Building growth team: 3 rules and 5 must-have roles

In Dashly, we know how hard it can be to launch a growth marketing team. After multiple ups and downs, it is the fifth year when my team has practiced growth marketing. Finally, we’re ready to share with you this experience.

In this article, you’ll find best practices, typical mistakes, and rules to follow when building a growth marketing team. 

3 rules to launch a growth hacking team on the first try 

We didn’t manage to build a growth team on our first attempt. After numerous mistakes analysis we tried again. And this time it worked out! 

Here are insights we discovered. Mind them to when building a growth hack team.

1. You need a separate team work on marketing growth tasks systematically.

In our first growth team, there were two people. We tried to combine growth team tasks with others (i.e. marketing, design, sales.) Unfortunately, it didn’t work out. 

The growth team needed much more time for growth marketing test. Just compare the scale of work within growth team vs marketing team: 

Thus, after testing 10 hypotheses in 2 months, it fell apart.

2. The growth marketing team should focus on a single key metric.

The first growth marketing team in Dashly tested various SaaS growth hacks chaotically at different funnel stages and was not focused on a key metric. 

As a result, the team had poor changes in metrics. Sure thing, it did not motivate the team. Marketers needed more work to understand which growth hypothesis worked and which did not.

3. If you cannot build processes in the team independently, involve experts.

Our second try to establish growth marketing team processes was based on involving third-party expertise. To quickly achieve the set goals, we immediately decided to learn from an expert in growth marketing — Antony from Growth Academy. 

He helped quickly debug processes in our growth team and achieve the results mentioned above.

How to set goals for a growth team [free template]

It is a working template that we use to set goals for Dashly growth marketing team.

1. Determine one key growth metric for your company. 

Your global goal is likely to increase revenue. Many metrics influence its achievement, and it’s unlikely that the growth team will be able to work with each of them. 

Instead, choose those growth marketing metrics with the most significant impact on revenue and assign them to the team.

The growth marketing team key metric should be close to money — affecting the company’s financial results. This way, you can prove the benefits of growth marketing and get more resources: people, time, and money for tests.

2. Align the chosen metric with the capabilities of the growth team. 

You must ensure the team can genuinely influence the selected metrics and has the necessary resources.

Example: The growth team needs to change the onboarding process to influence user retention of the product. At the very least, a developer is required. They should either be part of the growth team or have time allocated from another team’s developer.

Also read:

3. Determine the success criteria. 

How much should the metric grow due to the team’s work? The goal should be ambitious but achievable and recorded in your growth hacking canvas.

Dashly experts team consists of a personal manager, copywriter, designer, layout designer, and analyst. They help companies integrate Dashly tools and increase conversion on the website.

The manager comes up with ways to achieve the client’s goals and, together with the team, develops, tests, and implements triggered mechanics. By selling this service, rather than just a subscription to our service, we help clients achieve their goals faster and without expanding their staff.

So if you don’t have time for experiments, you can turn to great marketing services.

Must have growth marketing team structure and roles

The growth team at Dashly is a marketing team because it is focused on attracting targeted leads. However, growth teams can also be of other types, such as product teams. It all depends on the goals you want to achieve, hacking growth of your company.

To launch a marketing growth team, you need to fill 5 roles:

• marketer,
• scrum master,
• PPC specialist,
• designer,
• analyst.

The marketer looks for insights on which to generate hypotheses, look for growth marketing tips, test channels, and formulates offers.

Btw, if you need inspo for your experiments, check out our growth marketing playbook with over 40 ideas for testing from Dashly and our customers.

The scrum master is responsible for processes, “pushes” the team to maintain pace, helps understand what is blocking launches, and conducts brainstorming sessions and all other team activities.

The PPC specialist launches advertising campaigns in various channels: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Google Ads. They can use various social media growth hacking tools in their work.

The designer creates visuals and helps with the design of landing pages.

The analyst helps monitor key metrics, collects statistics before launching hypotheses, and calculates the sample size and test duration.

You don’t necessarily need to find a growth hacker for your startup (or bigger business) in the market. Think over growth hacking team structure by choosing from those who already work in the company and have the appropriate skills. One person can combine several roles in the growth team. 

For example, a marketer can handle advertising launches and even create visuals independently.

The main participants of the marketing team growth should work in it full-time. In our case, they are:

• marketer (also the growth leader — responsible for interacting with other teams and directing the team overall);
• scrum master;
• two PPC specialists.

The rest of the employees can be “borrowed” from other teams for half a workday. 

The main thing is to borrow specialists of the same specialization for which you want to involve them in the growth team. You can invite a designer from another team to design creatives, but you should not ask a project manager for this. The project manager will focus on their projects and need to pay more attention to your marketing growth strategy. 

We share a designer and analyst with the marketing team, of which the growth team is a part.

To launch a product growth team, you need to fill 4 roles:

• product manager,
• product designer,
• developer,
• analyst.

The product manager comes up with which features that can be quickly implemented to bring tangible results in the growth of the key metric.

The product designer comes up with how to visualize the idea with minimal changes to the current version of the product.

The developer makes changes to the product or website.

The analyst helps monitor key metrics, collects statistics before launching hypotheses, and calculates the sample size and test duration.

But if you want your company to stand out among the competitors, shape the product growth team in the Product-Led Growth Marketing approach.

Let’s recap

How to launch a growth marketing team?

1. To systematically work on growth, you need a separate team.
2. The growth team should focus on a single key metric.
3. If you need help setting up processes within the team, involve experts.

How to set goals for a growth marketing team?

1. Determine which metric your company should grow quickly first. The metric should be close to the money.
2. Relate the chosen metric to the capabilities of the growth team.
3. Define the success criterion.

Which roles need to be filled to launch a growth marketing team?

To launch a marketing growth team, you need to fill 5 roles:

• marketer,
• scrum master,
• PPC specialist,
• designer,
• analyst.

To launch a product growth team, you need to fill 4 roles:

• product manager,
• product designer,
• developer,
• analyst.

Can’t wait to test your first hypothesis? We want to be a part of it!