Overview
Growth Marketing Agency (Growth Hacking)
Growth does not come from more advertising alone. We measure every step, from the moment a customer finds you to the moment they buy again and recommend you to someone else, and use experiments to unblock the step that holds you back most.
Short answer
Growth marketing is a data-driven marketing approach that manages a business's growth through measurable, fast experiments across activation, retention, revenue and referral, not through new customer acquisition alone. UNIT İstanbul's growth team, led by co-founder Uğur Deniz İlhan, sets a shared North Star metric, runs regular experiments and rolls out what works across every channel.
What is growth marketing?
Growth marketing means looking at a business's growth not through the success of a single channel or campaign, but through the entire journey a customer takes, from first noticing the brand to becoming a loyal customer and a source of referrals. The core idea is simple: direct effort and budget at whichever step is limiting growth most right now, test changes against a hypothesis and scale only what works.
In this approach, marketing is not limited to advertising and content. The sign-up and checkout flow, the first-use experience, how pricing is presented, email and notifications, and even how quickly the sales team follows up all count as part of growth. That is because growth depends not only on bringing in new customers, but also on those customers quickly seeing the value of the product, staying and buying again. We cover the fundamentals in more depth in our article what is growth marketing.
What is growth hacking, and is it the same as growth marketing?
Growth hacking is a way of working that focuses on growing the number of users or customers through low-cost, creative and fast experiments. The term emerged among technology start-ups that needed to grow quickly on a limited budget, and it is often associated with invitation, sharing or referral mechanisms built into the product itself.
Today the two terms are largely used interchangeably. The difference lies in emphasis: growth hacking highlights individual clever tactics, while growth marketing ties those tactics to a continuous experimentation system, a solid measurement infrastructure and long-term customer value. A tactic found as a shortcut may work for a while; lasting growth comes from a repeatable process.
How does growth marketing differ from digital marketing and performance marketing?
All three approaches use digital channels; they differ in goal, scope and way of working. The table below summarises those differences.
| Criterion | Traditional digital marketing | Performance marketing | Growth marketing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main goal | Visibility, reach and brand awareness | Profitable conversions from paid channels | Sustainable growth across the whole funnel |
| Scope | Social media, content, advertising and SEO channels | Paid search, social ads, measurement and landing pages | Acquisition, activation, retention, revenue and referral |
| Measure of success | Impressions, engagement and traffic | Cost per conversion, return on ad spend and profitability | The North Star metric and the input metrics that drive it |
| Way of working | Campaign calendar | Continuous optimisation | A cycle of hypothesis, prioritisation, testing and scaling |
| Relationship with the product | Usually separate | Up to the landing page | Including sign-up, first use and customer retention |
That is why growth marketing does not exclude performance marketing; it encompasses it. If the first experience of a customer who arrives through an ad is weak, or if the customer never comes back a second time, growth will not last, however good the acquisition cost looks.
Who is a growth hacker and what do they do?
A growth hacker is someone who uses data to find the bottleneck holding back a business's growth, designs experiments to remove it and makes decisions by measuring the results. They work across marketing, analytics and product; rather than being a specialist in one channel, they are a decision-maker who knows which channel and which step will make the biggest difference at any given moment. A growth marketing agency takes on the same work as a team.
- Funnel analysis: Finds the step in the journey from visitor to customer where the most people are lost.
- Hypothesis generation: Draws testable ideas from user data, recordings and customer interviews.
- Experiment design: Writes down up front what each idea will test, with which audience and against which success criterion.
- Measurement: Sets up event tracking, cohort analysis and reporting, and reads results from business data rather than platform estimates.
- Scaling: Turns successful experiments into permanent processes and records unsuccessful ones as learnings.
What is the AARRR model?
The AARRR model is a framework that breaks growth down into consecutive stages of the customer journey and lets you measure each stage separately. The letters come from the names of the stages: acquisition, activation, retention, revenue and referral. The model's key lesson is this: acquisition alone is not growth; a leak at a later stage can waste even the most efficient advertising campaign.
- Acquisition: The right people finding you through SEO, advertising, content, AI answers or referrals.
- Activation: The moment a new visitor or user first experiences the value of the product, such as a first order, first use or a qualified enquiry.
- Retention: The customer coming back, continuing to use the product or keeping their subscription.
- Revenue: Increasing value per customer through basket size, repeat purchases, plan upgrades and pricing decisions.
- Referral: A satisfied customer recommending the brand to others, leaving a review or joining an invitation programme.
What is a North Star metric and how do you choose one?
