Growth marketing strategies – unlock scale beyond early adopters
Share:
Growth marketing is fast becoming one of the most important levers for B2B SaaS and fintech businesses looking to scale. Especially for those who’ve experienced a strong start by solving a clear customer problem, building a compelling brand, and attracting early adopters. These early-stage wins are valuable, but they rarely sustain growth on their own.
Eventually, momentum slows. Your most engaged, ideal customers, those that were quick to try new solutions have become saturated. The initial surge of interest flattens and then comes the question every scale-up faces: what now? How can we harness growth marketing to continue scaling effectively, when the easy wins are behind us?
This is where growth marketing becomes not just helpful, but essential. It shifts your thinking from isolated campaigns to a full-funnel mindset. It brings data, creativity and curiosity together. And most importantly, it helps you develop a system for continuous optimisation so you can adapt, experiment, and evolve as your market matures.
Growth marketing isn’t a trend. It’s a strategic, test-and-learn approach that sits at the heart of sustainable business development. It’s how you uncover new opportunities, sharpen what already works, and keep momentum going when early tactics start to lose their impact.
Growth isn’t just about adding new leads
A common trap for scale-ups is to focus only on acquisition. More leads, more campaigns, more traffic. But real growth, sustainable and scalable growth, goes deeper.
It’s about looking across the whole customer journey. From first touch to onboarding, from regular use to long-term loyalty. Where are the friction points? Where are people dropping off? What small changes could lead to outsized impact?
This might mean refining your onboarding flow so it’s simpler and more intuitive. Or it could involve rethinking your retention strategy, using behavioural data to understand what keeps your best customers coming back. It’s not always glamorous work, but it’s often where the biggest opportunities live.
Exploring new, logical channels
As your original acquisition channels start to plateau, the instinct is often to cast the net wider. Try everything. Be everywhere.
But that rarely works. A more grounded approach is to explore new channels with intent. Not because they’re trendy, but because they make sense for where your next customers are.
Some practical areas to explore:
Partner ecosystems that align well with your proposition
Community spaces, physical or digital, where your audience already spends time
Referral mechanisms that make advocacy easier for your happiest customers
The key is to stay close to your audience, understand their context, and test new routes with discipline, not desperation.
Building a culture that embraces experimentation
One of the cornerstones of growth marketing is the willingness to test, learn and adapt. But to do that well, you need an internal culture where experimentation is not only allowed but actively encouraged.
That means creating psychological safety. People need to know they won’t be penalised for running a test that didn’t work out. In fact, sometimes the most useful experiments are the ones that don’t deliver immediate results, because they teach you what not to do.
Measurement plays a big role here. And while attribution in marketing is never perfect, looking beyond direct last-click metrics can help you see the fuller picture. Maybe that podcast didn’t drive conversions directly, but it increased brand searches. Maybe that webinar brought in only a few leads, but they turned into your highest-value customers.
Growth marketing asks you to look for patterns, not just results. To be open to nuance, to stories hidden in the data. And to keep questioning what you think you know.
Deepening value with your existing customers
Another misconception is that growth only comes from new customer acquisition. In reality, some of your richest opportunities may already be on your books.
Perhaps they came in for one solution, but you offer three more that could help. Perhaps they’ve only activated 40% of your product’s capabilities. Maybe they’ve hit a new stage of growth, and their needs have shifted.
Growth marketers ask: how can we get closer to these customers? How can we serve them better? How can we increase their lifetime value in a way that feels helpful, not pushy?
This could mean tailored lifecycle campaigns, tighter collaboration with customer success, or simply listening more closely to the signals customers are giving you.
Where AI fits into this story
Used wisely, AI can be a powerful ally in growth marketing. Not as a magic wand, but as a set of tools that can accelerate and scale your efforts.
Think:
Personalisation at scale
Smart segmentation
Predictive analytics to identify churn risks or upsell opportunities
Creative optimisation that helps you test more, faster
But the power of AI still depends on human judgement. On knowing your customer, having clear hypotheses, and being able to interpret what the data is telling you. AI is there to enhance your thinking, not replace it.
Winning over the more cautious adopters
As you grow, you’ll need to convince people who are harder to shift. They’re not the ones who jump on the new thing. They need proof, reassurance, a reason to act now.
