Performance marketing a form of marketing that measures distinct results of a campaign, like clicks or conversions. Common metrics include cost-per-mille impressions, cost per click, and cost per conversion, and brands often only pay when these actions are completed. A growth marketing strategy usually focuses more on brand building and the customer experience to establish long-term, sustainable growth beyond performance marketing metrics.
Guide

# Growth marketing

Growth marketing is a strategy that emphasizes increasing revenue through acquisition and retention of customers. It leverages information from frequent testing to expedite campaign optimization

Start using Amazon Ads to display your products and create campaigns.

If you have limited experience, contact us to request services managed by Amazon Ads. Budget minimums apply.

Create cost-per-click ads to help customers find your products on Amazon.

Whether or not you sell on Amazon, first-party signals, customer insights, and ad formats from Amazon Ads can help increase sales and drive conversions with efficiency.

Jump to:

## What is growth marketing?

Growth marketing is a marketing model that uses data from campaigns and experimentation to expedite growth. By optimizing customer data and industry insights, growth marketers can reach more customers and increase conversions for a brand.

## Why is growth marketing important?

Growth marketing is important because it engages every stage of the marketing funnel. Due to its focus on optimizing growth, growth marketing can be a useful method of using brand awareness to boost sales and also turn loyal customers into brand advocates.

## How is growth marketing different from traditional marketing?

Traditional marketing is the process of promoting and selling products or services to customers. On the other hand, growth marketing builds upon the basics to attract and engage customers with a variety of strategies to determine the best path forward to understand shoppers at every stage of the marketing funnel.

## Key elements of a growth marketing strategy

### 1. A/B testing

A/B testing can be a highly effective tool for growth marketers. By experimenting with distinct sets of options to connect with audiences—such as different keywords for SEO or headlines on blog posts, hooks on social media copy, or types of packaging—brands can see what resonates with customers and can drive user engagement.

### 2. Omnichannel marketing

Omnichannel marketing is a customer-centric strategy that seamlessly integrates all types of marketing channels to reach shoppers where they are. This could include connecting with audiences through newsletters, social media ads, brick-and-mortar stores, or even experiential marketing tactics such as pop-up shops or virtual events—wherever they prefer to spend time and interact with brands they’re just learning about or already engage with.

### 3. Customer feedback

Collecting customer feedback is an essential part of any marketing strategy to create a positive customer service experience and develop customer retention. By encouraging feedback and reviews, brands can determine what is or isn’t working by speaking directly to their audience, whether through surveys, reviews, or social media inquiries. This type of marketing research is particularly important for a small business or a start-up to leverage since it can help motivate customers to share a positive brand experience to their networks via word of mouth.

## What is the AARRR framework?

AARRR is an acronym for the framework that product-led businesses should track to analyze user behavior that could lead to business growth. It stands for acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue. These metrics can provide a more holistic view of the health of the company or the depth of customer engagement, as opposed to superficial metrics such as likes on social media. Silicon Valley venture capitalist Dave McClure coined the term, which is sometimes known as “pirate metrics” since the acronym mimics the sound that is stereotypical of pirates in popular culture.

### Acquisition

The goal in the first part of the AARRR framework is to emphasize discovery, ultimately generating new business and users. Users may visit an app or a site and linger for a bit, familiarizing themselves with available offerings and content. This is an omnichannel step that uses all types of marketing—such as SEO, paid search, social media, and other types of marketing campaigns—to connect with shoppers.

### Activation

At this point, brands want to be sure that customers are taking the actions that they want. For example, users may subscribe to a newsletter or perhaps sign up for a free trial to take an actual step to learn more about the brand and engage a bit further after their curiosity is piqued. A/B testing could be useful at this stage to see what resonates with customers.

### Retention

In the retention stage, brands try to form lasting relationships with current customers, which is usually more cost-effective than finding new ones. This may include encouraging users to sign up for email marketing and click through the links, or begin visiting an app or a site a few times in a certain time period. It’s also important at this stage to monitor how often and via what channels they are interacting with the brand.

### Referral

In this step, users could potentially recommend the offerings to a friend, who may start exploring the brand’s offerings or even activate by becoming customers themselves. Brands could offer promotions for users who refer friends with special links or other incentives to encourage word of mouth to increase their customer base.

### Revenue

The final stage of the AARRR framework is an opportune moment for brands to determine whether revenue goals are being met. Not only should this be a time to assess whether their tactics are paying off, it’s also a time for brands to see the revenue that each customer brings since acquisition cost is usually high. The quality of the revenue can have great potential, particularly with customers who make multiple referrals to new customers who convert.

## What are the benefits of growth marketing?

Growth marketing is beneficial because it takes an overarching view of a brand’s marketing strategy to focus on a long-term plan to increase revenue and improve customer loyalty. Growth marketers use data and insights from customer feedback and engagement metrics to optimize the future of the business.

## Growth marketing examples

Case Study

See how solution provider Quartile helped the CPAP Shop, a subsidiary of AdaptHealth, build their brand presence in the Amazon store. By working with the e-commerce ad platform, CPAP Shop was able to build an advertising strategy that increased their digital visibility to consistently increase revenue month over month.

Quartile

Case Study

Find out how BUXON Cosmetics increased brand visibility to find new customers and boost sales. The U.S. brand teamed up with Envision Horizons to maximize engagement at different stages of the shopping journey by remarketing to customers who hadn’t yet made a purchase, ultimately surpassing their Amazon DSP sales goals.

BUXOM

Blog

Explore the ways that Blue Diamond Growers connected with Spanish-speaking audiences in the U.S. with in-language display ads. Taking the time to develop campaign tests to better reach these customers helped the brand see what type of creative and products would resonate the best with these groups, which improved average click-through rate and return on ad spend on Amazon.

Blue Diamond

## FAQs

What is growth hacking?

Growth hacking is a type of marketing that concentrates on hypergrowth by finding low-cost marketing strategies to leverage any research to rapidly expand a company’s customer base to increase business.

What is the difference between growth marketing and growth hacking?

The terms growth marketing and growth hacking are often used interchangeably. However, growth marketing often refers to a longer-term and more comprehensive plan for a brand, whereas growth hacking can refer to shorter-term strategies for day-to-day challenges.

What is the difference between growth marketing and product marketing?

Product marketing centers on positioning a product in the market with extensive customer research to understand an audience. While product marketing can be part of a growth marketing strategy, especially considering customer feedback, growth marketing is a more holistic strategy that centers shoppers to convert them to loyal customers who help generate revenue by analyzing customer data and seeing what does or does not work.

What is the difference between growth marketing and performance marketing?

Performance marketing a form of marketing that measures distinct results of a campaign, like clicks or conversions. Common metrics include cost-per-mille impressions, cost per click, and cost per conversion, and brands often only pay when these actions are completed. A growth marketing strategy usually focuses more on brand building and the customer experience to establish long-term, sustainable growth beyond performance marketing metrics.

What is the difference between growth marketing and demand generation?

Demand generation is a marketing strategy that improves product awareness and generates business interest by identifying customer needs. Growth marketing builds upon demand generation by using this information to connect with shoppers and develop a long-standing relationship with them to ultimately bring revenue and grow a brand.