Guru VP of Marketing Brittany Bingham

1. How to Build a Growth-oriented Team
with Guru’s VP of Marketing
Brittany Bingham
VP of Marketing
Guru
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2. The who, what, and why?
Today, we’ll chat:
1. Misconceptions
2. Benefits
3. Tips to starting
Keep in mind:
Tips for leaders in an organization
(still good for practitioners, too!).
Realistically, we could be spending
hours, not minutes discussing this.
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3. GROWTH
Misconceptions, galore.
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4. #1
We’ve hired a head of growth.
That means we’re growth-oriented, right?
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5. #2
Growth isn’t for to us because we’re B2B.
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Testing
Loops
Engagement
Analytics
Virality
…
…

6. #3
We’re too early, small, or late (you get the
point) to start thinking about growth.
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7. GROWTH-ORIENTED
There’s a lot of upside. Why?
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8. Why invest in growth?
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1
2
3
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Source: Unsplash & Giphy

9. GREAT.
This makes sense. But how?
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10. What to do: align your organization on how the company grows. What drives your
acquisition, monetization, and retention of your customers?
What to avoid: confusing with the ‘north star metric’, defining the model without
experimentation or giving targets without context.
Why it is important:
● Gives the team the context to work towards business outcomes.
● Establishes the appropriate incentive model.
Understand & align on your growth model
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Acquisition
Conversion
Engagement
Retention

11. What to do: focus on the outcome, not the function.
● Tie your growth model to your company plan (OKRs) to your accountable teams.
● Encourage cross-functional accountability and collaboration.
How it may show up:
● Centralized: single growth organization (or growth product and marketing)
● Decentralized: fully distributed growth and testing model
● Hybrid: central expertise, distributed execution
What to avoid: conflating past success and functional responsibility with the approach
to establishing growth roles.
Then… the who, how, and where
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12. The who, how, and where (some more!)
Why it is important:
● The customer has a single
journey
● Mitigates limits of local
optimization
● Forcing function for shared
priorities
● Fosters creativity
● Drives business outcomes
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Impact
Iterations

13. Enable data curiosity and testing
What to avoid: data-absent < >
data-only decision making, or
ignoring the user.
Why it is important: This is the path
between the growth model and the
business outcomes.
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What to do: encourage data-informed (qual and quant) hypotheses,
experimentation, and learning. Create space for this testing. Encourage “whys”.
What has to come first: systems, access to data, and a clear growth model.

14. What to do: celebrate learnings, both
from winning and failed experiments.
Share learnings broadly and often.
What to avoid: emphasizing winning
tests or investments.
Why it is important: focusing on only
‘winning’ experiments can lead to
risk-aversion and lower creativity.
Celebrate outcomes AND learnings
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16. While growth-orientation is a continuous process, remember…
1. Growth is a shared responsibility that must be supported and valued by
leadership.
2. It requires a shared understanding of how the business grows, what is trying
to be achieved, and what measures are indicative of this success.
3. Enable cross-functional teams to ask why, and to curate and execute
data-driven experimentation and learning.
A whirlwind session, in summary
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17. QUESTIONS
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18. THANK YOU
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