What is growth marketing? Core principles and strategies 2025

The digital world is constantly evolving and changing, and so are user preferences.You have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place, and twice as fast to go anywhere. That’s why growth marketing is on the rise these days. Let’s delve deeper into this topic and see how you can implement this approach into your business. So, what exactly is growth marketing?

Definition: growth marketing is a data-driven approach based on constant experiments with strategies and tactics. Growth marketers regularly come up with hypotheses and test them, looking for what works best and drives business growth. Frequent testing provides valuable data that is used to achieve your goals: maximize reach, expand customer base, increase conversions, turn buyers into brand advocates, and more.

Another name for this approach is “growth hacking”.  Sometimes these terms are used as synonyms, but “growth hacking” usually means shorter time periods, limited resources, and seldom includes focus on sustainable growth.

From the history of growth marketing

Growth marketing as a concept emerged and developed between 2007 and 2012, when companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn were booming. In a short time, these companies expanded their user bases from 100,000–200,000 to several million by adopting an experimental approach, using new promotional tools, and continuously testing lots of hypotheses.

The key feature of this approach was that these companies had no prior experience or case studies of rapid scaling in the IT field. There were no standards, no methodologies, no conventional ideas of what worked and what didn’t. Every decision heavily relied on the results of their own research and risk assessments. That’s why their experiments always had specific performance metrics, including measurements of audience behavior.

This experimental, data-driven approach was called “growth hacking”. The term was coined  in 2010 by Sean Ellis, a Dropbox marketer who came up with a brilliant idea: a referral program that granted extra storage to those users who shared Dropbox files with others. In no time, the service attracted about 4 million new users. Sean Ellis published a manifesto on rapid growth and founded the first online community of growth hackers.

Sean Ellis defined the concept of growth hacking based on three key questions:

1. What is the growth mechanism? What metric is the most important for growth?
2. What value will customers gain from using the product or service?
3. How can we improve the user experience?

The answers to these questions can only be found when marketers, engineers, analysts, and other employees join efforts to increase value for the end user and drive profitability.

Growth marketing VS traditional marketing: what's the difference?

Growth hacking: benefits for business

Growth hacking is particularly effective for startups and businesses who aim to maximize results with limited use of resources. By implementing this approach, you get a number of benefits:

• Reduced costs. Growth hacking employs creative low-cost techniques to achieve impressive results. For example, Dropbox used their own product as an incentive when launching a referral program. The result was astounding: reduced customer acquisition cost and exponential growth.
• Fast results. By focusing on rapid experimentation and iteration, growth hacking helps businesses quickly identify what actually works.
• Effective data-driven decisions. Growth hacking deals with measurable outcomes. A/B testing and analytics allow businesses to track performance and tweak campaigns in real time, ensuring resources are spent on high-impact strategies.
• Scalability. Successful growth hacks are designed to scale. Hotmail’s inclusion of a “Get your free email at Hotmail” signature in every outgoing email turned users into brand advocates, driving viral growth.
• Customer loyalty. Growth hackers prioritize understanding customer behavior and pain points. It means that you’ll improve your product or service to meet the needs of your audience, and happy customers will become your brand’s advocates.
• Cross-functional collaboration. Growth hacking breaks down silos by involving teams across product, marketing, and engineering. This collaborative approach results in aligned and impactful strategies.

Core principles of growth hacking

Focus on the user. This principle will help you find the most important metric. Ask yourself these questions:

• How do you attract people?
• How do you guide them to the “Aha! moment” when they first realize the value your product brings to their life?
• How do you keep them engaged?

Chamath Palihapitiya used these questions when leading Facebook’s Growth team. He emphasized that every action of the team should aim to help users experience the “Aha! moment” as often as possible. Focus on retention, not on the number of those who sign up.

Fail fast and cheap. Growth hacking encourages ditching past experiences and standard solutions. Instead, build your strategies on hypothesizing and testing. When you need to test multiple ideas in the short term, tools like quizzes can help. They make it easier to launch new tests, discard what doesn’t work, and find the hacks that may lead to exponential growth.

A/B testing on Marquiz is a great way to test hypotheses and identify weak spots. Create two quiz versions with different headlines, questions, or visuals, and show each version to half your audience. To see what performs better, analyze the results using tools like Google Analytics (Universal) or Google Analytics (4).

Simplify everything. Growth hacking thrives on simple, cost-effective improvement techniques. Creating a popular product implies that it must be easy to use. Think simple registration, autopay, uncluttered interface, and clear website structure.

That’s how Marquiz Pages works. This tool helps you create high-converting landing pages without spending much time or money. One of our customers, a company selling mini coffee shops, built a landing page in just 2.5 hours. As a result, it generated over 700 leads and 42 sales in 7 months.

Grow key metrics. Growth hacking is about increasing the critical metric, not spreading efforts thin. Every department should cooperate to grow this indicator. Otherwise your efforts can drag on for months or even years without real results.

Scale up success. Once you find what technique or method works, scale it. Remember that testing remains essential at every stage of product launch. Use tools like Marquiz’s quiz templates to gather feedback from your audience, conduct research and test new product hypotheses.****

Outpace your competitors. Finding a way to multiply your key metric doesn’t guarantee success. Competitors are always looking to gain an edge, and they might even copy your new strategy. That’s why proven hacks need to be implemented immediately.

Example: one company offering residency and visa services in the EU, the UAE, and the US used quizzes to target high-ticket clients. It created a Marquiz Pages landing and stated the price to attract target leads only. While competitors were still figuring out how to reach their audience, this company achieved a 3.4% quiz conversion rate and 6% lead conversion rate — despite service prices ranging from €6,000 to €12,000.

