Growth Marketing vs Performance Marketing - What's more relevant?

You may have come across terms like performance marketing and growth marketing whenever you have looked for strategies you could apply to boost your business growth. If you’re considering using either growth marketing or performance marketing to boost your business, it’s important to understand the differences between the two approaches.

What Is Performance Marketing

Performance marketing is focused on maximizing the return on investment (ROI) from marketing efforts. In performance marketing, the objective is to carefully design and execute campaigns to maximize the ROI of marketing spending. This means that for every dollar spent on marketing, the goal is to generate more than a dollar in revenue. To achieve this, it is necessary to continually optimize and refine marketing campaigns through various channels, such as search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. This can involve tactics like conversion rate optimization and A/B testing, which are driven by data and analytics.

What Is Growth Marketing

Growth marketing aims to quickly scale the business by targeting people who are already interested in the company and by expanding the market by engaging and educating new audiences. Growth marketing includes elements of performance marketing, but it takes a more holistic approach to the entire marketing funnel. This might involve upper funnel marketing tactics such as video ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and LinkedIn ads, as well as organic growth strategies like SEO optimization and content marketing.

Finding the right growth hacks for marketing campaigns and maintaining a stable customer acquisition cost (CAC) are important factors in growth marketing. Establishing strong unit economics can also help define pricing strategies. In some cases, it may be necessary to sacrifice short-term profitability and return on ad spend (ROAS) to drive more leads and scale the business, such as when preparing for Series A funding. The key is to balance the need for growth with the need to maintain financial stability.

How are Growth Marketing and Performance Marketing Similar and Different?

There are some similarities as well differences between the two. These are detailed below:

Growth Marketing and Performance Marketing Similarities:-

Performance marketing and growth marketing are two approaches businesses use to increase their reach and boost revenue. Both strategies use scalable and repeatable processes and rely heavily on data to track progress and make informed decisions. Both growth marketing and performance marketing also involve setting clear goals and using key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure progress and drive positive outcomes. Understanding the target audience and setting goals focusing on growth and revenue are crucial elements of both strategies.

Growth Marketing vs Performance Marketing Differences:-

On the one hand, Growth marketing is about building long-term growth. It aims to retain and bring new customers to your business by experimenting with new approaches.

On the other hand, performance marketing is a short-term strategy where you pay for quick, measurable results. Unlike in growth marketing, you only pay when a specific action (sale, lead, click) is achieved.

Your company has a specific time and place to decide on performance marketing. Performance marketing teams may be a solution for your business needs if you’re aiming to sell a certain defined number of products in a specific time or boost your email sign-ups. However, these things do happen organically through growth marketing campaigns. Instead of focusing on a specific sales goal, growth marketing sets the goal as your business’s overall growth.

If you are a startup in the tech or SaaS industry seeking to grow your customer base and have specific sales targets in mind, then growth marketing might be the most suitable strategy for your marketing efforts. Both growth marketing and performance marketing can be effective for businesses, and it is common for companies to utilize both approaches. This discussion aims to provide a deeper understanding of each strategy to assist you in making an informed decision for your company.

Growth Marketing, Performance Marketing and the Marketing Funnel

In a nutshell, performance marketing is most effective at the bottom of the marketing funnel. At the same time, growth marketing encompasses performance marketing and includes strategies for all stages of the funnel to accelerate business growth. By understanding the differences between these two approaches, you can determine the most suitable for your business needs and goals. This can help you define what success looks like in marketing and what objectives to set for your team.