Everything I've learnt around growth - https://x.com/i/article/2109323363336491008
What is growth? (Full guide)
I'm not the best person to explain what growth is, but this article contains almost everything I've learnt, experienced, understood, or researched after being in this domain for a couple of years and talking to a few growth legends.
Growth, at its very core, is just a function of marketing + sales. Everything that comes under growth is either done to market the company or to make more sales.
I've seen this domain evolve across the different companies I've worked at, from an AI B2B SaaS to a Series A consumer AI startup to now a Short Form Distribution Company and there's a LOTTT to learn.
This article is my attempt at putting together almost everything that falls under growth. If you're just starting out, hopefully this helps you figure out where to start. If you're already experienced, feel free to correct me, add to this, or share things I've missed. I'm still learning too.
Topics covered (feel free to skip to the relevant).
1/ Performance Marketing
2/ SEO / AEO / GEO
3/ UGC & Short-Form Distribution
4/ Influencer Marketing
5/ Social Media & Launches
6/ Outbound & Cold Outreach
7/ Newsletter & Email Marketing
8/ Personal Branding & Founder-Led Growth
9/ Content Marketing
10/ Partnerships & Affiliate Marketing
11/ Community, Events & Webinars
12/ Account-Based Marketing
13/ Product-Led Growth (PLG)
14/ PR & Earned Media
15/ Retention & Monetisation
1/ Performance Marketing
The OG marketing of all. I've seen so many companies scale just by doing performance marketing properly. The most common channel here is Meta Ads, and knowing how to run them is genuinely one of the most useful skills you can have in marketing.
At my previous company, we scaled the product primarily through Meta Ads and YouTube partnerships. Meta Ads, in particular, played a massive role in growth. You can target specific audiences, test different creatives, figure out what makes people click, and keep putting money behind what works. Get the product, creatives, and economics right, and a single channel can take a company surprisingly far.
A few terms you should know before getting into it:
- CPM (Cost Per Mille): What you pay for 1,000 ad impressions.
- CPC (Cost Per Click): What you pay, on average, for each click.
- CTR (Click-Through Rate): The percentage of people who see your ad and click on it.
- CPA (Cost Per Acquisition): How much it costs to acquire a customer or complete a desired action.
- CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost): The total cost of acquiring a customer, including marketing and sales expenses.
- ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): Revenue attributed to ads divided by ad spend.
- LTV (Lifetime Value): The revenue or gross profit a customer generates over their relationship with your business.
- LTV:CAC: The relationship between customer lifetime value and acquisition cost. Helps you understand whether acquiring customers makes financial sense.
You can also explore other channels like Google Ads, YouTube Ads, LinkedIn & X Ads, display advertising, and affiliate marketing. Each works differently depending on your audience, product, and goals. Meta Ads might work brilliantly for a consumer app, while Google Ads can capture people actively searching for a solution and LinkedIn Ads can help reach specific decision-makers in B2B.
2/ SEO / AEO / GEO / ASO
Another OG marketing skill. Good SEO can help your website rank for relevant keywords on Google, bringing in organic traffic, leads, and sales without paying for every click. For example, if someone searches for the best AI video generator and your product ranks among the top results, you have a chance of acquiring a customer who is already looking for what you offer.
SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is the paid side of search, where you bid on keywords through platforms like Google Ads to appear in search results.
Now, search is evolving beyond Google. AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) focuses on getting your content surfaced in direct-answer experiences, while GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) focuses on visibility in AI-generated answers on platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity. ASO (App Store Optimisation) helps your app rank higher in app stores like Apple's App Store and Google Play. These channels overlap, but the goal is similar: make sure people discover your product when they're searching for something relevant.
3/ UGC & Short-Form Distribution
UGC has become a major growth channel, especially on TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. The idea is to get creators to make content around your product and distribute it at scale. At @Aydusco, we've generated 2.2B views across 59,372 videos, and one thing is clear: a small percentage of videos drive a disproportionate share of views.
If you're starting out, here's the process:
- Research formats: Study viral videos in your niche and adjacent categories. Look for repeatable hooks, storytelling patterns and formats.
- Adapt what works: Recreate successful formats for your product. Borrow the structure, not the exact script.
- Warm up accounts: Set up profiles properly, engage with niche-relevant content and post a few organic videos before promotional content.
- Test at volume: Try different hooks, scripts and formats across multiple accounts. Don't judge the channel by a handful of videos.
- Double down: Track views, watch time, shares and conversions. Identify winning formats and make more variations.
The goal is to build a repeatable distribution system, not pray for one viral video.
Checkout whether you should do UGC or not -
4/ Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is pretty straightforward: you collaborate with creators who already have an audience on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, X or TikTok. This could mean a dedicated YouTube integration, an Instagram Reel, a story shoutout, or a podcast appearance. Most deals are one-off or based on fixed deliverables, where you pay a creator to introduce your product to their audience.
The key difference from UGC is who owns the distribution channel. With UGC, you're typically building content for accounts you own or control. With influencer marketing, you're paying to access an existing creator's audience. To get started, shortlist creators based on audience fit rather than follower count, study their engagement and past brand collaborations, negotiate deliverables and usage rights, and track results through links, discount codes or conversions. (Youtube partnerships / collabs were a big big channel of revenue in one of my previous companies)
5/ Social Media & Launches
Every company wants to go viral on social media, but most don't have a proper plan for it. This covers building a presence on platforms like LinkedIn, X, Instagram and TikTok, creating platform-native content, and using launches to get a concentrated burst of attention. Think Product Hunt (outdated) launches, announcing a new feature on X, or getting a bunch of people to talk about your product on launch day.
