Growth Marketing vs. Performance Marketing: Which Strategy Should You Prioritize?

Are you divided on which strategies to use for your business between growth marketing and performance marketing?

Both strategies aim to drive sales and revenue but approach it differently. 

So, which one should you prioritize?

The answer will depend on your company's objectives and top concerns.

Do you wish to build long-term client loyalty and a powerful brand presence?

Or do you need quick wins to boost your sales and revenue immediately?

This article will explore growth marketing vs. performance marketing and how it will help you determine which approach best suits your business needs.

Let's dive in!

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What is Growth Marketing?

Growth marketing is a marketing strategy that utilizes data to create quick and measurable growth in a company. 

Focusing on measures like customer acquisition cost (CAC), lifetime value (LTV), and conversion rates, it is founded on continual experimentation and optimization.

Start with traditional marketing if you want to comprehend a growth marketing plan.

The top of the funnel is the focus of typical marketing strategies.

For instance, a traditional marketer wants to boost traffic, leads, and brand awareness throughout the awareness and acquisition stages.

The remaining funnel steps are then taken care of by the sales staff.

The entire funnel is the focus of a growth marketer.

They drive every stage of the organization's business growth: awareness, acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue (AARRR).

Check out the diagram below.

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Benefits of Growth Marketing

A growth marketer looks into all company corners for expansion possibilities.

Growth marketing provides several advantages.

• Improved efficiency 

Growth marketers use data to monitor the results of their work and continuously improve their tactics.

This openness enables them to maximize the effectiveness of their marketing expenditures.

• Greater focus

Growing your brand's visibility is not the goal of growth marketing.

Finding the best marketing strategies and platforms for your company is essential.

Due to this focus, your growth marketing team's efforts will become more targeted and strategic.

• Data-driven decisions

Growth marketers don't base their decisions on gut feelings when deciding what to do next. 

To help them make judgments, they employ analytics.

They can improve plans and results thanks to this scientific method.

• Long-term results

Sustainable growth is at the core of growth marketing.

It's not a tactic for transient increases in traffic or sales.

Growth marketers lay a strong foundation for the success of your business with the goal of longevity.

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What is Performance Marketing? 

Performance marketing refers to online and advertising initiatives where marketers only pay when a particular action occurs.

This action could be a lead created, the purchase of a product, a click on an article, or any other user-driven action. 

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Benefits of Performance Marketing

Performance marketing is a high-return, low-risk technique with many advantages.

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1. Cost-effectiveness

Performance marketing supports specific, action-based company goals.

As a result, it is frequently less expensive than other forms of marketing.

In contrast to paying for placements or impressions, PPC, for instance, only charges you when a user clicks on your advertisement.

2. Targeted reach

You can target particular demographics based on location, hobbies, or actions through performance marketing.

Your chances of success rise due to this segmentation, which enables you to connect with the right customers at the right time.

For instance, marketers noted a 760% increase in revenue after applying campaign segmentation.

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3. Improved customer experiences

Performance marketing focuses on specific prospects so that you can produce more pertinent content.

Personalization results in better engagement and improved experiences. In fact, 84% of consumers desire to be treated as a person, not a number, by brands.

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4. Measurable results

In performance marketing, you determine results by how customers behave. Thus, it is simple to monitor the results of your work.

By comparing the outcomes to your marketing objectives, you can determine what works and what does not, and then you can make adjustments.

5. Low-risk, high-return

Performance marketing offers the best value for your money.

You can decide how much of your advertising budget to devote to a specific objective and how long to use the pay-as-you-go concept.

If something is not functioning right, you'll know immediately and can adjust your plan to improve results or take a different path.

This enables quick results while helping you gradually decrease your advertising expenditures.

6. Easily trackable

This is an essential benefit since campaign indicators in real-time allow you to accurately determine how your internet marketing efforts affect your return on investment (ROI).

Tracking every impression, click, and conversion makes it simple to determine whether your campaigns are performing as expected or need improvements. 

7. Expand your reach

Performance marketing is a quick and efficient technique to attract the largest audience possible, which will eventually help businesses flourish.

Businesses may connect with more potential clients by reaching new and unexplored areas using social media advertising, strong affiliate networks, and PPC platforms like Google Ads. 

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The Growth and Performance Marketing Ecosystem

Performance marketing prioritizes generating conversions as quickly as possible, using automated emails and paid marketing methods to ensure that none of the partially enrolled users or abandoned carts go missing.

By examining the methods listed below to draw in new clients, growth marketing, on the other hand, concentrates on improving company profiles.

• Insist on customers leaving reviews or providing feedback on websites like TripAdvisor, Capterra, Google, Amazon, etc.

• Posts on social media increase organic traffic and encourage user interaction.

• Be mentioned in the media or on widely visited websites.

• What inquiries do people make after using your service or item?

1. Growth Marketing Tactics, Channels, Metrics, and Goal

What strategies and platforms growth marketing uses? It depends entirely on the goals and methods to reach them.

As we all know, growth marketing leverages any instrument a business has in its marketing toolbox and focuses on the six KPIs AAARRR.

Growth Marketing Tactics and Channels:‍

• Publish blog posts and articles frequently that include applicable CTAs to produce appropriate lead magnets for the context.
• Keyword research, SEO, and link-building
• Email marketing
• Target customers based on their browsing or other prior behavior
• Post your material in various social media guises on various social media networks.
• Adding lead magnets to popular web pages on websites

The goal of growth marketing is to aid in corporate expansion.

The primary goal is to increase the growth rate.

