Growth Marketing - What is It?

If you’ve owned a small business for any length of time, you know this truth: every dollar matters. That’s why for over 25 years, growth marketing has been the only marketing strategy I could afford to follow.

I wasn’t building a brand just to be seen. I needed results. As legendary marketer Dan Kennedy once put it, “Don’t spend money on marketing unless it comes back with friends.” That philosophy shaped how I approached everything—from emails and ads to local sponsorships and payment options.

Growth Marketing = Measurable, Profitable Marketing

Whether it was my time or money, I needed both to generate a return. Writing an email? It had to drive profitable sales. Even though my email list was modest, I tracked results using UTM tags and Google Analytics, and I nearly always saw a bump in revenue around campaign launches.

At Kellogg, my professor Brian Sternthal drilled in the idea that advertising is an empirical science. Test, measure, improve. We lived by that in our digital marketing.

Especially with CPC (cost-per-click) ads, we built simple spreadsheets to track daily spend against attributed sales. Our customer journey was short—many visitors bought on their first visit—so it was relatively easy to identify what worked. But even then, we didn’t make snap decisions. A one-day dip wasn’t enough data to cancel a campaign. Trends, not guesses, guided our decisions.

Pro tip: Be cautious when Google (or any ad platform) offers to "optimize" your campaigns. More often than not, the optimization improves their revenue—not yours. Always test their suggestions yourself.

What Didn’t Work for Growth

One example? Local sponsorships.

I tested sponsoring clubs and teams, but it rarely delivered a measurable return. It felt more like a donation than a growth tactic. With margins around 10%, a $500 donation required $5,000 in sales just to break even. Most of the time, we didn’t get close—especially when clubs also asked for a discount on top of the sponsorship. Eventually, we shifted to offering team packages at discounted rates to help our community while keeping the model sustainable.

Lesson: If it doesn’t support growth, don’t call it marketing—call it what it is: a donation.

Growth Marketing Starts Inside Your Business

Some of our best ideas came from inside the building. Your employees are your front line—they know what customers are asking and what new products might move the needle. We encouraged everyone to contribute insights. Many of our best-selling products were discovered by staff.

We also ran countless small A/B tests—especially around our add-to-cart, checkout flow, and payment methods. Even if the changes weren’t statistically significant, we implemented improvements if they aligned with customer feedback and made purchasing easier.

One of the biggest wins? Adding more payment options. When we rolled out PayPal and Amazon Pay, the jump in completed transactions shocked us. These weren’t guesses—they were customer requests we acted on.

Small Data, Big Insights

You don’t need a massive dataset to do growth marketing. In fact, small data often reveals the most valuable clues. If one customer takes the time to ask why you don’t offer a payment method or flags a checkout issue—assume 10 more had the same issue and quietly left.

Talk to your customers. Involve your customer service team in marketing strategy. Ask what objections or complaints they hear. This is how you reduce friction and increase conversions.

Speed Is Your Secret Weapon

The final edge small business owners have in growth marketing? Speed.

At conferences, I’d learn a new tactic on Friday, and we’d be testing it by Tuesday. Big companies take weeks (or months) to act. You can pivot in days. That’s a huge advantage in digital marketing.

Final Thoughts on Growth Marketing

At the end of the day, growth marketing is about measurable results, fast feedback loops, and continuous testing. You won’t get everything perfect, but you will get better if you track what works, listen to your customers, and keep making small, meaningful improvements.

No matter how small your business—or your budget—you can run a marketing strategy that’s grounded in data and focused on profit. That’s the heart of growth marketing.

👉 Question for you: What’s one marketing tactic that actually grew your business last month? Drop it in the comments. I’d love to test it out.

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