Why the Head of Growth is Indispensable for Any Company
Do all companies need a Head of Growth today? Of course not—only those that want to grow more in the next year than they did in the previous one.
This is a little joke I always make when talking about the Head of Growth role. People often ask, “When will I need a Head of Growth?” whenever we discuss the field.
I usually respond that you need a Head of Growth when you decide that you want to grow every day and double your growth year after year.
Having a Head of Growth today, however, is no longer something only startups do. The role is becoming increasingly popular, and business owners across all industries and sizes are eyeing these professionals.
Today’s article is a mix of a guide and a manifesto. I’d like to share with you what this professional does. This way, you’ll be able to see, in practice, why every company needs a Head of Growth.
Shall we begin?
Understanding Everything a Head of Growth Does
“Growth” is an English word that means “growth.” Essentially, the job of a Head of Growth is to lead the department of the company dedicated exclusively to its growth.
This sounds common when you say it like that, doesn’t it? But think about all the companies you’ve worked for or started. How many of them had a professional dedicated to overseeing growth strategies?
An interdisciplinary professional who moves between sales, operations, marketing, and customer service, capable of creating strategies that cross all these areas—when did you last see someone like that working?
In most cases, the Head of Growth works in startups. They need rapid and measurable growth because their investments depend on it.
But in more traditional companies, what we often see are partners, directors, and founders taking on this role with great difficulty: these people simply don’t have the time.
Let me show you now what a Head of Growth does. What do you think about evaluating the possibility of working with one in your company?
1. Analyzing Conversion, Activation, and Retention Metrics
One of the main tasks of the Head of Growth in any company is to understand how many people are making purchases, how many are actually using your products, and how many continue to buy from you or maintain their subscription.
But of course, not all businesses have these definitions as clear-cut. The reality of a marketing agency, for example, is completely different from that of a meatpacking company.
In fact, this is why most companies in more traditional sectors don’t work with a Head of Growth. They think this professional is for “trendier” companies. Spoiler: they’re not.
Even if in different ways, all companies will have metrics that indicate customer conversion, activation, and retention. It is the Head of Growth’s job to set goals based on these metrics and direct the company’s efforts to always exceed them.
2. Increasing Customers Through Interdisciplinary Strategies
The Head of Growth needs to work, and does work, in conjunction with the other departments in your company. The primary goal, beyond retaining and ensuring customer success, is to generate more and more conversions.
Many people even think that the Head of Growth’s role is to serve as a CMO—the Chief Marketing Officer, the person responsible for all marketing strategies. But that’s not quite the case.
In fact, the Head of Growth navigates between departments, including marketing, to create new ways to increase conversions. But because this effort is interdisciplinary, their role is not confined to marketing.
Sales, product development, campaign creation—all of this falls under the Head of Growth’s responsibility. This professional acts as an advisor and designer of new conversion strategies, with each department responsible for weighing and executing their ideas.
3. Formalizing Growth Goals
The Head of Growth will have their own metrics focused on growing the company’s customer base and ensuring the satisfaction of the customers you already have.
Growth, after all, boils down to this: more customers coming in, more customers staying. That’s the equation. But how do you know if the actions are working?
Each department works with its own metrics. The Head of Growth needs to create their own metrics, but they are fueled by the data shared by other departments.
In this way, the Head of Growth functions as a centralizer and simplifier of the information that determines the company’s health.
Imagine you want to know if your company is doing well or not. It’s a simple question to ask, but finding the answer requires cross-referencing data from various departments. The Head of Growth works by doing just that.
Armed with all the data that indicates the company’s growth, they can simplify the metrics. The answer to this simple question then becomes less complex.
4. Measuring the Success of Their Own Actions
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The Roman poet Juvenal asked, way back in the 1st century—“Who watches the watchers?”
In your company, several teams have different metrics, right? But who monitors these complex metrics? Often, it’s the teams themselves, leaving the results to be presented in meetings with the management.
The Head of Growth creates interdisciplinary metrics and does more than that: they monitor everything daily. This is their main job.
So, besides directly intervening in all areas of your company, seeking growth opportunities, and setting metrics for tracking, they also monitor performance and respond more quickly to difficult situations.
An example to make this clearer: your sales team has set a monthly goal of 20 new clients for the next semester. You would receive reports on the success of the actions month by month, and then a more complete one at the end of the semester.
The Head of Growth monitors these metrics in real time and can make immediate adjustments, involving other teams if the goal is not being met.
5. Being a Fundamental Part of Product Development
This part of a Head of Growth’s job is very important. Besides working on everything we’ve discussed so far, this professional also plays a role in the development of new products and solutions.
Because they have a closer monitoring of metrics from various departments, the Head of Growth has more information about what works and what doesn’t.
This is precisely why product development benefits greatly from the Head of Growth’s input. They know which products are succeeding and which aren’t and can determine the best path for new launches.
4 Examples Showing Why Companies Should Invest in a Head of Growth
So far, we’ve discussed the logic of having a Head of Growth in your company, right?
But now we’ll look at real examples, showing how companies from various industries achieve significant advances when they work with a Head of Growth and apply their strategies.