Key marketing KPIs and objectives tracked by the growth marketing team include the following:

Growth Marketing Metrics and Goals:

• Website traffic: organic, direct, or other sources
• Sales-qualified leads and marketing-qualified leads
• Email Metrics
• SEO Metrics: results, domain authority, website rankings, and keyword rankings
• Upsells, cross-sells, and churn rate: retention metrics
• Metrics for determining revenue, including current clients, recommendations, case studies, testimonials, etc.

2. Performance Marketing Tactics, Channels, Metrics, and Goal

Performance marketing is based on compensated marketing techniques, such as paid social media campaigns, paid commercials, paid sponsorships, affiliate marketing, SEO, etc.

The process involves defining your goals and objectives, determining your channels in marketing, creating a campaign with messaging, executing your campaign, gathering and analyzing the data collected during the campaign, and optimizing. Rinse and repeat it all.

‍The diagram below gives you a better visualization. 

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Here are some typical performance marketing strategies and platforms.

Performance Marketing Tactics and Channels

1. Native advertising differs from conventional advertising because it uses native content.

These advertisements supply the audience with the expected information and are directly aigned with the newspaper or websites.

2. Sponsored content is promotional media funded by advertisers and produced by publications, brands, or influencers. 

Businesses employ sponsored content to promote their products and services.

3. Affiliate marketing is another strategy for earning commissions by promoting other people's goods and services.

In fact, it is responsible for 15% of all online marketing revenues.‍

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Many companies collaborate with fashion influencers to promote their products on Instagram and Facebook.

4. One of the best marketing strategies is social media promotion. For example, you can upload flyers, videos, and anime designs to advertise your company.

Do you wish to produce a large number of sales?

Or would you want your potential consumers to subscribe to an email service instead?

To achieve the most desired results, it is crucial to determine the measurements that will have the most significant influence.

Find the importance of a company's performance marketing indicators and objectives below.‍

Performance Marketing Metrics and Goals‍

1. Return on Ad Spend: Find out how much your business makes for every penny you invest.

2.  Return on Investment (ROI) is the amount of money your company makes from advertising after spending a certain amount.

ROI can be determined by dividing your marketing expenses by the increase in sales.

3. Cost per Impression (CPI): This is the sum an advertiser pays for an online publication per a thousand impressions.

4. Cost per click (CPC): The sum advertisers receive for each click on their adverts.

5. Cost per lead (CPL): This is the cost the advertiser pays when a lead comes in through an advertisement and results in a sale.

6. Cost per acquisition (CPA): The sum that the advertiser must pay for any user-driven actions, such as clicks, leads, sales, etc.

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Similarities: Growth Marketing vs. Performance Marketing

Performance and growth marketing are two methods businesses use to increase revenue and outreach.

Both models equip businesses with scalable, repeatable processes and other traits.

For instance, growth and performance marketing uses data to create a feedback loop, track success, and make critical decisions.

Growth and performance marketing use strategic goal-setting to achieve success.

Both methods are crucial to understanding your audience and setting growth and revenue KPIs. 

The two marketing frameworks are very different despite their similarities. 

Curious? Here is how.

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Differences: Growth Marketing vs. Performance Marketing

The similarities between the two strategies are smaller than those between a dog and a cat (growth marketing, in this case, is the cat).

Here is a clear distinction:

• Time span

You must optimize growth marketing to build long-lasting, meaningful connections.

 For performance marketing, prioritize quick-deploy campaigns and immediate results.

• Expected results

The achievement of specific key performance indicators constitutes success in performance marketing.

Growth marketing seeks to increase sales over the long term and cultivate client loyalty by forging genuine relationships.  

• Methods

Performance marketing is predicated on tried and tested methods that produce quantifiable results.

Growth marketing builds on tried-and-true strategies by adding customization, compassion, and concern for the customer.

Here is a summary illustrating the difference between growth and performance marketing. 

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How Growth Marketing and Performance Marketing Work Together

The all-encompassing strategy of growth marketing for digital marketing is performance marketing.

Depending on your company's situation and goals, you might emphasize one approach more.

For instance, growth marketing techniques should be your focus to create a customer base and keep your audience coming back.

If you're an established company that needs to meet monthly sales quotas and specific KPIs, a performance marketing strategy might make more sense for you.

However, if you're looking for ways to create quick and measurable growth in your business, growth marketing might be the way to go. At our digital marketing agency, we offer collaborative services in growth marketing, performance marketing, and buyer's journey marketing to help your business achieve its goals.

Growth marketing raises awareness, draws in potential customers, and maintains customer satisfaction.

When marketers need to convert prospects into customers quickly, performance marketing is an extra push they may apply.

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Which Option Should You Go For? 

To settle for the correct answer, one must consider all the variables that affect both marketing strategies.

However, the elements that have the most significant impact are as follows: 

• How far along is your business?‍

• What are your key objectives for the upcoming five-year cycle?‍

Increasing consumer involvement and sales should be your top priorities if the business is just getting started.

This means that growth marketing would be your best marketing strategy since it includes all the marketing techniques and SaaS SEO tips that directly contribute to a business's growth.

On the other hand, performance marketing demands more significant expenditures on advertising, social media marketing, affiliate marketing, and other activities.

It may be most appropriate for one-time marketing campaigns for large-scale businesses.

Performance marketing is not the solution if you are in charge of a small start-up with limited resources because your priorities differ.

Your initial attention will be on AAARRR.

Therefore, growth marketing is unquestionably the answer.

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Conclusion

We hope this post has clarified the primary difference between growth and performance marketing.

You will enjoy your business’s growth if you can use any of the above marketing strategies.

Moreover, if you need help, AI bees is here to help you with growth marketing or performance marketing, depending on your needs.

Our AI-powered marketing solution will help you generate leads that support your business.

‍Schedule a demo to learn how B2B companies like yours can benefit from our solution.