The growth word.
Growth is the most over-used word in marketing. It used to mean revenue. It now means anything anyone wants it to mean.
A “growth marketer” might mean someone who runs paid media, someone who does landing-page optimization, someone who builds a referral loop, someone who handles email, or someone who does all of the above and reports up to a CRO. The job title is the same. The work is wildly different. The compensation reflects the confusion. Three growth marketer postings on the same day in the same city will have a forty thousand dollar spread on base.
The word started losing meaning around 2014 when the growth-hacking movement made it a category instead of an outcome. Before that, growth meant the company was getting bigger. After that, growth could mean a button color change, a re-engagement email, or a quarterly report.
The damage is not linguistic. The damage is operational. Companies that staff a growth team without defining what growth means end up with a team that owns nothing and is held accountable for everything. The team stays busy. The number does not move.
The companies that have it right define growth at the input level. Pipeline qualified leads above a threshold. New customers in segment X. Revenue from accounts that did not exist twelve months ago. Each definition is concrete enough to know whether the team is succeeding. Each definition implies a different team structure and a different reporting line.
When a leadership team cannot agree on what growth means, the marketing function ends up operating on whatever definition the loudest stakeholder uses that quarter. The team executes against the definition for sixty days, the stakeholder changes their mind, the definition shifts, the team executes the new direction for another sixty days. The compounding cost is enormous and never shows up on a single P&L line.
Plain language fixes most of this. Stop saying growth. Say what kind of growth. Say which inputs produce it. Say which team owns each input.
The agencies that ask this question on the first call save themselves a year of mismatched expectations. The companies that answer it before hiring an agency save themselves a worse year.
A word that means everything means nothing.
Pick a definition.
Hold to it.