Growth marketing is a relatively new marketing tactic that is actively adopted by different organizations nowadays. We decided to dive deep into this topic to get a better understanding on why it is being actively adopted, what kind of challenges organizations face when implementing growth marketing tactics, and whether they would recommend it to others.

To get the data shown below, we surveyed almost 300 marketing executives employed by organizations varying i​n size and industry:

• Retail
• IT (product-based company)
• IT (outsourcing company)
• FMCG

Company sizes our respondents are employed by, are the following:

• 1 - 20 employees
• 21 - 50 employees
• 51-100 employees
• 101-1000 employees
• 1000+ employees

Job titles of our respondents are shown below:

Growth Marketing adoption

Few organizations did not try growth marketing

Q: Did you try to implement growth marketing in your organization?

The adoption of growth marketing is becoming a popular approach. 35% of respondents said that they tried implementing growth marketing. Another 40% of respondents indicated that they had plans to implement growth marketing in their organization.

Many organizations find value in growth marketing

Q: Do you think growth marketing had a positive impact on your business?

The above chart demonstrates the positive reputation that growth marketing has as a marketing tactic. 87% of respondents said it had a positive impact on their business, 13% were not sure about it, a 0% thought there was no positive impact.

Marketers face the challenges when implementing growth marketing

Any implementation process takes time and resources, and there are always challenges to overcome when dealing with new tactics. Our respondents defined and rated the challenges they face when implementing growth marketing in their organizations.

Q: What kind of challenges did you face when implementing growth marketing?

Building a process, run analytics and find good hypotheses top the list. Running tests and communicating the value of growth marketing to the team have also been strong challenges for our audience. 6% of organizations said there were no challenges at all. WOW!

What’s good about growth marketing

Q: Please specify what's good about growth marketing.

As we can see, organizations who tried growth marketing are enjoying higher conversion, growing user base, and increased retention. Changes are happening faster in their organizations, teams are more effective. The respondents also mention that their products became better with growth marketing being implemented

Reasons for not trying growth marketing

In one of the sections above we’ve seen that 25% of organizations did not try growth marketing yet. We’ve analyzed why.

Q: Why did you not try to implement growth marketing in your organization?

The vast majority of those 25% who did not try growth marketing, said that they were not sure how to do growth marketing right, and they did not have enough resources to start.

Being afraid of risks and a necessity to redesign the processes also stops organizations’ moving into growth direction.

Reasons of why 40% of respondents are planning to try growth marketing

In one of the sections above we’ve seen that 40% of organizations are planning to try growth marketing. We’ve analyzed what the reasons for those plans are.

Q: Why are you willing to implement growth marketing? What are your goals?

Marketers’ willingness to recommend growth marketing to their colleagues

We have also asked whether marketers are willing to recommend growth marketing tactics to their colleagues. The results are phenomenal - almost every organization would recommend growth marketing to other organizations.

Q: Would you recommend growth marketing approach to other marketing executives?

Investment into Growth Marketing

Q: Please select the statement that best describes how you expect your organization's budget will change for Growth Marketing

Investment into Growth Marketing by organization size

Q: Please select the statement that best describes how you expect your organization's budget will change for Growth Marketing

Investment into Growth Marketing by industry sector

Q: Please select the statement that best describes how you expect your organization's budget will change for Growth Marketing.

Growth Marketing Execution

Few organizations outsource growth marketing

Q: Do you execute growth marketing in-house, outsource to an agency or use a combination of both?

Outsourcing growth marketing by organization size

The effectiveness of growth marketing

Q:  Please indicate the effectiveness of the following marketing tactics for your organization.

Very effective ratings of growth marketing by organization size

Very effective ratings of growth marketing by industry sector

This report was created by Growth Marketing Stage, the leading destination for growth marketers. Growth Marketing Stage is a global growth marketing conference hosted in Kyiv, Ukraine. It attracts companies like Google, Booking.com, Dropbox, and Adobe, as well as the fastest-growing companies from Uber and HubSpot, to Naspers and Skyscanner.

(Disclaimer: The Author is the co-Founder of Growth Marketing Stage)