Growth hacking continues to evolve and incorporate new approaches. As long as startups emerge and develop, new principles of rapid growth will be invented. That’s why there’s no perfect formula for growth hacking. You just need to stay on top of trends and keep a close eye on your metrics.

Best growth marketing strategies 2025

Content marketing. Discover new traffic channels by testing new blog platforms, email newsletters, unconventional video formats, podcasts, webinars, or influencer collaborations. Test what type of content resonates most with your audience, and where it’s best to post it.

Product marketing. Your aim is to find a disruptive way to improve your product. Make it user-friendly, intuitive, and straightforward. Add integrations, new features, or adapt your product to specific business needs. At Marquiz, we have a system for gathering and ranking user suggestions for product improvements. The most popular of them get implemented into Marquiz.

Viral сontent. Create attention-grabbing content like short videos, memes, flash mobs, or funny posts referring to high-profile events. Aim for high engagement and shareability to maximize your reach.

Advertising. Rethink traditional ad tools and experiment with gamification, quizzes, provocative campaigns, or engaging formats. Test new ad channels and focus on those delivering the best results to maximize ROI.

Guerrilla marketing. Develop creative low-cost campaigns like graffiti, stickers in public places, unexpected collaborations, or product placements that leave a lasting impression.

Fear of missing out. Use limited-time offers, countdown timers, or exclusive deals to create urgency and drive action. Avoid pushing your audience too much, though.

Interactive content. Quizzes may help you boost a product without much investment, perform quick A/B testing to find the right solution, and scale up eventually.

‍

💡Enhance your quizzes with analytical tools, and you’ll get all the necessary data for growing the key metric.

Best practices of growth marketing 2025

As we’ve already mentioned, growth marketing is an ever changing landscape, and what’s effective today may be out-of-date tomorrow. Still, we’ve collected today’s best practices for you to consider:

• Data-driven personalization.  With advancements in AI and machine learning, growth marketers can now leverage customer insights to deliver hyper-personalized user experience. This may include tailored content, product recommendations, and dynamic pricing based on user behavior and preferences. Tools like predictive analytics and AI-driven segmentation enable you to anticipate customer needs even before they arise!
• Storytelling. Create captivating narratives that highlight your brand and showcase your products or services as the solution to your audience’s challenges. Explore diverse formats like videos, podcasts, and visuals to make your materials more dynamic and impactful. Avoid being overly promotional. This approach builds trust and keeps your audience engaged without feeling pressured.
• Collaboration with influencers. Younger generations place immense trust in influencers, which makes them a powerful tool for growth marketing. The key is to collaborate with those whose audience aligns closely with your target market. Even influencers with 10,000+ followers can drive meaningful impact for your growth marketing efforts when chosen strategically. Do your best to build authentic partnerships that deliver value to both your brand and their audience.
• Referral and loyalty programs. They turn one-time buyers into return customers and leverage the power of word-of-mouth. Such programs reward customers for their loyalty and encourage them to become brand advocates. There are multiple ways to design a rewards program. For example, you can implement a system that gamifies purchases and motivates customers to buy more from you. Alternatively, offer discounts or coupons for bringing a friend.
• Video marketing. Video content is one of the most engaging tools in a growth marketer’s toolkit. Including compelling videos in your growth marketing strategy can boost audience engagement and expand your reach. If a video goes viral, it can bring your thousands of new users — or even more.

Growth hacking team: what should the team be like?

Though each employee of your company should keep growth in mind, you need a dedicated cross-functional team that makes it the main priority.

To determine the team’s composition, it’s important to identify areas that directly impact product demand. For instance, if your user interface isn’t user-friendly, the team should include developers and designers.

A growth team might consist of:

• Team lead. The leader who sets the direction, coordinates the efforts, and monitors progress.
• Product manager. An expert who identifies opportunities to improve the product, ensuring it meets customer needs.
• Marketer. A data-driven marketing specialist who thrives on insights and metrics.
• Designer. Someone who can work quickly without sacrificing quality.
• Engineer: A software developer who can focus on speed rather than on writing perfect code.
• Data analyst: The analytical brain behind testing, interpreting results, and guiding decisions.

KPIs and metrics to consider in growth marketing

If you struggle with defining your key metrics, here’s the list of the most important ones for you to consider:

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) — the average cost to acquire a new customer
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) — the total revenue a customer is expected to generate over their lifetime.
• Conversion Rate (CR) — the share of leads or website visitors who complete the target action
• Return on Investment (ROI) — the ratio between net income over a certain period and investment in marketing efforts
• Churn Rate — the share of customers who abandoned your product
• Retention Rate — the share of customers who continue using your product over time
• Revenue Growth — the increase in revenue over a specific period
• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) — the average cost of acquiring a single customer via a certain marketing campaign
• Engagement metrics — how users interact with your website, content, or social media page
• Virality and referral metrics — how often your content goes viral, and how often your customers invite someone to use your product

By monitoring these metrics, you can make data-driven decisions, optimize your growth efforts, and make sure they deliver measurable results.

💡 About the most important marketing metrics — talking here

FAQ

I’m new to business growth marketing. What should I start with?

First, collect and analyze customer insights: Start by gathering data about your existing users and reviewing their feedback. Use this data to design and perform simple A/B tests. Launch sample campaigns using email newsletters and social media posts. Identify what works best and add these tactics to your list of best practices. Gather fresh data and repeat the cycle, optimizing your campaigns with each iteration. Good luck!

Are there techniques and strategies that guarantee rapid growth?

The above-mentioned strategies are likely to drive results for any business regardless of the scale. However, success ultimately depends on tailoring these approaches to fit your unique circumstances. The key for marketers is to analyze data, understand the specific funnel of their company, and identify the solutions that work best. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer in digital growth marketing.

‍