-on-deck situation where multiple departments come together and collaborate with each other to create effective strategies. You may begin with the A-A-R-R-R (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue) approach to kick start your campaign:

1. Set Your Goals

So the first and foremost aspect of creating a growth marketing strategy is to identify what you want. Having some vague qualitative projection of your aspirations is simply no good. You will want to quantify and measure your goals to find out the efficacy of your strategy.

Implementing goals like 3x website visitors in 4 months or a 20% increase in the number of qualified leads within 6 months can be useful to stay on track.

2. Define the KPIs of Your Campaign

The next step to create scalable marketing campaigns is to define the key areas of your growth. For instance, to realise the above-mentioned goal of increasing website visits, we must find ways to achieve so.

Aggressive content marketing across different channels with keywords optimised for the target group can prove useful to drive new audiences to the website. Hiring quality content writing services that can optimise content as per your audience is always a good start to ensure better rankings and visibility to the target group.

3. Track the Buyer Journey through the Conversion Funnel

Initiating the buyer journey through the marketing funnel could be easy, depending on your industry. In any case, top-of-the-funnel audiences are relatively easier to get. However, most users tend to leave through the middle of the funnel before arriving at the bottom.

This is exactly where businesses need to work by curating customised landing pages, relevant ads and appropriate CTAs through the page. Through data insight tools like Analytics and Semrush, identify the phase where users tend to leave.

Implement attractive offers and promotions in such areas to reduce the bounce rate and enable efficient conversions. Refer to our blog to know the top 15 digital marketing tips for beginners.

4. Perform Data Analysis

And we cannot stress this enough! Abundant data plays the most advantageous role in growth marketing. To implement user engagement strategies, listening to your data is vital.

Identify the topics people want to read about and find out what they don’t want to know – this should give a thorough understanding of what to do and what not to do.

Tracking the heatmap of your pages can help to understand where your users tend to stay and where they do not. Placing appropriate CTAs in such sections may prove useful to drive up your conversion rates.

5. Listen to Customer Feedback

Implementing product-marketing integration strategies in your campaigns allows you to provide a seamless and unified experience to the audience. It also gives you a chance to listen to what the users have to say about your offerings.

Listening in on comments on social media and actively encouraging people to interact and offer feedback to your brand always leaves a positive impact. It makes the customers develop a stronger bond with the brand. As a plus side, the feedback should always give you much-needed insights about what is working and what is not.

Ultimately, it is for the customer that a business exists, so taking time to align your product and services as per the needs of the market is the best way to accelerate your growth.

Conclusion

Having gone through all the intricacies of growth marketing, it should be fairly clear when to launch a growth marketing drive and exactly what to expect out of it.

In a nutshell, while businesses can achieve all-around growth organically over time, adapting data-driven marketing tactics yields efficient results for consumers, as well as reducing their struggles and problems.

Thereby, making growth marketing a win-win situation, favourable for all. 

Contact Das Writing Services now to get your content marketing strategy after a thorough competitor analysis. Drop an email at business@daswritingservices.com, and we will get back to you.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How important is growth marketing?

Growth marketing is important for businesses looking to increase their customer base through data-driven strategies and campaigns.

2. What is a growth marketing strategy?

A growth marketing strategy involves marketing campaigns across multiple channels and platforms to realize its growth for expansion.

3. Is growth marketing a skill?

Growth marketing is an essential skill that allows businesses to identify and address customer pain points. Marketers need to possess technical skills and critical insights into consumer behaviour to identify growth opportunities.

4. Why hire a growth marketer?

Growth marketers critically analyse a business’s marketing and operations model and formulate strategies to enable the overall growth of a business.

5. When should I hire a growth marketer?

To kick-start a business, one should hire a growth marketer as soon as the products and services are ready to hit the market.