What is growth marketing is asked by a business that has been pitched a growth agency and wants to know what it would actually be paying for. This page answers it beside two neighbours the same business meets on the same shortlist, what is direct marketing and what is a PR campaign, so the three kinds of agency can be told apart by what they deliver, how they are briefed and how they are scored. It is written for the buyer, not as coursework. The free in-house versus agency worksheet on this site sizes any of the three retainers against a hire; Retainvia Pro keeps the brief and the scorecard for $49 a month.
Growth marketing: experiments across the whole funnel
Growth marketing is the practice of running many small, measured experiments across acquisition, activation, retention and referral, keeping what moves a number and dropping what does not. An agency selling it should be briefed on the one number the business wants moved and scored on the experiments run and the lift proven, not on the volume of activity. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics handbook cited below puts the median pay of a market research analyst or marketing specialist at $78,760 a year, which is the in-house alternative the free worksheet on this site compares against.
Direct marketing: a message to a named list
Direct marketing is a message sent to a named list, by post, email or phone, with a response the business can count. An agency selling it is briefed on the list, the offer and the response the business needs, and scored on cost per response. It is the easiest of the three to score and the one most often bought without a scorecard, because the mailing itself feels like the deliverable when the responses are.
A PR campaign: earned attention with a beginning and an end
A PR campaign is a planned effort to earn coverage and attention around one story, with a start, an end and a target for where the story appears. An agency selling it is briefed on the story, the audience and the outlets that matter, and scored on the coverage earned against that brief rather than on the volume of releases sent. Retainvia Pro keeps the brief, the shortlist and the scorecard for a growth, a direct or a PR agency for $49 a month; the reputation management agency page on this site covers the ongoing version of the PR work.
Questions people ask about what is growth marketing
Is growth marketing just performance marketing with a new name?
Performance marketing buys measured traffic; growth marketing runs experiments across the whole funnel, including retention. Brief them differently.
How do I score a direct marketing agency?
Cost per response against the target in the brief; the list and the offer are the two things to argue about first.
What is a PR campaign scored on?
Coverage earned in the outlets named in the brief, not the number of releases sent.
Does Retainvia work for a PR retainer?
Yes; the brief, the shortlist and the scorecard are the same record for any kind of agency.