Growing or Scaling – what kind of marketing do you need?

Companies go through many phases during their lifecycle. During each phase, the focus changes as the product matures. Recently, I’ve heard companies state that they need to focus on marketing to scale the business. This seems like a simple and straight-forward statement, but when digging into the results the company wants, it becomes a bit murkier.

Companies have started to use the terms “growth” and “scale” interchangeably. This may seem innocent enough, after all, aren’t they the same? Growth and scaling are both focused on increasing revenue, so does the terminology really matter? In fact, it does because each phase a company goes through requires a different marketing strategy to maximize revenue.

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Growth is generally viewed as adding resource—people, tools, capital—to increase revenue. Scaling is generally viewed as increasing revenue without adding more resources. Knowing the difference clarifies the marketing goals and creates a defined plan for achieving revenue targets.

Right now, you may be thinking, “Thanks for the vocabulary lesson, but I need more leads and revenue. Just tell me what I need to do.” Below are checklists to determine which marketing strategy phase your company falls into and help guide your overall marketing planning.

Growth Phase Checklist

Marketing

• ICP is determined but evolving
• Positioning is good but not solidified
• Generating large leads to fill funnel
• Establishing awareness of product in the market
• Tracking and reporting set up to track marketing activities
• Metrics: cost per lead, revenue

Sales/Customer Success

• Converting deals but not “best customer”
• Churn is higher than desired
• Onboarding still has wrinkles
• Tracking and reporting set up to track sales activities
• Metrics: wins, ASP, revenue

Product

• Software has launched at MVP or better
• Bug list is in whack-a-mole state but quickly solving them
• Rapidly adding new features
• Tracking and reporting set up to track product activity
• Metrics: reducing bugs, usability, features used?

Scaling Phase Checklist

Marketing

• ICP is defined
• Positioning is locked (for now)
• Market is aware of product and now market share is the focus
• Top of funnel is generating strong leads, but mid-funnel needs work
• Marketing programs built to attract best customer
• Metrics: CAC, segment performance, LTV, revenue

Sales

• Best customer is defined, and laser focused on finding similar customers
• Positioning has turned into comprehensive sales story
• Processes are starting to solidify
• Churn has slowed
• Metrics: churn, ACV, revenue

Customer Success

• Onboarding process defined
• Process for assistance, adding new features, testing new roll outs with key customers
• Metrics: revenue, time to onboard, response to inquiries

Product

• Software is viable competitor with industry leader
• Feature releases are larger and more strategic
• Metrics: features used, usage, revenue

Revenue Operations

• Marketing, Sales, and Product Operations are combined into RevOps function
• Integrated tracking and reporting
• Company-wide definition on KPIs
• Metrics: revenue, funnel conversions, segment performance, LTV, ACV, churn

The checklists above are a great guideline to help determine which stage your company is in—growth or scaling. As you may have noticed, these checklists involve more than just marketing. That’s because, just as in football, you don’t just focus on offense, defense, or special teams. All teams must work together for success. In addition, not all teams are alike, and these checklists should be adapted to your company structure.

Knowing which phase your company is currently in helps shape the marketing strategy needed to grow revenue. Without assessing whether your company is in the growth phase or scaling phase, there is the risk of creating marketing plans that don’t align with the needs.

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In the growth phase, marketing is focused on getting the brand out in front of as many people as possible. Awareness that your brand exists and can help solve a problem for the ICP is the primary focus. This, however does not mean that marketing is spending money mindlessly. Depending on your brand, you don’t need everyone in the world to know you exist, you just need your target audience to know. That mindset helps efficiently spend marketing budgets while growing awareness, managing the cost per lead, and increasing revenue.

In the scaling phase, your industry and ICP know your brand exists. Now is the time to focus on the metrics that improve gross margin, increase revenue, and are scalable to a larger customer base. Metrics such as CAC, LTV, and segment performance are helpful for marketing teams to know which channels are generating the best customers. However, revenue, gross margin, and other company wide metrics are what the C-Suite, board of directors, and investors are most concerned with. Leveraging the marketing metrics to improve the company wide metrics should always be a focus of the marketing team, but at the scaling phase, it is imperative.

The growth phase and scaling phase of marketing may seem like it is a natural progression from one to the other. For some companies it may be straightforward and clear on when to switch phases. However, for most it is not so simple, especially if new products are added to the offering or M&A is part of the company growth plan. A company could have some product lines that are scaling while others are in the growth phase.

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At this point, if you’re not a marketer, you may be throwing your hands up and saying, “This is why I hate marketing. Why can’t you just set it, forget it, and move on?” It’s true, marketing changes all the time and adjustments must be made. A seasoned marketer can adapt to changes with product lines, competition, economic turbulence, and more. My point is that there is a lot more to marketing than first meets the eye. It is an art to position and differentiate a brand and it’s a science to leverage data, analyze the information, and adjust to keep momentum going in the right direction. It’s why terminology does matter and looking at marketing through a holistic business lens is needed.

It has been said that marketing is the most humbling job because technology, software, tools, and practices are constantly changing. Marketers not only have to stay current with industry trends, competitor activities, and economic obstacles, but they also need to know when Google changes their algorithm and when trends emerge that become mainstream such as intent data. To me, all the challenges and obstacles are what make marketing exciting. And when used correctly, strategic marketing can make a positive impact on the bottom line of a company.

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Rhonda Giedt is a marketing executive focused on solving challenges to spur revenue growth in companies. She has experience marketing companies in SaaS, manufacturing, and 3D printing. She is also an avid sports fan of college football, golf, premier league football, and many others.

She is also an ambassador to the PEAK community, start-up advisor, and mentor to marketing and business professionals.