Launching on twitter is trending these days. Everyday you're exposed to 100s of launches. A good successful launch can bring in tons of inbounds, help raise funds, hire talent and get a great revenue uptick.
Some of the goated companies that orchestrate these launches - @shownmedia @atomikgrowth @socapinc @mattepstein @subahwadhwani
6/ Outbound & Cold Outreach
Outbound is one of the most direct ways to generate leads, especially in B2B. Instead of waiting for customers to discover you, you identify the people or companies you want to sell to and reach out through cold emails, LinkedIn DMs, calls or other channels. A lot of companies get their first customers this way.
Start by defining your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile), building a targeted lead list, and finding the right person to contact. Write personalised messages that explain why you're reaching out and what value you can offer. Test different hooks, follow up without being annoying, and track reply rates, meetings booked and deals closed. Don't blast 10,000 people with the same AI-generated email and wonder why nobody replies.
Tools to use - Instantly, apollo.io, clay etc.
7/ Newsletter & Email Marketing
Email is one of the few channels where you can build a direct relationship with your audience without depending entirely on an algorithm. Newsletters help you stay top of mind, share useful information and bring people back to your product. Email marketing also covers product updates, onboarding sequences, promotional campaigns, abandoned cart emails and sales follow-ups.
I built a 30 day email cadence that used to run for every user signed up on @thineai's app. Because of the cadence we were able to stay in touch with the user time to time and later it helped a lot in getting initial feedback for the app. Any bugs or feature suggestions were communicated clearly by the users because of the human touch the cadence added.
Tools to use - Mailchimp, Brevo
8/ Personal Branding & Founder-Led Growth
People often pay more attention to people than company accounts. Founder-led growth uses the founder's expertise, opinions, network and personal story to build trust, attract customers, recruit talent and create demand. Think founders sharing lessons on LinkedIn, building an audience on X, appearing on podcasts or publicly documenting what they're building.
9/ Content Marketing
Content marketing is about creating useful content that attracts potential customers and helps them understand your product. This includes blogs, case studies, reports, playbooks, templates and educational videos. Start by answering questions your customers frequently ask, explaining what your product does, and showing how it solves real problems. For example, publish case studies about your work, break down how a customer achieved specific results, or create useful resources around your industry. The goal is to give people a reason to discover your brand and trust what you do.
10/ Referral & Viral Loops
Referral marketing encourages existing users to bring in new ones, often through incentives. Viral loops take this further by making sharing or inviting others a natural part of using the product. Think Uber offering referral credits or a product that becomes more useful as more people join. To get started, identify why users would recommend your product, make sharing easy, and give them a reason to do it.
11/ Community, Events & Webinars
This involves building communities around a shared interest or hosting events that bring potential customers together. It could mean running a Slack community, hosting founder dinners, organising industry meetups or conducting webinars. Start by identifying your target audience, give them a genuine reason to participate, and focus on providing value. A room of 20 relevant decision-makers can sometimes be more valuable than a webinar with 2,000 random registrations.
Eg. Events across SF Techweek & NY Techweek
12/ Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
ABM is particularly useful in B2B when you're targeting specific high-value companies. Instead of running broad campaigns, you identify target accounts, understand their needs, and tailor your marketing and sales efforts to them through personalised outreach, LinkedIn ads, relevant content and events. Start with a list of companies that fit your ICP, identify their decision-makers, and build campaigns around their specific business priorities.
13/ Product-Led Growth (PLG)
Product-led growth is when the product itself drives acquisition, activation and expansion. Instead of relying entirely on salespeople, you let users experience the product's value through free trials, freemium plans, self-serve onboarding or collaborative features. Think Figma, Notion or Calendly. The key is to help users experience value quickly, reduce friction during onboarding, and make the journey from sign-up to becoming a paying customer as seamless as possible.
14/ PR & Earned Media
PR is about getting your company featured in publications, podcasts and other third-party platforms without directly paying for the coverage. This could include product announcements, founder interviews, original research or industry commentary. Start by identifying publications your target audience follows, develop a story worth covering, and reach out to relevant journalists with a compelling angle. Original data and genuinely newsworthy stories give people a stronger reason to cover you.
15/ Retention & Monetisation
Acquiring users is only half the job. Retention focuses on keeping customers engaged, while monetisation focuses on turning that engagement into revenue through subscriptions, upsells, pricing and other revenue streams. Start by understanding why users drop off or stop paying, improve onboarding and the product experience, and experiment with pricing where appropriate. Track retention, churn, expansion revenue and customer lifetime value to understand how effectively you're growing revenue from existing customers.
Tools - Churnkey, Stripe / Payment dashboards etc.
I've somewhat worked across most of these channels over the last couple of years and have seen different ones work at different stages of a company's growth. There's no single playbook that works for everyone, and that's what makes growth fun. If you're just getting started, I'd recommend going deep into at least two of these skills instead of trying to learn everything at once. Pick the ones that interest you, get your hands dirty, experiment, and learn by doing. You can always expand from there.
(there's obviously more to growth which I am also learning, feel free to drop your resources or add to the content)
Who am I?
I'm Satvik, a growth nerd who's spent the last couple of years jumping between B2B SaaS, consumer AI, and now short-form distribution. I've tried a bit of everything and currently handle Brand Strategy / Head of Content (yes, the trending role these days) at @aydusco.
- @tr1ckastley (dms open)
In case you're looking for someone to run short-form distribution for your brand, check out https://aydus.co/contact
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