How to Learn GROWTH MARKETING in 6 Steps (From Beginner to Expert)

I am going to teach you the 6 most important steps in growth marketing.

If you know these 6 steps, you will already be considered an expert.

But before we dive in, I have to ask you an important question:

“Do you learn growth marketing for a job interview? Or do you learn growth marketing for your own business?”

Your answer to this question will be important at the end of this article. You’ll see why when I come back to the picture below.

So here are the 6 steps you need to know in growth marketing:

1. Awareness
2. Acquisition
3. Activation
4. Retention
5. Revenue
6. Referral

Traditional Marketing VS Growth Marketing

One awkward thing about growth marketing is the name: Growth Marketing.

Shouldn’t ALL marketing be about growth?

Then what’s the difference between Traditional Marketing and Growth Marketing?

Traditional marketing focuses on the first two steps of the process:

1. Awareness
2. Acquisition

In other words, once you’ve acquired a new client or customer, you consider the job of your marketing done.

With Growth Marketing, however, that’s only the beginning of the process.

Here is an important number you have to remember:

It is 10x easier and cheaper to sell to an existing customer than it is to acquire a brand new customer.

Growth marketing takes advantage of that by expanding the process with 4 crucial additional steps:

3. Activation
4. Retention
5. Revenue
6. Referral

If you want to make the most money out of every dollar and every hour spent on your marketing, then implementing growth marketing is crucial.

Step 1: Awareness

A mistake new marketers make is that they confuse awareness with knowing you.

They think: Ah, 1,000 people have seen my offer, now I’ve done my job and built awareness.

Big mistake. Big, big mistake.

You can ruin your entire marketing right here from the get-go.

So what is awareness?

This here is the key:

Awareness is about getting people’s attention until they

• Know you
• Like you
• And trust you

Whether you bring awareness to your personal brand, business brand, offer, or product…

Awareness means

1. They know about it
2. They like it.
3. And they trust it.

Now you can confidently move on to step number 2 with a much higher success rate: Acquisition.

Step 2: Acquisition

Acquisition simply means someone pays you money for the very first time.

They are now a new customer or client.

This is where sales comes into play: Having a great offer with convincing guarantees.

It also includes the onboarding process.

For example:

What information do you need about the customer to deliver what they bought, whether that’s:

• Physical product
• Software
• Or service

Once this first transaction is done and completed, you now move into step number 3: Activation.

Step 3: Activation

Remember, this step here is where we leave the world of traditional marketing and enter the growth marketing process.

Step 3, Activation, is an interesting concept that very few marketers and salespeople ever think of.

And that is: Many people buy things that they never use.

Think about that: Many people buy things that they never use.

It means they just wasted their money and it also means your business had no positive impact in their life.

This is horrible!

Activation is about engaging your customers so that they actually use your product, software, or service.

We want them to experience the value of what they bought from us. 

That’s how we make a real, tangible, positive impact in their lives.

Because so few marketers ever think about this, most of them struggle with this step.

Here are the 3 best ways how you can activate your new customers to use what they bought:

1. Make it part of the onboarding process. If you can get them to use your product, software, or service immediately when buying, then they have already experienced the positive impact it can have on their life.
2. Show them examples of how other people, people who are just like them, used the product to great success. Seeing other people use something well often motivates us to use it too.
3. Send them very simple tutorials and tips to help them use what they bought. Lay it out for them step-by-step and keep it as simple as you possibly can.

Activation isn’t a one-time thing.

The key here is to contact your new client and customer days and weeks after the purchase.

Keep regularly following up with them and help them use what they bought from you.

This leads you to step number 4: Retention.

Step 4: Retention

You want your customers and clients to stay with you for as long as possible.

This is most obvious with subscription-based models, like software and memberships.

Where you earn more money the longer somebody stays subscribed.

It’s a very simple calculation.

But even for single payment transactions, you want your customers and clients to keep using it for as long as possible.

We become attached to things that we use regularly and for a long time. Your business, your brand, or your product become an important part of their lives.

And this is crucial for the next step in the growth marketing process: Revenue.

Step 5: Revenue

This step is where growth marketing starts earning you a lot more money than traditional marketing.

I’m gonna share with you these examples.

First Example

Imagine you’re selling software with a monthly subscription of $10 per month.

On average, your customers stay subscribed for 3 months. This means every new customer is worth $30, on average.

If you wanted to double your revenue, in Traditional Marketing you would have only 1 option:

• Signing up twice as many customers

But with Growth Marketing, you have another option:

• Signing up twice as many customers
• Increasing the average subscription time from 3 months to 6 months.

And remember what we said at the beginning of this article?

“It is 10x easier and cheaper to sell to an existing customer than it is to acquire a brand new customer.”

Doubling your number of customers is expensive and difficult.

But increasing their average subscription time is cheaper and easier.

Second Example

Now here’s another example that I think will blow your mind:

Imagine you’re a health coach helping people lose weight through 1on1 online consultations.

And your coaching package costs $1,000 where you help someone get in shape over the next 60 days. That means the value of every customer is $1,000.

Now if you want to make more money, traditionally you would have two options:

1. Get more clients
2. Or increase your price.

But with Growth Marketing, you have a 3rd and better option:

1. Get more clients,
2. Increase your price,
3. Or offer other things to your existing clients.

There are 3 technical terms for this:

• Upsell
• Downsell
• Cross-Sell

An Upsell is where you offer something more expensive to existing clients. For example, a 1-week in-person weight-loss retreat that you organize.

A Downsell is where you offer something cheaper to existing clients. For example, a digital course that you’ve created.

And a Cross-sell is where you offer something that is not a direct follow-up but is still related. For example, people who want to lose weight might also be interested in learning how to create their own homemade cosmetics products free of chemicals.

When you are upselling, downselling, and cross-selling to existing customers, your average income per new client goes up. The technical for this is Customer Lifetime Value.

So instead of earning $1,000 per client on average, you can now be earning $3,000 per client on average.

Essentially, you would have tripled your revenue with the same number of clients.

That’s why business owners love growth marketers. It is not only cheaper but also more effective.

And this brings us to the 6th and final step in the process: Referrals.

Step 6: Referrals

Asking happy customers for referrals should be more than just a question thrown out and hoping for the best.

You want to think about two things:

• How do I make it EASY for my customers to refer me or my product?
• What can I add so customers WANT to refer me or my product, what’s a great incentive?

Word-of-mouth is the best type of marketing.

Referrals are almost free and they come in with a very high level of trust from the get-go.

It’s the same in my business. People who get referred to me, always make the best new clients.

At the beginning of this article, I asked you if you are learning growth marketing for a job interview or for your own business., right?

If you are preparing for a job interview, then you also need to know some technical terms about Growth Marketing.

And here’s how you can learn these terms very easily and quickly:

1. Go to ChatGPT.
2. Type in two prompts. The first one is this: “Tell me all the marketing terms related to growth marketing”. The second prompt is this: “Tell me the most important metrics in growth marketing.”

Learn the technical terms that ChatGPT spits out for you and you should be crushing it at your job interview.

If you are learning Growth Marketing for your business, then you need to read this article here next to help you implement what you’ve learned here.

In which steps of Growth Marketing you’re having trouble? Can’t wait to hear your thoughts on this one!

And don’t forget to subscribe on my YouTube channel, @creategrowprofit.