A North Star metric is the single main indicator that best reflects the value customers get from the product and has the strongest relationship with long-term revenue. It keeps every team pointed in the same direction. For an e-commerce business this might be the number of customers placing repeat orders; for a software product, weekly active users; for a B2B company, qualified opportunities that turn into sales.
A North Star metric cannot be managed on its own; the input metrics that feed it have to be defined. Inputs such as new visitors, activation rate, progression to a second order and referrals are indicators that teams can influence directly. A good North Star metric is meaningful rather than flattering: when it rises, it should mean customers are getting more value.
How do you run a growth experiment?
At the heart of growth marketing is a repeatable experiment cycle. Every experiment answers a question and, whether it wins or loses, leaves a learning behind.
- Hypothesis: A testable, data-based statement is written down: if we make this change, this metric will improve for this reason.
- Prioritisation: Ideas are scored for impact, confidence and ease using a method such as ICE, and the highest-value ones are moved to the front.
- Testing: The experiment goes live in a controlled way, using an A/B test where possible and a period-on-period comparison where not.
- Learning: The result is read against the success criterion set in advance and entered in the experiment log.
- Scaling: The winning change is made permanent and adapted to similar steps or channels.
What measurement infrastructure does growth marketing need?
An experiment is only as reliable as its measurement. That is why we begin every project with a measurement audit, checking the GA4 and Google Tag Manager setup, event naming, cookie consent and advertising platform conversions. Wherever possible, CRM or sales data is connected to measurement, so you see not the person who filled in a form but the person who actually became a customer.
Cohort analysis shows how customers acquired in different periods behave over time and reveals whether retention is genuinely improving. We are also open about the limits of attribution models: no model can measure the contribution of every touchpoint perfectly. You can find more detail on our CRO and analytics page.
Which channels does growth marketing use?
Channels are chosen according to the business's bottleneck; not every channel does the same job at every stage.
- Organic search and AI answers: Being visible both on Google and in assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity through SEO and GEO work.
- Paid advertising: Capturing and creating demand with search, social and video ads.
- Content: Building trust and speeding up activation with content marketing that answers customers' questions.
- Email and CRM automation: Strengthening retention with welcome flows, abandoned basket reminders and win-back campaigns.
- Referral programmes: Making it easier for satisfied customers to bring in new ones.
- Product-led growth: Turning the product itself into a growth channel by simplifying the sign-up and first-use flow.
Which companies is growth marketing right for?
E-commerce businesses built on repeat purchases or subscriptions, software and mobile app companies, B2B firms with long sales cycles, health tourism providers and franchise brands growing through branch or dealer networks are the groups that benefit most from this approach. What they have in common is a measurable customer journey and growth that depends on more than one stage.
Growth marketing is not always the first step. If a product or service has not yet found a response in the market, experiments will not create growth; they will only make that gap visible. In such cases we recommend clarifying positioning and the offer first.
How does growth marketing work at UNIT İstanbul?
UNIT İstanbul has been delivering digital marketing from its offices in Ataşehir, Istanbul and in London since 2009. Growth marketing is the agency's priority service and is led by co-founder and growth hacker Uğur Deniz İlhan. You can read about the team's background on our about us page.
Who leads the growth team?
Uğur Deniz İlhan is the co-founder of UNIT İstanbul and its growth hacker. He built his career on performance marketing, conversion rate optimisation and measurement, and treats growth not as the success of a single channel but as a process that starts with a hypothesis and is measured and scaled. He publishes his writing on growth hacking and performance marketing on his personal website. In UNIT İstanbul's growth projects he sets the experiment roadmap, the prioritisation calls and the team's weekly growth rhythm.
For every project we build a small, multidisciplinary team that brings together strategy, analytics, advertising, content and development. In the weekly experiment meeting, results are reviewed, new ideas are prioritised and the next experiments are chosen. Everyone looks at the same shared dashboard; decisions are made not on platform figures but on the business's own sales and customer data. If in-house marketing leadership is missing, we can combine this work with our fractional CMO model.
How do you choose a growth marketing agency?
- Ask whether it covers activation and retention, not just advertising management.
- See how it shares its experiment process, prioritisation method and experiment records.
- Check that analytics, advertising accounts and CRM data remain in your name.
- Choose teams that link goals to business outcomes and share their measurement method openly, rather than set-ups that describe success only in terms of traffic and impressions.
- Make clear who works on your account and who attends the decision meetings.
To get acquainted and talk through what is limiting your growth most, get in touch via our contact page.
