Growth Marketing 101: The Secret Sauce You Need to Triumph - Blog

The term “ growth marketing ” may seem, at first glance, redundant. After all, why do companies market if not for growth? What is the difference between “growth marketing” and “just marketing?” Confusion is understandable.

Think about it almost like being married. On a wedding day, two people get married: the event happens, their identity is affected, and their lives are changed. But marriage, while it starts there, is about so much more.

You will spend a lifetime learning the other person's needs and desires. You will invest time in building a relationship with them. You will change and they will change.

Traditional marketing vs Growth marketing

Traditional marketing is like the wedding day. It's the day you spend a bunch of money on, hoping that everything “sticks.” It's about attracting new customers, driving conversions, and generating that initial upfront interest.

Growth marketing is the marriage. That's when you do the hard work of self-improvement for the health of your relationship and develop good communication to make sure it “sticks.” You test different techniques and create loyalty through the whole marketing funnel.

Now, all analogies fall apart at some point, so don't take it too seriously, but with that framework, you can see why growth marketing is so crucial for businesses in 2022. In crowded markets, it's important to make the best of every asset you have—including a loyal customer base. Growth marketing is how you do that.

Let's dig in.

Growth Marketing and The Funnel

The marketing funnel is a concept that allows marketers to envision their audience in a series of narrowing qualifiers.

# 1 Top of Funnel (TOF / ToFu)

At the very top of the funnel are people who aren't yet customers. Your marketing is making them aware of your business' existence and niche in the market. This is where your audience is the widest: there will always be people who don't know much about you.

Traditional marketing focuses nearly exclusively on audiences at this level of the funnel. Displays in shop windows, billboards off the highway, magazine ads, and mailings direct to your house are all intended to grab the attention of potential customers and convert that attention into a visit to their website, for example. Traditional, TOF-focused marketing doesn't necessarily concern itself with what happens to customers after this point.

# 2 Middle of funnel (MOF / MoFu)

Growth marketing really differentiates itself from traditional marketing as you move through the funnel. MOF marketing is targeted to audiences who have shown interest in you.

In this region of the marketing funnel, brands would use growth marketing strategies to educate and nurture the leads toward an informed sale. You already have your audience's attention from TOF, so this is where you work to make sure you don't lose it. The MOF is where the actual sale takes place!

#3 Bottom of Funnel (BOF/BoFu)

The ultimate goal of growth marketing is getting down to the BOF. Not only do you have the attention of your audience, you've converted the clicks into an informed customer, and now you want that customer to come back to purchase from you again.

Even better, you want them to become their own sort of walking, talking TOF advertisement through word-of-mouth referrals and recommendations. Fealty is probably the key indicator of any relationship: if you've built a solid relationship with your customer, they will be loyal to you and talk you up to their friends.

The role of growth marketing

So how does growth marketing work when it comes to the marketing funnel? A growth strategy in marketing is focused on moving the audience through the funnel using both responsive and proactive techniques. 

Sometimes, these techniques might seem like throwing a bunch of paint against the wall and hoping it sticks. It might be like throwing stuff against a wall, but maybe more like throwing spaghetti against the wall to see if it's done: it still looks chaotic, but at least it's purposeful.

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