For many years, companies saw growth as the most important sign of success. Venture capital poured into businesses that were desperate to capture market share, acquire new customers, and achieve high sales numbers at any cost. But progress without profit is like running a race with no finish line; it gets boring, wears you out, and eventually falls apart.

The winners today aren’t the ones that grow the fastest. Instead, the true winners are the companies that know how to utilise marketing to generate revenue: they understand which customers to target, how much to charge, and how to foster long-term customer trust. Marketing now has a different job to do. It’s not about making noise, filling up pipes, or getting hits anymore. If you do marketing right, you’ll be able to precisely direct limited resources toward the right growth, not just any growth.

This is the new order: marketing must be the source of profit for growth to last.

The Death of Growth at All Costs

The last ten years have been a time of careless scale. WeWork, Uber, and many other startups tried to grow at any cost by offering big discounts, spending too much on getting new customers, and focusing on meaningless measures to please investors. It was clear what would happen: burnout, cuts, and business models that couldn’t keep going when the money ran out.

That’s not like companies such as Apple, Nike, or Adobe. These brands didn’t just grow quickly; they grew smartly. They put money into building their business, charged more, and kept fans for decades. Market share was never the only thing that drove their growth; it was also what made them money.

It’s easy to see what the lesson is: speed without sustainability is not growth; it’s waste.

Marketing as a Profit Driver, Not a Cost Centre

Companies frequently perceive marketing as merely a cost centre. However, when executed effectively, marketing serves as the most significant catalyst for profitability.

What is the rationale behind this? Effective marketing is essential because it:

• Establishes the target audience and, equally significant, delineates those to exclude.
• Establishes pricing power via brand equity.
• Enhances lifetime value through the cultivation of customer loyalty and the mitigation of churn.
• Shapes profitable demand rather than indiscriminate demand.

Examine Nike. Every campaign transcends mere shoe sales; it promotes identity, aspiration, and cultural significance. Nike’s ability to command a margin unattainable by competitors is attributable to its strategic advantages. Marketing extends beyond merely driving sales; it is focused on generating profitable sales.

The Four Levers of Profitable Growth

Marketers need to be disciplined if they want to move from “growth at all costs” to “profitable growth.” Four tools matter the most:

1. Pick the Right Clients

You don’t need every customer. Going after numbers without thinking about cost-to-serve is the fastest way to become unprofitable. Smart segmentation means focusing on people who like what you have to give, stay longer, and help your profit margins.

Southwest Airlines didn’t try to be everything to everyone; instead, it built its business by serving tourists on a budget with straightforwardness and regularity.

2. Use Your Brand to Gain Price Power

A good name is the best way to make money. It builds trust, makes people less sensitive to price, and lets businesses charge more. Every dollar spent on building brand value is a dollar made in the long run.

Think about Apple: people don’t just buy iPhones; they buy the brand’s reputation, style, and community. That’s why Apple makes most of the money from smartphones around the world, even though it sells fewer machines than its rivals.

3. Find a Good Balance Between Acquisition and Retention

Getting new people costs money; keeping old ones makes money. Healthy companies invest in both sides of the issue. They keep an eye on the relationship between lifetime value (LTV) and customer acquisition cost (CAC) and come up with plans to keep customers coming back.

Take HubSpot as an example. The SaaS company built a strong environment for bringing in new customers, but its real strength is in keeping customers interested and growing with them over time.

4. Find Out What Really Matters

There are still too many marketing tolls that focus on meaningless numbers like views, clicks, and follows. Those don’t keep the lights on though. The new scoreboard is all about making money: LTV/CAC rates, margin by sector, income per customer, and price premiums based on brand.

The popular quote by Peter Drucker goes, “What gets measured, gets managed.” Marketing might chase growth that doesn’t lead to profits if we don’t track its effects.

From Growth Hacking to Growth Discipline

In the 2010s, “growth hacking” was a big word, but hacks don’t make businesses last. Discounts, stunts, and acquisition tricks may cause spikes in sales, but they rarely keep profits high.

The next era calls for growth discipline, a stricter method where marketing leaders work together with finance, product, and operations to ensure that growth increases profits instead of decreasing them.

So, you have to make tough decisions:

• Not taking on customers who aren’t successful.
• Not pricing in the short term because they want to build their business in the long term.
• Value long-term trust over short-term output.

The Competitive Advantage of Profitability

Growth that makes money multiplies. It gives you money to spend again, the ability to bounce back from bad times, and clients’ trust. Companies that make money while growing can spend more, come up with better ideas, and last longer than rivals who only want to grow.

Marketing is at the heart of that engine. It should not be an afterthought or “the team that makes ads.” Instead, view it as a strategic field that links customer value to business value.

It’s a race to the bottom to grow just for the sake of growing. Growth that makes money is the only race that’s worth running, and marketing is what gets us there.

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