What do Growth professionals really do?

You'll not get a proper answer here. Growth sounded cool, so people and companies lapped on to it. It's just running internet ads. I see on other comments saying it's like mini ceo. Ye bhi mini ceo. Product bhi mini ceo. Toh bhai ceo kya karega fir.

Check GrowthX. Their whole business is built on that premise.

Btw, Shrewd people would answer your question with ‘Spending money on Google and FB ads’ 🤦‍♂️

Skills needed:

-Cross-functional Collaboration

-Market Research and Competitor Analysis

-Revenue Growth (identify new avenues + improve/optimise existing ones)

-Marketing and Sales Knowledge

-You are basically a mini version of CEO + knows how to crunch numbers/data and make tons of PPT

There are two things: Growth Manager and a Growth Marketing Manager. Some say both are the same, or the latter is the subset of first, but no. They aren't.

They might have similar end goals - more customers, more money; but the process of reaching that is different.

I'm a Growth Marketer, and what I am trying to identify clearly is who the product is meant for/what problem the product solves (product-led), or who is the ideal customer that needs to use the product (category-led).

Then you strategize the best ways to "market" i.e. communicate/showcase them your product/solution and keep reiterating to increase customer acquisition. Beyond this you study which ones of these are staying back (retention), and why/how more can stay back (engagement); and how to get back lost customers (resurrection). That completes "holistic" growth.

You'll come across another fictional term called "Growth Hacking". If you hear it, let me tell you it's a scam. There is no hacking in growth. You need to understand customers, understand products, position yourself well etc. Growth hackers claim to just do quick trial and error in their methods till something works or breaks.

Plus, Growth Hacking is referred to as an individual role, which is bullshit because Growth/Growth Marketing can never be an individual. You have to work with product teams, engineering, solution architects etc. to get a true sense of what is right for the customer.

Many would not know the real work.

Internet marketing Online marketing Digital marketing / social media marketing Performance marketing
Growth marketing

This is how I see evolution in this industry, but role or responsibilities wise it’s a mix of all as the industry grows and platforms becomes wiser…

At end, everything is towards driving revenues and growing business.

What a growth role typically means:

A) Building/tracking a dashboard for all the metrics that are relevant to your role/business. B) Planning interventions to move these metrics with relevant cross-functional teams. In most cases, these are tactical short-term interventions like a small experiment or a marketing campaign.
C) Measuring what is working, what is not and then doing more of what's working. Could be a particular marketing channel or discount type D) presenting these metrics, progress on action items and root-cause analysis for changes to leadership teams in weekly review meetings. E) on a monthly basis, forecasting the metrics for the next month for an operating plan to align on targets and budget requirements etc.

That's the role.
To be good at it, you have to have a) Good with data & analysis. Structured problem solving / deep dive helps / is non-negotiable.
b) Good with program management.. Most growth roles have to work with other functions (sales, marketing, product etc) to get things done. c) Be comfortable presenting (and often sharing bad news) with leadership d) have a strong bias for action: growth is about doing many things very quickly, learning and iterating. Speed is core to the role.

That's about it. This is a generalist role. It is valued because they are accountable for weekly targets to leadership. So accelerated learning but also much higher on stress levels.

Performance Marketing + Content Marketing + ownership of p&l, CAC and ROAS + Retention marketing, CRM

In US based companies , if you see there are a lot of people working in the same technology , same domain upto retirement. These people have humongous domain knowledge and are called subject matter experts mostly . In India you would hardly see this , most professionals want to become a manager within 2-5yrs of their work and dream of becoming director /CEOs within years . The name given to individuals who were doing multiple things across the organization in US companies was Generalist , and this is copied in India coupled with YouTube ads based roles and named Growth X (where can range from hacker to marketer to programmer to salesman )

Talk a lot..

Depends from company to company.

There isn't an industry definition per say.