Growth isn’t Product

Hi there 👋,

It seems like everybody is raving about Product-Led Growth (PLG), and I love this new trend.

The PLG movement has a lot of benefits for the growth community, including:

• Growth is confused less often with marketing - see my full rant here

• A focus on driving value for your product and building it up to drive engagement and retention

• Pricing strategies are seen more as a lever versus a fixed element

• A focus on scalable ways to grow rather than sales-led strategies

• It drives a natural word-of-mouth promotion for consistent growth

But now we’re facing a new problem… people are equating product to growth.

We need to remember that it’s product-led growth rather than product = growth.

Here’s why this matters.

Why does it matter if we see product as growth?

This isn’t another pointless Daphne rant, I promise.

I think Product-Led Growth is so important, and yet it’s equally important to differentiate product and growth.

1. Growth comes from all areas of a business.

So equating product and growth means you’ll only look at opportunities within that field, and miss countless others.

For example, growth might be limited by operations not delivering fast enough.

2. Build it… and hopefully they’ll come?

A lot of product revolves around the concept of “build it and they will come”. If your product is strong enough, it will sell itself… right?

Yes and no.

More will eventually come, and without a strong product, you have nothing. But you need a decent amount of customers and momentum before you rely on word-of-mouth.

3. Don’t underestimate marketing

There are other moments where traditional ‘marketing’ can still be valuable along the journey.

You might use social media to engage your customers outside of your product.

You might use email to communicate updates or PR to generate awareness.

And let’s not forget the importance of ads to reactivate churned customers!

How do I avoid this mistake?

This is a similar situation to equating growth to marketing, so it’s only natural that it should be handled in a similar way.

When creating a growth team, consciously opt for a growth team model that includes a wide range of individuals. 

Base this on your company’s goals, growth levers and organisational structure.

There are three key types of growth teams to choose from (note the visuals are purely examples, the structure and team members will vary per organisation):

1. Independent

This is when growth is seen as an independent department, and the individuals that make up this team are solely focused on growth.

They’re dedicated to this goal, and the result is rapid growth, but this is quite an investment to make for many companies.

This structure is present in Uber, Airbnb and Facebook.

2. Cross-functional

This is when (almost) everyone is part of a growth team, and the key here is that you as you grow you create multiple teams, each with its own goal.

For example, one could be focused solely on the customer journey. They also have their day-to-day responsibilities alongside it.

This structure is present in Pinterest and Hubspot.

3. Mixed model

This is a mix of the former two models - hence the clever name! Individuals report to their own departments but work together as a growth team as well.

It allows you to utilise experts without dedicating an entire team to it.

Your growth lead may report to product, but they don’t belong wholeheartedly to that department, which allows them to stay focused.

Avoid equating growth to product by ensuring that your growth team doesn’t fall within product.

Instead, choose one of these three structures and allow product to be a vital part of growth.

Recommendation

In every edition of Growth Waves, I also share a related book, individual or newsletter to check out related to the week's topic.

As you can tell, this is a topic that I’m quite passionate about, so it seems only fitting that I share my own resource on the matter.

In this guide, I cover the three types of growth team in-depth. I consider the advantages and disadvantages of each model, as well as their scalability.

It isn’t publicly available, but you can check it out for free.

I like to think of growth team as cake batter 🎂.

So many parts go into growth, such as product (eggs), growth (flour), marketing (baking powder), customer care (chocolate) and whatever else you put into your favourite cake.

But even though these things go into the cake, they’re not the same thing as a cake and every cake requires a different mix. You’re not going to munch away on raw flour and call it growth.

So growth is the sum of many parts; it is utilising all the skills of your team to develop and grow your brand.

Well, this seems like a good hint that I’m too hungry to continue, so until next time!

Daphne

P.S. In case you missed it, at the end of this week, my Growth Experiment Tracking course goes live! It’s ideal for collaborating across teams on experimentation. You can still get the early bird offer here.