We have 5 very interesting examples to show you. All of them demonstrate how the main concern of a Head of Growth is to always create new ways to engage your audience—both those who haven’t bought from you yet and those who have.
Now let’s see in practice how the philosophy of converting, activating, and retaining works. Check out the growth cases below:
Case: Dollar Shave Club
With a single video, the subscription club Dollar Shave Club managed to gain 12,000 new customers—can you believe it?
The video in question is right here below. Watch it (it’s well worth it!), and then we’ll continue the conversation:
With the help of the Head of Growth, Dollar Shave Club developed a product and business model that was simply too good to be true. For $1 a month, you get a subscription to razor blades, delivered by mail.
This is DSC’s main offer, designed to capture the largest number of customers. The next challenge for the Head of Growth is to turn these $1 customers into customers who pay much more.
The quality of the products and their extremely creative marketing strategy immediately evangelized their customer base, who began to consume more and recommend the company to others.
This is the kind of strategy that a Head of Growth can provide. Going beyond the basics, taking risks, and selling the best possible quality, DSC remains a leader in its market to this day.
Rappi Case
Rappi has experienced rapid growth since its inception in 2015 in Bogotá. The company expanded from its original country and conquered Latin America in less than ten years.
Rappi’s growth strategy was the simplest possible at the time: while every app works with some kind of delivery, Rappi delivers anything that fits in the delivery box.
And see how challenging it is to grow in a delivery business model today: you need to attract three types of users – customers, retailers, and couriers.
How do you grow and achieve this simultaneously? The company needs a Head of Growth. For customers, heavy advertising on every imaginable channel. For couriers, receiving the full amount of the delivery fee. And for retailers, better conditions and lower fees.
As you can see in this and other cases, the hallmark of a Head of Growth is creating strategies that seem too good to be true. But they are – their job is to offset the potential downsides of the strategy with other strategies and indicators.
Tesla Case
Many people say that Elon Musk is Tesla’s Head of Growth, that he is a true genius, and so on. We don’t know who decides what in the company, but one thing is certain: Tesla helped popularize the concept of electric cars worldwide.
Tesla sold 3,000 cars in 2012. In 2013, it sold 22,447. In March 2022 alone, it sold over 500,000.
And all of this without spending a single dollar on advertising, something unimaginable for a car manufacturer.
Tesla bet on exclusivity, environmentalism, and the scarcity of its products in the early years. Owning a Tesla was akin to being a bit like Elon Musk: innovative, disruptive, and of course, wealthy.
The Model S became the new Ferrari – all relying on the personal marketing of the company’s founder.
Dropbox Case
In the early 2000s, cloud computing was a concept that half the world had never even heard of. And then Dropbox emerged: a service where each user could have their own little cloud, with no questions asked, no problems.
And the best part was their strategy: each registered user on the free plan received an extra 200MB of space for each person who signed up using their link, with a limit of 16GB of space.
16GB of space back in 2010 was more than Google Drive offered. In fact, it’s more than Google Drive offers today for its free users.
This is one of the oldest marketing strategies, but it worked very well for Dropbox due to its market concentration. It was the first comprehensible and accessible cloud storage tool, so those who didn’t have it, wanted it.
With this incentive, the platform dominated most of the 2000s as the best way to store files in the cloud.
How a Head of Growth Can Demonstrate Their Value to Companies
While it’s common for Heads of Growth to develop innovative solutions for startups, it’s also very common for these solutions to be far removed from traditional companies in equally traditional segments.
If you’re a young Head of Growth who doesn’t quite know how to demonstrate your value to a company that isn’t used to this type of work, this section is for you.
And if you’re the business owner who just hired a Head of Growth, these strategies will help everyone understand what they do.
Shall we?
Internal Newsletter
Remember everything we discussed about metrics and data from all teams that the Head of Growth needs access to?
Well, to demonstrate their presence in the company and promote their roles, these metrics can be shared through an internal newsletter.
This will practically show what the Head of Growth does. All information related to new actions, customer acquisition, and achieved goals needs to be shared across the entire company.
This data doesn’t need to be confidential. In fact, the more it’s shared, the more motivated the team becomes!
Real-Time Reports
With business intelligence platforms hired or designed by the Head of Growth, the board can access all this data in real-time, going far beyond what the newsletter shows.
Of course, data structuring and metric definition are still the responsibility of the Head of Growth. And that’s exactly why this strategy is so valuable.
By demonstrating this data curation, the board becomes aware of the true talent of the Head of Growth: focusing on what truly matters within the company.
Presence in Board Meetings
In very traditional companies with well-defined hierarchies, the Head of Growth needs to ignore all of them. Really: they aren’t the boss of anyone, and few people will be their boss.
That’s because, although they aren’t necessarily a C-level executive, the Head of Growth works for the company above all.
Being present in board meetings exemplifies this concept. The Head of Growth needs to present their vision and align the board’s vision with the company’s growth plans.
Growht managers are very important to companies worldwide. It’s very important to find them, nurture them and give them the keys to your castle.
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