3 Stages of Growth Marketing for Startups:

1. Early Stage 🔵

The core focus of the 1st stage is to discover the market. Early Stage growths (often founders) need to become explorers.

They go into “discovery mode”:

→ Detect channels
→ Find their positioning
→ Discover key audiences
→ Validate the product-market fit

It’s important to:

→ Stay agile and test everything
→ Conduct weekly experimentation sprints

This stage keyword is velocity.

2. Consolidation Stage 🟢

Most growth frameworks go from “market-fit validation” to the “growth stage”. But in reality, startups go through a consolidation phase before scaling.

They go into “build mode”:

→ Hire the growth team
→ Create the processes
→ Install growth systems
→ Build deep audience knowledge

It’s important to:

→ Set a solid foundation to scale
→ Continue experiments optimization

This stage can be quick or slow depending on the team’s expertise.

3. Growth Stage 🔴

Once the product-market fit is validated and systems are in place, startups can expand properly.

They go into “scale mode”:

→ Scale channels coverage
→ Focus on increasing revenue
→ Reach their audience at scale
→ Keep brand consistency across channels

It’s important to:

→ Control growth with discipline
→ Build long-term marketing programs

This stage’s keywords are method and discipline.

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Obviously, this is only a snapshot of what needs to be done to go from idea to growth. But this 3-stage framework gives an overview of the objectives for each stage.

🎯 : main objective
SAM: serviceable available market

What stage are you in?