What is Growth Marketing? How is it different from the old way of doing marketing?
For a long time, marketing was mostly seen as a way to grab attention. Running ads to get impressions, writing content for traffic, optimizing conversions to increase leads. Everything revolved around pulling users in. But there’s one question few people stop to ask: what happens after they arrive?
The truth is, many marketing campaigns only perform well on the surface. Users come and go. Beautiful metrics in reports don’t always reflect the real value a business receives. And the danger is, you might keep pouring in more money, more resources - only to see results not much better than before.
Growth Marketing emerged as a response to that instability. It doesn’t just focus on where users come from, but pays more attention to what they do after they arrive. Do they come back? Do they actually use the product? And what makes them want to recommend it to others?
The biggest difference in Growth Marketing is mindset. It no longer views marketing as short-term campaigns, but as an ongoing feedback loop. Experiment, measure, learn from data, and repeat. Every user action is a clue. Every improvement is a growth opportunity.
But growth can’t be done in isolation. It doesn’t belong to a single team. It requires coordination between marketing, product, data, and engineering. This mindset only works when every department is aligned toward one goal: creating real value for users - and turning that value into real business growth.
If you’re still doing marketing the old way - focusing only on ads, content, or landing page optimization - you might be missing the most important part of the user journey. And if you’ve ever asked yourself why conversion rates are low despite doing everything “right,” now’s the perfect time to explore Growth Marketing.
How does Growth Marketing work? What is the AARRR model?
When talking about Growth Marketing, it’s impossible not to mention AARRR - a hugely popular model considered the backbone of the growth mindset. Its strength lies in helping you view the entire user journey systematically, from the moment they discover your product to the point where they refer it to others.
AARRR stands for five stages:
Acquisition – Activation – Retention – Revenue – Referral
Each letter represents a specific stage in the user lifecycle. Instead of focusing only on traffic or impressions, AARRR helps you ask the right questions at each touchpoint: Where do users come from? Do they stick around? Do they return? Are they willing to pay? And are they likely to invite others?
That’s why, instead of looking at isolated channels like Facebook, Google, or Email, growth marketers view everything through the lens of user behavior. Channels are just a medium. What really matters is how far the user has progressed in the journey - and where they’re getting stuck.
Let’s start with the first stage.
Acquisition – Where users come from and why they decide to click
Acquisition is the starting point of every growth journey. It’s where you first reach users and convince them to check out your product, website, or platform.
But unlike traditional marketing that often asks “which channel is cheaper,” the growth mindset at this stage asks:
- How do we know which channel brings the highest quality users?
- And what exactly does “quality” mean here?
For some products, users from Google may convert more easily than those from Facebook. For others, niche communities or influencer marketing might deliver better-fit users. What matters is not just tracking clicks, but also tracking what happens after the click. Do they sign up? Do they return? Do they go deeper?
At this stage, a growth marketer’s job is to set up robust tracking systems - not just to know where users come from, but to determine whether they truly fit the product. Running ads, doing SEO, social, or email are just surface-level activities. What matters is comparing user quality based on actual behavior - not just traffic volume.
In other words, acquisition isn’t about “bringing in as many people as possible,” but bringing in the right people. People who are likely to move through the later stages of the AARRR journey and ultimately generate real value.
For example, if you’re building a vocabulary learning app for busy professionals, users from Facebook ads may just click because of a catchy image. Meanwhile, someone searching for “how to quickly memorize vocabulary for office workers” on Google likely has a real problem and needs a solution now. This Google user is more likely to register, stick around, and convert to a paying customer.
Activation – The first experience and why users decide to stay
The user has landed on your product. They clicked an ad, visited your site, maybe even created an account. But what happens right after that is what truly matters. This is the Activation stage - where users have an experience good enough to feel they’re on the right path.
Activation isn’t just about completing sign-up. That’s surface-level. What you’re really aiming for is the “aha moment” - that instant when users realize the core value your product delivers.
