What is growth marketing?
Growth marketing is a holistic, data-driven strategy that focuses on optimizing the customer journey, from the acquisition to the retention stage. This strategy largely relies on experimentation, iterative testing, and cross-functional collaboration to ensure sustainable growth.
Key principles of growth marketing
To elaborate on the definition that we just dropped above, growth marketing essentially relies on the following principles to optimize the overall customer journey:
- Continuous testing and experimentation of different marketing strategies to optimize performance.
- Tailoring content to specific user behaviors and preferences and providing personalized experiences.
- Cross-functional collaboration between marketing, product development, customer success, and sales teams.
đź’ˇ Related guide: The Complete Guide to Growth Marketing With Examples
What is demand generation?
Demand generation is a strategy that is focused on generating user awareness about a company in the market, with the objective cr. This is a long-term strategy that works by educating and engaging users and even reaching out-of-market leads to convert them into buyers.
Key tactics of demand generation
Growth marketing usually relies on the following tactics to educate, engage, and nurture potential customers:
Content marketing: Producing blogs, whitepapers, and thought leadership content to educate potential customers.
Webinar and event marketing: Engaging prospects through industry events and live demonstrations to nurture their interest.
Email marketing: Engaging leads with targeted and personalized content to nurture them and guide them through the buyer journey.
Companies that embrace growth marketing often use tactics like:
- A/B testing and experimentation: Continuously testing various marketing strategies, messaging, and user experiences to find the most effective approach.
- Product-led growth: Leveraging the product itself as a growth engine, like Dropbox’s viral referral system.
- Retention and lifecycle marketing: Engaging users with personalized email campaigns, push notifications, and content to maintain long-term relationships.
- Referral programs: Encouraging word-of-mouth marketing, similar to Airbnb’s referral incentives.
- Cross-functional collaboration: Aligning marketing efforts with product, sales, and customer success teams to drive consistent growth.
đź’ˇ Related guide: How to Create Successful Demand Generation Strategies for Your Brand
Differences between growth marketing and demand generation
Now that we’ve got the basics of growth marketing and demand generation, let’s dive deep into really understanding what makes the two concepts different from each other:
| Aspect |
Growth Marketing |
Demand Generation |
| Focus |
Entire funnel, from awareness to retention |
Primarily top-of-funnel, focused mainly on lead acquisition |
| Approach |
Fast iterations, quick hypothesis testing, and rapid optimization |
More structured and long-term, requiring consistent effort over time |
| Tactics |
- Conversion rate optimization (CRO) |
- Content marketing (whitepapers, blogs, webinars) |
|
- Retention & referral loops |
- Lead nurturing through email & events |
|
- Product-led growth (PLG) |
- Account-based marketing (ABM) |
|
- Performance marketing |
- Sales enablement |
|
- Lifecycle marketing |
|
| Team collaboration |
Collaboration among product, engineering, and data teams to enhance user experience and optimize growth loops |
Collaboration between sales and marketing teams to generate and nurture leads effectively |
| Revenue impact |
Directly impacts revenue by optimizing conversions, reducing churn, and increasing LTV |
Influences revenue indirectly by driving awareness and generating high-quality leads for sales |
| Paid vs organic |
Balanced mix of paid and organic, often leveraging virality and product-led tactics |
More reliant on organic and outbound efforts |
| Best for |
Startups, tech companies, and businesses looking for rapid, scalable customer acquisition and retention |
B2B companies, enterprise sales models, and businesses that focus on long-term pipeline growth |
How to choose the right strategy between growth marketing vs demand generation
It may be confusing when you’re trying to decide which strategy would work best for your business. To determine this, you can do the following:
Stage: Consider the stage of your business when choosing your strategy. If you’re just starting out, focus on building brand awareness and generating initial traction through cost-effective methods like social media, content marketing, and referral programs. At this stage, growth marketing can help create organic momentum. On the other hand, if your business is more established, you may have the resources to invest in demand generation tactics like paid advertising, retargeting, and targeted campaigns to drive immediate leads and scale growth. Each stage requires a tailored approach to maximize impact.
Assess business objectives: Think about your business objectives. Are you aiming to drive immediate awareness or focus on optimizing for long-term retention? Consult with your sales and marketing teams to align on the goals, and use their insights to choose the strategy that best supports your objectives.
Consider your available resources: Growth marketing requires a data-driven, agile team, while demand generation focuses on content and awareness. You need to assess the resources at your disposal. If you have a lean team and limited resources, opt for a strategy that requires less manpower and focuses on cost-effective methods. If budget allows for more extensive campaigns, you can invest in strategies that demand a larger spend and offer quicker results.
Evaluate team expertise: Both growth marketing and demand generation require separate expertise and tools. You need to assess what kind of internal expertise you possess in your business. Are your employees more skilled with using analytics and experimentation (growth marketing) or are they more comfortable with content and outreach (demand generation)?
Combining growth marketing and demand generation
Companies can effectively combine growth marketing and demand generation to optimize the entire customer journey. Demand generation drives awareness and attracts the right audience through strategies like thought leadership, SEO content, paid ads, and webinars. Growth marketing then refines these efforts by A/B testing creatives, optimizing landing pages, and experimenting with lead qualification to improve efficiency. As leads progress, demand generation nurtures them with personalized email sequences and case studies, while growth marketing enhances engagement through behavioral triggers, lifecycle emails, and multi-touch attribution, ensuring higher conversion rates and cost-effectiveness.
Takeaways
Growth marketing and demand generation serve different yet complementary roles in a business’s marketing strategy. While demand generation is ideal for building brand awareness and attracting leads, growth marketing optimizes the full customer journey to ensure customer retention and revenue expansion.
Both these approaches are tried and tested methods that companies use. Therefore, It’s important to understand the difference between the two so you know which strategy can benefit you based on your goals, available resources, and target audience.
