7 Skills you Need to Become a Growth Marketer – MarTech Mag

Who is a growth marketer?

“A person whose true north is growth. Everything they do is scrutinised by it’s potential impact on scalable growth”

- Sean Ellis

This definition originally describes a growth hacker. However, it is a good starting point to understand the fundamental principles of growth marketing.

What is Growth Marketing?

Growth Marketing is a way of marketing that is largely data-driven, and focused on achieving set goals, easier and faster.

Often referred to as marketing 2.0, it is an approach to attracting, engaging and retaining customers that involves continuous experimentation and iteration in line with performance. Think of it as a lean marketing practice, where less performing channels / ads are eliminated and focus (and resources) is shifted to the higher performing ones.

Simply put, it is the process of:

1. Identifying important performance metrics and setting clearly defined growth objectives in line with business goals.
2. Forming hypothesis and conducting experiments to improve results of the selected metrics.
3. Analysing data to generate insights and honing in on what works.

The goal of growth marketing is quite simple: To improve engagement and conversion metrics throughout the funnel.

Lets give some tactical examples…

Examples of Growth Marketing Tactics

1. A/B testing of different digital ad copy or visuals (for display), to zero in on the most performing variant.
2. Performing multivariate testing on different combinations of content, platform, timing and user segments; to discover which combinations deliver the best results.
3. Testing referral offers by segmenting customers, and offering different incentives to different segments; to discover where referral conversions are maximised the most.

While adopting a growth mindset is advisable for all marketers, it is equally important to create a healthy balance between strategies that best serve customers needs (where impact is not completely measurable) and those that deliver the most ROI.

For instance: SEM might be generating the most conversions for a business; but it would be unwise to neglect content marketing. This is because it is likely that the first contact (awareness) was established via content marketing – and the interaction could not be tracked because the user did not engage.

Ultimately, scalable growth is recorded when the cost of customer acquisition (CAC) is kept low, while increasing customer lifetime value (LTV).

7 Skills Of Successful Growth Marketers

The demand for growth marketing has increased exponentially over the past 5 years – especially in startups. This is due to factors such as limited business funding and the urgent need to grow a large customer base.

Being business oriented and data savvy, are attributes of successful growth marketers.

In addition to those soft skills, you’ll also need to become acquainted with the practical skills involved In the process of growth marketing.

1. Data Analysis

Data is the fuel of the growth function and growth teams dedicate significant amounts of resources to assemble MarTech stacks that enable analysis of user behavior, scientific experimentation, and targeted promotions. The ability to navigate data analysis tools, is important to understanding user behaviour and formulating hypothesis for further strategies.

2. Critical and Creative Thinking

It is equally important for growth marketers to think deeply and critically while questioning data to unearth deep insights.

However asides data analysis, critical thinking is also necessary for full funnel strategy and prioritising experiments.

Creative thinking often comes into play during A/B and multivariate testing. It helps to think outside of the box when testing elements like copy, visuals, ad placements etc.

3. Segmentation and Experimentation

To create more personal interactions with leads, it is important to divide them up into small groups based on selected characteristics in user profiles or actions taken.

The best growth marketers are proficient at segmenting across all funnel stages using various dimensions like acquisition channel, intent, journey stage, churn risk etc.

Expertise in experimentation at every stage of the segment, is equally important.

4. Marketing Automation

In many startups where Human Resources is limited, it is important to have some marketing automation in place for repetitive, time consuming tasks. This let’s growth marketers focus on more meaningful, strategic and creative functions.

It is important to keep in mind, that effective communication requires personalisation. This is where segmentation comes in; but also, instance may arise where marketers will have to buckle down and respond personally.

5. User Experience

A common misconception about user experience is that it is mostly about UI designs and the sole responsibility of the designers. This ideology is evidently flawed because great product design. is only one of the very many contributing factors to great user experience.

Growth Marketers need to understand the factors that contribute to a remarkable user experience across the entire funnel, to create more effective growth strategies and get the best results from experimentation.

6. Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)

This aspect of marketing is concerned with increasing the percentage of users that take a desired action (such as email subscriptions, ebook downloads or requesting a demo).

Growth marketers should not only have good knowledge of the testing tools (e.g optimizely, hotjar, Google Optimize etc) available but also what to test to increase conversion. Channel optimisation is also crucial as ads and landing pages that perform excellently on one platform, may not work on another.

7. Collaboration and People Management

The Growth Marketer typically functions at the intersection of marketing and product development, with a focus on customer acquisition, activation, retention, and upsell.

The role often operates cross-functionally with design, product management, operations marketing and engineering.

A marketers ability to work with diverse teams will greatly influence how well he/she is able to. get buying of key stakeholders and unify everyone towards specific growth goals.

Advancements in the technologies that power. MarTech softwares have greatly impacted the accuracy and effectiveness of growth marketing strategies.

With CDPs like TerragonPrime, redefining how businesses connect with African audiences, the future of growth marketing in Africa is one to look forward to.

Follow the MarTech Mag on Twitter for updates on technological advancements in marketing.

All the Best,

Folahanmi Esan.