For instance, a task management app might ask users to create an account, set goals, invite teammates. But if their first experience doesn’t feel much different from just writing things in a Google Doc, it’s unlikely they’ll return. On the other hand, if the app suggests a pre-made workflow tailored to their industry and generates a job-relevant dashboard automatically, users may sense the value - even before they dive deep.
That’s Activation - it’s not a specific action, but a psychological threshold.
Doing Activation well means truly understanding early user behavior. Are they confused? Where do they drop off? What percentage gives up before trying the core feature? Metrics like time on page, funnel completion rate, or heatmaps can reveal valuable insights.
If you only focus on bringing in traffic and neglect the initial experience, you’ll face a common scenario: high traffic, low signup rate - or worse, users register but never return.
Improving Activation doesn’t always require new features. What you often need is a clearer path. An experience that guides users to your product’s core value as early as possible. Trim the unnecessary steps, add smart suggestions, create intuitive design, and align content with context.
Today’s users have little patience. If the first experience isn’t compelling, you’ll likely lose them forever - making all prior acquisition efforts nearly meaningless.
Retention – Do users come back?
Many products can make a strong first impression. But not all of them can bring users back for a second time. And this is the most important test of whether your product actually delivers value.
Retention measures whether users continue using the product after their first experience. It reflects true engagement, habit formation, and most importantly - your ability to sustain growth without constantly pouring money into ads.
For growth teams, retention isn’t just about tracking return rates after 7 or 30 days. More crucial is understanding why users come back, what value they retain, and why they choose your product over others.
Let’s say you build a health tracking app for office workers. Users may eagerly install it in the first week, fill out their info, even log some data. But if the next week there are no reminders, no fresh info, and no clear value, they’ll drop off. On the flip side, if the app sends personalized insights like “You walked 20% less this week than last,” along with custom exercise suggestions - they’ll have a reason to return.
Retention also shows you what really matters to users. Many products chase new features while neglecting the basics. But sustainable growth doesn’t come from novelty - it comes from consistently delivering enough value that users want to keep using it.
One effective way to boost retention is giving users a concrete reason to return. This could be timely notifications, smart reminder emails, light gamification, or simply showing users their progress over time.
If you’ve nailed acquisition and activation but users still churn after a few days, your growth is still superficial. The better you retain users, the lower your revenue acquisition cost. And the more you understand why they return, the smarter your product development becomes.
Revenue – When value turns into income
If users are returning, you’re on the right track. But that alone doesn’t mean sustainable growth. For a product to survive and scale, good experience isn’t enough - it needs to generate revenue. That’s where the Revenue stage begins.
In the AARRR model, revenue isn’t just about making sales. It’s about deeper questions: What are users willing to pay for? When do they feel it’s worth paying? What barriers stop them from paying? These can’t be solved just by tweaking prices or adding a buy button. You need to understand user behavior and psychology at the moment of decision.
For example, if you’re building an online learning platform, many users might use it for free for a while. But if they feel they’re truly making progress after a few lessons, they’ll likely pay to unlock advanced content. On the other hand, if there’s no clear value difference between free and paid, or if the pricing doesn’t match their perceived value - they’ll stay in the free tier.
A growth marketer at this stage doesn’t just ask how to increase conversions - they seek to understand why users decide to buy. They analyze pre-purchase behavior, test different pricing packages, reframe benefits, and sometimes even restructure the product to make value more visible.
A common mistake is pushing users to pay too early. This not only worsens the experience but also increases churn. Growth marketing instead aims to build revenue by helping users realize value on their own - then make the decision to pay willingly.
When revenue comes from users who truly need and enjoy your product, you don’t just earn money - you build a much more solid foundation for growth.
Referral – When users voluntarily recommend you to others
A good product satisfies users. But a truly memorable product is one they want to talk about. That’s why referral is seen as the highest level of growth - where the value you create spreads without needing to buy attention.
