Growth Marketing Vs. Demand Generation

Let’s be real—marketing isn’t about tossing things at a wall and hoping something sticks. It entails adapting a bouquet of strategies to fit business goals or needs. Take, for example, Facebook’s early marketing strategy that employed a dedicated growth team in place of traditional marketing to meet the needs of an evolving internet generation.

 As businesses grow, a lot of changes take place simultaneously. Target audiences shift, competition ramps up, and user expectations change. The kind of early growth hacking that worked for Facebook might not work for an established enterprise. As such, marketing strategies must expand to include bespoke approaches that attract, convert, and retain users.

 Let’s look closely at strategies like growth marketing vs. demand generation, which, despite significant overlaps, differ in the marketing goals they meet.

What Is Growth Marketing?

Unlike old-fashioned marketing, growth marketing is more data-driven. This targeted approach ensures you don’t just acquire customers but that you acquire the right ones. It also focuses on retaining these customers and keeping them happy through continued engagement tactics—whether personalized email campaigns or rewards programs. Over time, this tactic naturally attracts new customers and keeps the momentum going. 

The bottom line: Traditional marketing often stops at the sale, but growth marketing treats it as a starting line. How? By optimizing every step of the customer journey for long-term success.

Key Growth Marketing Strategies

• A/B Testing: A/B testing is about experimentation and refining strategies for maximum impact. It lets you test out two versions of a tactic on your customers, then learn which brought in higher conversions, better ROI, and business growth. You test, learn, and grow.
• Content Marketing: This strategy is primarily concerned with attracting eyeballs by producing more content—not just any content but high-quality, relevant, and conversion-driven content from bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) blogs to videos, infographics, and newsletters.
• Email Marketing: Email marketing never goes out of style; your customers always want to hear from you. It also serves as an excellent product marketing tool, keeping customers up-to-date on the latest deals and products. Segment, personalize, and automate your emails—that’s the mantra to drive higher conversions and retain customers.
• Referral Programs: Another timeless strategy is referral marketing. 90% of people are more likely to buy into a brand or product a trusted friend recommends. This tactic converts existing customers into willing endorsers of your brand, leading to a natural bump in sales.
• SEO: New customers will flock to your product or brand if you offer valuable content to your audience and try to remain visible through tactics like search engine optimization (SEO).
• Social Media: 75% of internet users use social media to research brand offerings, making it a golden gateway to your targeted audience. But it’s not just about posting updates. It’s about engagement, retargeting, and community building.

What are Some Other Growth Marketing Tactics?

Aside from the above, the long list of growth marketing efforts includes:

• Blogging
• Lead magnets and lead generation
• Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
• Email nurture campaigns
• Sales enablement
• Customer onboarding
• Loyalty programs
• Referral programs
• Net promoter score (NPS)
• Paid ads
• Podcasts
• Webinars
• Live events – trade shows, conferences, industry events
• Account Based Marketing (ABM)
• Influencer marketing 

What Is Demand Generation?

Demand generation occurs long before brands acquire and find in-market buyers, placing it in the early stages of the marketing funnel. It focuses more on building awareness and creating a pipeline of qualified leads—essentially, short-term sales goals.

Unlike growth marketing, it doesn’t push for sales. Instead, it uses tactics to generate buzz, excitement, and brand recall among “out-of-market” buyers. This way, when the same buyers are in the market for a product, your brand is at the top of their minds.

Demand Generation Tactics and Channels

Here are the tactics demand generation uses to generate leads and build a sales pipeline:

• Content Marketing: This tactic builds authority through informative and educational posts, usually through whitepapers, webinars, and case studies.
• SEO and PPC: Brand awareness tactics thrive on visibility. This approach uses paid and organic search strategies to boost a brand’s online presence.
• Email Marketing: Targeting leads also means nurturing them. This is possible through targeted drip campaigns and newsletters that keep the brand-customer relationship going.
• Events and Webinars: These are old-fashioned but effective even today. They provide invaluable networking opportunities and help establish credibility.
• Lead Magnets: This involves classic give-and-take, where brands offer resources in exchange for contact information—an absolute win-win.
• Social Media: This indirect tactic creates brand awareness and organic ambassadors instead of aiming for direct sales.

Key Differences: Growth Marketing Vs. Demand Generation

Despite being two sides of the same marketing coin, there are key differences between growth marketing vs. demand generation:

The Funnel

Both growth marketing and demand generation serve distinct roles in the marketing funnel.

·       Demand generation experts typically focus on the upper-middle funnel. The goal here is to build brand awareness and generate leads.

·       Growth marketing occupies the entire funnel, from awareness and acquisition to customer retention and recommendations.

Inbound Vs. Outbound

Both growth marketing and demand generation are largely inbound marketing approaches. However, demand generation also uses outbound marketing efforts, from cold emails and calls to direct mail and event networking.

Traditional Vs. Innovative

Growth marketing relies on hard data to conduct A/B testing and email automation to acquire customers. Demand generation also uses these but includes classic methods such as trade shows, direct mail, and paid ads to generate leads and interest.

Data

Key metrics and data, such as retention rates, customer lifetime value (CLV), and impressions, drive growth marketing plans and tell growth marketers what’s working. Demand generation is also data-driven, albeit in a different way. It uses intent data to learn more about its customers and what they’re seeking.

Brand Awareness

Growth marketing plays the long game but still values brand awareness. It uses value-based tactics like producing product marketing content (comparison and product guides), email retargeting, and incentive programs to nurture loyal customers. Demand generation builds awareness by supplying potential customers with key information so they turn to the brand when they’re ready to buy.

Growth Marketing and Demand Generation Similarities

Here are some areas where growth marketing vs. demand generation overlap:

Customer-Centric

Both approaches prioritize the role of value-based marketing, i.e., offering customers value at all stages of their journey.

Automation

Both heavily depend on automation tools for audience research, marketing campaigns, and targeting tactics.

Data-Driven

Neither strategy works without data and key metrics to support their efforts, whether tracking marketing performance or scaling campaigns.

Cross-functional

The success of both strategies requires collaboration between various departments, including the marketing, product, and sales team.

Importance of Understanding These Concepts in Modern Marketing

Consumer personalities, needs, and goals are not the same as they were a decade ago. Market trends aren’t static, either. Since business needs are in flux, marketing tactics must keep up. 

This means understanding and adapting concepts like growth marketing and demand generation to the modern marketing landscape, as companies like Starbucks and McDonald’s have done. A major reason they’ve flourished over the years is that they used tactics like growth marketing and demand gen to mold their products to the needs of diverse users—keeping them hooked for both the short and long term.

Maximizing Marketing Efforts: When to Use Growth Marketing Vs. Demand Generation

Growth marketing helps drive sustainable growth. This means hitting multiple touchpoints across the customer lifecycle, from acquisition and retention to long-term brand loyalty. Early-age startups, including Facebook (now Meta), Dropbox, Snapchat, and Tinder, used growth marketing for reliable, long-term, and rapid growth.

Demand generation focuses on creating awareness, especially when introducing a product to a new audience. It aims to fill the sales funnel with “would-be” customers by attracting them with information and offerings today.

Growth Marketing Vs. Demand Generation: A Summary

Successful brands have mastered the art of tailoring their approaches to meet the market’s whims. This means eschewing obsolete marketing tactics for modern alternatives like growth marketing and demand gen. While both are similar in theory, their goals and tactics set them apart.

Growth marketing uses data analytics and experimentation to acquire and retain the ideal customers. However, demand gen sparks interest among potential customers, priming them to buy into the brand when a need arises. Both are crucial tenets of a changing market, but knowing when to use either makes all the difference.