This is where growth marketing overlaps with positioning, messaging and storytelling. You’ll need case studies that show real outcomes. Pricing structures that reduce perceived risk. Onboarding support that removes friction. And above all, you’ll need to answer the deeper question they’re asking:
Why? Why should I switch? Why should I care? Why is this worth the hassle?
Growth comes when you get really good at answering that question. Not just at the brand level, but in every conversation, every touchpoint.
Scaling in a way that builds trust
Ideally, we’d all like to build businesses where the product is so good, and the experience so seamless, that word of mouth does the heavy lifting. Where existing customers do the selling for us. Where excellence drives referrals and creates a network effect.
But few businesses can scale on that alone. Marketing still has work to do, to stay relevant, to stay present, to keep the brand top of mind.
That work doesn’t have to be loud. But it does need to be consistent, considered and connected to what your customers truly value.
Final thoughts
At GingerTree, we believe that growth is a continuous effort, not just a moment. It’s something you build by staying curious. By staying close to your customers. By being willing to ask: what else is possible?
Growth marketing isn’t about hacks or hustle. It’s about creating the right conditions, for learning, for experimentation, and for scale. It’s what helps businesses move beyond the early adopters and into long-term relevance.
And when done well, it doesn’t just drive results. It creates a culture of momentum. If you would like help with your growth marketing planning get in touch.
The Marketing Minds Series #3 with Cordell Burke – Advertising Creative genius.
Cordell Burke is an advertising creative genius. Currently Creative Managing Partner at Up There Everywhere. But his title doesn’t really do justice to to Cordell’s talents. Creativity oozes from him and what I love about him is his energy, enthusiasm and desire to give back. With a wealth of experience gained at some of the…
Elevating B2B Marketing Relationships: The Art of Customer Engagement
In the dynamic landscape of B2B Marketing, establishing and nurturing customer engagement serves as the linchpin for success. Gone are the days of transactional interactions; today’s B2B Marketing demands fostering deeper, more personalised connections between businesses. With the global B2B eCommerce market over 5 times that of the B2C market it’s worth exploring the evolving…
Blog or newsletter? This is a question we get asked a lot, and we’re always glad people ask it because it’s a good one. However, to get started on an answer, we actually need to ask you a couple of other key questions first… Are you trying to further engage existing contacts? Or are you seeking…
Marketing Minds Series #4 with Media expert Ashley Bolt.
The first job I had was as a media buyer at Zenith Media in the 90’s when there was a handful of commercial channels and “digital” didn’t exist. Ashley Bolt, a Managing Partner at Havas Media is a really good mate – he’s my husbands BFF and has always been at the forefront of the…
The challenges facing a CMO have evolved expodentially over the last few years. CMOs have faced interesting challenges from the start of marketing time, of course. But with ever changing technology, ever adjusting customer wants, and an ever increasing need to deliver immediate results, now more than ever investing in a strategy takes guts, determination,…
In my professional journey collaborating with diverse brands, particularly those operating on a smaller scale, the complexities of marketing attribution modelling have become increasingly apparent. Before we dive into the perspective of simplifying attribution, let’s establish a foundational understanding. What is Attribution Modelling? Attribution modelling is the analytical process that helps marketers understand and assign…
Can You Build a Brand as Well as Generate Leads at the Same Time?
Marketers are under immense pressure to deliver measurable results. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) has become a critical metric, pushing us to sometimes favour lead generation over brand building. Lead generation offers immediate, quantifiable outcomes, making it an attractive focus for those accountable for proving the effectiveness of their marketing spend. However, this short-term focus…
Marketing Minds Series #5 with Marco Bertozzi @ Spotify
Spotify is THE number 1 music streaming company globally and Marco Bertozzi is their Vice President of EMEA Sales. Marco and I grew up in the same area and started our working life in the same place at Zenith Media. Our careers have evolved and gone in very different directions and that’s why I was…
The Difference between ABM and Lead Generation: B2B Marketing Strategies.
Introduction In the B2B marketing world where success is dependent on building long-term relationships, companies face the decision of choosing between two powerhouse strategies: Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and lead generation. The decision on which strategy to deploy is profound, influencing not only how businesses engage their audience but also the manner in which they need…