Referral isn’t just launching a referral program, dangling a reward, and waiting for shares. In reality, most users don’t refer because of rewards - they refer because they have a reason to. Maybe your product solves a real pain. Maybe it’s smooth and delightful to use. Or maybe they just want to share something cool they found.
For instance, if you’re building a personal finance app for young professionals, you might encourage referrals by letting users share a pre-filled budgeting template. It’s not just easier for others to try - it makes the referrer feel they’re sharing something genuinely helpful, not just chasing a reward.
Growth marketers at this stage need to ask: What moment makes users feel the product is worth sharing? Is it after they hit a milestone? When they see progress? When they get more value than expected? And most importantly, how can we turn that moment into a specific, easy-to-take action?
A good referral mechanism is always subtle. It doesn’t interrupt the experience or feel forced - but appears at just the right moment. You don’t need to hit users with pop-ups the first time they open your app. But if they’ve just achieved something meaningful, that’s the perfect time to invite them to spread the word.
Growth from referrals is not only more sustainable - it also brings higher quality users. Referred users tend to be more motivated, more trusting, and have better retention and conversion rates. Most importantly, referral proves you’re delivering real value - something no ad campaign can buy.
How is Growth Marketing different from traditional marketing?
A common misconception is that Growth Marketing is just a fancier version of digital marketing or another name for performance. But in reality, growth isn’t a replacement - it’s a fundamentally different approach. It asks the core question: why are we doing marketing in the first place?
Not just attracting - but retaining and growing
Most traditional marketing campaigns revolve around delivering a message, reaching the right audience, and inspiring a purchase. These campaigns usually have a clear start and end point, and results are measured in reach, click-through rates, or post-campaign sales.
Growth Marketing sees everything as a continuous lifecycle - from the moment a user hears about you to when they become a loyal customer and start spreading your product to others. Conversion is just one small step. The focus is on retention, lifetime value, and organic growth.
A simple example: both a traditional and a growth campaign might aim to drive signups. But while performance marketing optimizes for the highest number of registrations, growth focuses on how many of those users return after 7 or 14 days - and how many eventually pay. These two mindsets create two completely different execution plans.
A mindset of continuous experimentation - not gut instinct
Traditional marketing often runs large campaigns planned in advance based on experience and intuition. It might take weeks or months to launch, then results are reviewed and adjusted afterward.
Growth Marketing operates on short cycles. Experimentation is at its core. Nothing is assumed. Every idea must be validated with real data. This creates a more proactive process: form a hypothesis, launch fast, measure specifically, learn, and repeat.
Experimentation isn’t limited to channels - it influences product, pricing, messaging, and onboarding. It doesn’t separate marketing from product - it optimizes both as a system.
Not fully dependent on budget
Performance marketing depends heavily on ad budget. The bigger the spend, the wider the reach. But once ads stop, traffic disappears.
Growth Marketing sees things differently. Budget is still important, but only part of the equation. The goal is to build systems that sustain and scale growth without constant spending. Strong retention, great UX, and referrals all contribute to long-term growth at lower costs.
That’s why growth is especially suited for tech products, startups, or models that need to scale fast on limited budgets. But even large companies are increasingly adopting this mindset - because they know they can’t rely on growing by simply spending more on ads.
Final thoughts: Growth isn’t a tool - it’s a mindset
Growth Marketing isn’t just a method. It’s not some ad hack or analytics tool. It’s a mindset rooted in real user behavior - where every decision revolves around the question: what’s truly driving value, and what’s blocking growth?
If you’ve ever felt your marketing only worked on the surface - or felt frustrated that users left too quickly - you may not need another campaign. You might need to reframe the entire user journey through the lens of growth.
Real growth doesn’t come from doing more - it comes from understanding better, acting more precisely, and improving continuously.
If you’re new to growth marketing, try mapping your user journey using the AARRR model. Pick one bottleneck - maybe onboarding is too complex, or retention is too low. Form a small hypothesis and start testing.
Growth won’t happen overnight. But once you start seeing with the right lens, you’re already halfway there.