👋 The following is a fictional story (shoptalk). Enjoy!
It was a day one of the first annual Growth Conference. Mason nervously looked around as he stood in the food court planning his next move.
Mason was a Growth Marketing Manager for a scaling SaaS startup. He is a regular subscriber to ConversionXL, Neil Patel, and growthhackers.com. He continuously runs A/B tests on his companies main landing pages and is responsible for PPC channels, conversion rate optimization, and campaign management.
Mason decided to introduce himself to someone standing nearby before he got in line for an overpriced burger. After exchanging names, Mason was asked a question that he would be asked multiple times that weekend.
"How is your growth team setup?"
"Uh... it's myself and 3 marketers and we manage the CRO, SEO, & paid channels for the business"
Mason couldn’t help but notice their reaction:
"Oh that’s great, nice, good for you! Hey sorry to jump away but I need to get in line for this amazing burger I keep hearing about. See you around!"
After grabbing their $15 burger Mason watched as they walked into a large gathering of people.
There, you could spot Reforge 'Executives in Residence' laughing as they drank from their cold-pressed juice. Applicants, students, and fans surrounded the table sharing their notes that were filled with drawings of loops.
"Hey check out these loops, what do you think?"
"They’re cool, but... you can't just lean on that sales & paid loop... wake up"
"Totally, check out this UGC and viral loop I've been working on... I even thought of the macro loop that connects all of it"
"That's what I'm talking about... let's grab another juice"
Within the Reforge 'section', groups were divided into B2B & B2C. They even subdivided further into DAU, WAU, & MAU groupings.
After eavesdropping, Mason wasn’t sure what to do.
Of course, Mason had no idea what Reforge was or why folks were arguing about the difference between an 'aha moment' and a 'wow moment'. Luckily, he spotted some more reserved folks over in a dark corner.
"How is your team set up?"
"It's myself and 3 marketers and we manage the CRO, SEO, & paid channels for the business"
"NICE! You don't work with engineers either, right?"
"No we don't, were focused on the top of the funnel"
"So are we! Thank you for saying something…ya! We are a full marketing team too!
Before Mason could respond, a new group came into the scene as if they were in an old western strutting through the "batwing" doors of a refined saloon. Mason noticed the letters "PLG" all over. T-shirts, buttons, laptop stickers... covered with “PLG”.
"What's PLG?"
"Ahhh.... so you're not up to speed on product-led growth? It’s this next ‘Content Marketing!’ type wave"
After hearing all about PLG, Mason couldn't keep his head on straight. There were divides created everywhere in the food court. You could hear people talking over each other about PIRATE metrics, cohorts, experimentation, operations, monetization, and activation.
The only common thing between all of these groups is that they had ‘Growth’ in their title. After that… all bets were off.
Although confused, Mason found his place within the food court that day. This group of marketing-led growth teams spoke about their common pain points and drew from different experiences.
Who’s to say this isn’t ‘growth’, Mason thought.
Everyone attending the conference was looking to learn. Although ‘growth’ had taken a life of its own and confused the masses, people were able to find their common areas and move forward.
In the end, they are all looking to find their own definition of growth inside their companies and where it fits in. So instead of arguing what ‘growth’ is and isn’t, let’s all get along, eat some wildly expensive conference burgers, and grow.