The digital transformation, which has changed the way all industries operate worldwide, has increased communication opportunities like never before. As a result, the marketing field has been freed from the physical limitations of traditional marketing.
Growth marketing, which transforms digital marketing methods into data-driven strategies with a holistic mindset, has begun to shape the dynamics of the modern marketing world.
The demand for competent people for growth marketing positions is increasing, and those who blend strong marketing skills with a flexible and determined growth mindset are perfect fits.
In this article, we will talk about the skill sets needed to become a growth marketing manager, one of the target positions for those who want to build a solid growth marketing career.
To discover what it means to be a growth marketing manager, one must first understand what growth marketers do.
Growth marketers reshape the classic marketing funnel with a holistic perspective to ensure sustainable, data-driven growth. That's why growth funnels focus on the entire customer journey, not just stages like customer acquisition and retention that are located at the top of the funnel.
Since the structure, goals, and needs of each organisation are different, when growth marketing methods are used, unique strategies must be created for each company.
Unlike digital marketing, growth marketing uses not only digital marketing methods but also creates company-specific short and long-term goals using trial and error methods to achieve sustainable growth.
Their methods are highly data-driven to make decisions with the most accurate predictions. Because every industry has its own metrics and success criteria.
Growth marketing managers make sure that different units are working towards the same goal, that intra-team and inter-team communication is strong, and that the right metrics are followed.
They adapt innovations in the field to their working methods and monitor whether the correct briefs are delivered to each team. In addition, they make sure the right personas are identified for brands and that all operations are carried out with these personas as the focus.
Their role also includes coordinating the team's communication with external actors and providing solutions to daily and long-term challenges the team is facing.
So what skill sets do you need to make working in this position one of your career goals? Let's discover together!
To be a growth marketing manager, it's not enough just to be a good growth marketer or a strong leader. It is necessary to sustain a unique combination of these characteristics with the necessary skill sets. Here are the 7 skills you need to become an in-demand actor in the industry.
A successful growth marketing manager should be able to create fast and accurate decisions in line with the company's goals and needs. It is unthinkable for a manager to make uncertain or insufficiently analysed decisions, especially in this industry where experiments are constantly carried out, and the results analysed.
A solid growth marketing manager should be able to connect the dots between long-term and short-term goals and analyse risks. They should be able to draw accurate deductions from feedback and construct a plan B as a backup to plan A when necessary.
The data, if interpreted correctly, provides crucial insights into every part of the growth funnel. Thus, data analysis is paramount for growth marketers. Since all decisions in growth marketing are specially made for the sector and the organisation, all internal and environmental factors can only be analysed perfectly with data.
It is essential for a growth marketing manager to understand the quality of the data, whether it should be prioritised for the company's goals, and with which metrics this data should be interpreted. It's also necessary to change focused metrics when needed, and growth marketers can only determine how to adjust them with solid data interpretation capabilities.
Just because a content or campaign has been created doesn't mean it's perfect enough to be implemented. The critical part starts after this stage. Marketing managers must be able to bring all marketing campaigns and content to their best form.
Operations can only contribute to a growth marketing strategy if optimised and implemented according to current growth marketing dynamics. For this, growth marketing managers need to know the tools and the current marketing environment very well and constantly update themselves.
When your optimisation skills are strong, you also contribute to the creative processes of your team. For example, it is very difficult for a manager who does not know about search engine optimisation to monitor content marketing briefs.
However, a brief written in line with the right optimisation strategies enables the creation of much higher quality content and campaigns.
Growth marketing managers will only be successful if they master all stages of the growth funnel and understand the internal dynamics of each.
To do this, they must first learn all digital marketing techniques and know how to create data-driven strategies using these techniques at different stages of the funnel.
For example, managers who don't know how to supplement their social media marketing techniques with the unique features of email marketing are deprived of many combinations of strategies they can use. Or a manager who is not well-versed in customer relations may not be able to decide how to change their growth strategy in line with feedback.
Discovering customers' needs and habits is one of the primary fuels of a holistic growth strategy. Because the main factor in marketing today is an experience rather than a product. That's why a growth marketing manager needs to have a mental understanding of user experience, not just technical insights.
Since retaining existing customers is as important as acquiring new customers in growth marketing, good growth marketing managers analyse what each step they take means to the customer and guide their team in this direction. To manage the processes of analysing customer behaviour with data, having technical skills, such as A/B testing, is necessary.
Growth marketers with a growth mindset become well-rounded and perfection-seeking individuals. Managing strong personalities requires great responsibility.
Solid growth marketing managers discover the needs, personal goals, and potential of their team and make decisions based on these factors.
Successful leaders need to make sure that the team can manage stress as they happily walk towards a common goal. A perfect plan can fail when executed by a misguided team. But properly managed growth marketing teams can make any plan flawless.
You can create great strategies to achieve long- and short-term goals, choose the proper methods, and prepare your team. But your perfect strategy may mean nothing if you don't have enough resources to support the strategies.
Growth marketing managers must ensure that the financial structure and resources they control are always adequate and properly allocated. For this, you should always know current trends and follow potential changes. You need to be sure of the short-term and long-term return on investment in specific growth marketing channels, tools, or partnerships.
You may be naturally inclined to lead, but all growth marketing manager skill sets, from the simplest to the most complex, can only be unlocked with dedication and hard work. And often, work experience alone is not enough to get to this level.
The fastest path to follow is to gain a growth mindset and strengthen it as quickly as possible through inclusive training programs.
For this reason, it is essential for those who want to be a growth marketing manager to look for effective training opportunities, such as NBT Growth Pro Program, that will contribute to their career development and sectoral networks.