How we work
Growth audit
We review your business model, customer journey, measurement infrastructure and existing channel data, and identify where people are lost at each AARRR stage.
North Star and input metrics
Together with you, we define the main metric that best reflects customer value and the input metrics that feed it, which your teams can influence directly.
Measurement setup
We connect GA4, Tag Manager, the advertising platforms and, where possible, CRM data, correct event definitions and build a shared growth dashboard.
Experiment roadmap
We score the hypotheses that come out of data, customer feedback and competitor review for impact, confidence and ease, and prepare a prioritised list of experiments.
Weekly experiment cycle
We launch experiments across channels, the website and communication flows, review the results in a weekly meeting and choose the next step together.
Scaling and replanning
We make the changes that work permanent, shift budget to the areas contributing most and update the growth strategy periodically.
What we deliver
- Growth audit and bottleneck analysis by AARRR stage
- Definition of the North Star metric and input metrics
- A measurement plan covering GA4, Tag Manager and CRM connections
- A prioritised experiment roadmap and experiment log
- Experiment implementation across channels, landing pages and communication flows
- Cohort and retention analysis
- Flow recommendations for email and CRM automation
- A shared growth dashboard that every team works from
- Weekly experiment meetings and periodic strategy updates
Get a quote
How does the quote process work?
It starts with a message. We prepare the rest, and no work begins until you have seen in writing what you pay for, why, and how much.
Message us
Tell us briefly about your business, your goal and your website, on WhatsApp or by email.
Free initial analysis
We review your search visibility, how AI answers mention you and any ad accounts you run, and prepare a one-page summary.
Strategy call
We go through the summary together and agree on priorities, goals and the metrics we will track.
Written proposal
We send a proposal that spells out scope, deliverables, timeline and fee. We start once you approve it.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is growth hacking?
- Growth hacking is a way of working focused on growing the number of users or customers through low-cost, fast experiments. It emerged among technology start-ups and is known for invitation, sharing or referral mechanisms built into the product. Today it is largely used interchangeably with growth marketing; growth marketing ties these tactics to a continuous experimentation system and measurement infrastructure.
- What does a growth hacker do?
- A growth hacker uses data to find the bottleneck limiting growth, designs experiments to remove it, measures the results and scales what works. They work across marketing, analytics and product. Rather than being a specialist in a single channel, they are the person who decides which step and which channel will make the biggest difference at that moment.
- What is the difference between growth marketing and performance marketing?
- Performance marketing focuses on achieving profitable conversions from paid channels and works mainly at the acquisition stage. Growth marketing carries the same measurement and testing mindset into activation, retention, revenue and referral, making the product experience, email flows and pricing presentation subjects for experiments too. Performance marketing is one part of growth marketing.
- Which companies is growth marketing right for?
- It suits businesses whose customer journey can be measured and whose growth depends on more than one stage: e-commerce brands built on repeat purchases or subscriptions, software and mobile app companies, B2B firms, health tourism providers and franchise brands. If the product has not yet found a response in the market, clarifying positioning first is the better starting point.
- When will growth marketing show results?
- The first period is usually spent on measurement setup, the audit and experiments that deliver quick wins; even at this stage important learnings emerge. Seeing change in metrics such as retention and customer value takes longer, because you need to track whether customers come back. That is why we agree target metrics together at the outset, move forward with a disciplined experiment rhythm and report every step transparently.
- How do you choose a growth marketing agency?
- Look at whether the agency deals with the whole funnel rather than just advertising, whether it shares its experiment process and records transparently, and whether data and accounts remain in your name. Prefer set-ups that tie goals to business outcomes over those that describe success only in terms of traffic and impressions. Also make clear from the outset who works on your account.
- Can you do growth marketing on a small budget?
- Yes. Growth marketing is more about method than budget. On a small budget you first need to set up measurement correctly, find the step where the most people are lost and prioritise experiments that do not require advertising, such as improvements to a landing page, an email flow or the checkout step. Budget is then moved gradually to the areas proven to work.
- How does AI search affect growth strategy?
- Some users now ask their questions in AI answers such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews. This adds a new channel to the acquisition stage. For a brand to be mentioned accurately and credibly in these answers, it needs clear definitions, question-led content and consistent brand information. We track this visibility through GEO work and include it in the growth plan.
- What is a North Star metric?
- A North Star metric is the single main indicator that best reflects the value customers get from the product and has a strong relationship with long-term revenue. It keeps every team focused on the same goal. It is not managed on its own; it is tracked together with the input metrics that feed it, such as activation, retention and referral.
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