What is a Growth Agency?

A growth agency helps organizations reach revenue goals and growth objectives by developing, following, and implementing strategies that take a holistic approach to business development through strategic planning, marketing, sales enablement, and technology.

Allow us to explain.

“Hey, can you make this letter read better? I am not good at writing. I wish I was as good with words as you folks. Also, do you think you could make us a poster about our new office hours, and send an email out letting everyone know about our holiday hours? Maybe update the website. Now, I’ve got to run. I have a meeting to discuss an opportunity to offer a new service. Let’s catch up later,” says business owner Barry or CEO Charlotte.

Now, you may be thinking why such a statement would cause an owner of a Growth Agency to feel so much frustration. The reason is simple. As a Growth Agency, we are focused on driving growth, constantly driven to drive revenue. A Growth Agency is designed to be predictive, not reactive, which means that we focus on creating the strategies (including new services and products) that will help businesses grow. Now, communications are an integral part of growth, but a Growth Agency or a Chief Growth Officer (CGO) should be at the helm of the overall growth strategy for a business. Therefore, a Growth Agency or CGO should be a part of the decision-making process about new initiatives, products or services that will impact revenue. Growth agencies aren’t just the order takers for Barry and Charlotte.

What is the difference between a Growth Agency and a Marketing Agency?

Typically, a Marketing Agency will help promote a business, campaign, product, or service. In essence, a Marketing Agency has been given the what to sell, advertise, and promote and maybe the who to sell, advertise, and promote to. However, a Growth Agency focuses on the why, who, what, where, when, and how.

More times than not, Marketing Agencies work in a silo, operating apart from the rest of an organization. Often, marketing agencies are order takers. For example, they will get a request to start promoting a new product or service. They may be given the creative autonomy to come up with the strategy to promote. However, they are not necessarily perceived to be strategy and revenue drivers. Thus, when cost cuts are required, it is typically marketing staff that are put on the chopping block.

Growth Agencies are different because they do not just influence standard marketing KPIs, like conversions, clicks, website visits, market saturation, etc. A Growth Agency focuses on the big picture and focuses on a primary KPI: revenue. A Growth Agency can influence the development of a product or service offering. In fact, a growth agency can influence the overall “why” or strategic direction of a business. Often, growth solutions are centered around the big picture and growth opportunities, awareness, acquisition, retention, and referral of the buyer’s funnel, data and market research, automation, and product, service, and/or business development.

One of the most fundamental differences between a Growth Agency and a Marketing Agency is that a Growth Agency serves as a hub for a business, while consolidating and centralizing leadership. A Growth Agency does not operate in a silo because it focuses on making decisions that impact growth, while working with the leaders in a business to remove the obstacles for growth.

A Growth Agency combines marketing, sales, communications, and technology to drive revenue. Those who work in Growth Agencies are data-driven and focus on the big picture, and tend to focus on a single metric: revenue. Growth Agencies are passionate about growing businesses and they thrive on change and flexibility. They don’t focus on singular concepts or methods, like SEO, social media marketing, or inbound lead generation. They focus on whatever means will generate growth.

What services do Growth Agencies typically provide?

Growth Agencies understand that to successfully grow all revenue driving aspects of a business need to work together.

Growth Agencies offer:

By having all the components work together, a Growth Agency can execute closed-loop strategies. (A closed-group strategy can map out and evaluate the data from all areas of the business.)

What are the benefits of working with a Growth Agency?

Discover new opportunities for your business.
Establish new ways to communicate with customers.
Encompass all aspects of your business, like marketing, sales, communications, and technology.
Increase communication and collaboration across all departments.
Catalyze a growth mindset for your business and employees, which will help your company achieve success.

As a Chief Growth Officer, not only am I focused on the growth of my agency, MPWRSource, and each of my client’s businesses, I feel that I serve an additional role, a Chief “Know Your Why” Officer. To achieve growth, you must know your why. As Simon Sinek stated, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” For example, Apple did not define their why as just building computers like Dell did. Apple defined their why as making beautifully designed, simple to use, and user-friendly products. A lot of businesses fail because they do not know their why.

As a business and team works toward the Holy Grail, revenue growth, it is imperative to focus on the “why” of your business. In essence, the “why” is the business’s true unique selling proposition (USP), and this is what will attract customers and differentiate a business from competitors. When evaluating new growth initiatives, products, or services, the first question should always be, “How will this new initiative, product or service support and reflect my business’s why?” Inevitably if you see an opportunity for growth but it does not align with your “why”, growth will not be achieved because, as Jim Stengle so eloquently stated in “Purpose”, “Only purpose-driven companies witness higher market share gains and grow on average three times faster than their competitors, all the while achieving higher employee and customer satisfaction.”

Start-ups and businesses looking to scale up should consider hiring a Growth Agency. (Of course, I highly recommend our Growth Agency, MPWRSource. Of course, I am biased, but we are truly obsessed with growing our start-up and existing B2B clients.) However, please be aware that a Growth Agency will listen to what you need, but they are not order takers. They will say “no” and should be expected to say “no” when the idea will not work. Ultimately, if you are satisfied with the current state of your business or you just don’t want to accept help from growth experts, do not hire a Growth Agency. For the rest of you who want to grow and be disrupted, buckle up, because your Growth Agency will take you to new heights.

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