• by Nidhi Gupta , April 9, 2025

The VP, Growth Marketing at Etsy writes “while challenging times present unique obstacles, they offer the greatest opportunities. By mastering both the visible skillset and the powerful, unseen mindset, growth marketers can drive long-term impact.”

Driving business expansion is at the heart of a growth marketer's role. However, navigating a continuously shifting landscape comprising economic uncertainties, changing customer habits, competitive pressures among other internal and external factors, while facing ambitious business goals, can make this job challenging. To succeed, you need both a solid set of skills and a strong mindset – like an iceberg. Skills are what everyone sees, but the mindset is the powerful foundation beneath, taking growth marketing from good to truly great.

Essential Skills

A growth marketer's skillset is the bedrock of their success. First, they must be channel experts – whether it's paid search, SEO, social media, or others – and manage campaigns and budgets effectively. Continuous experimentation and optimization are vital, balancing privacy with personalization, and being tech forward is an essential competency. Being data-obsessed isn't just a buzzword; it's a necessity. Metrics are used daily, hourly, dynamically, to track campaign progress, ROI, optimize. To prioritize initiatives based on impact and effort sizing. 

To understand the customer journey and assign credit to different touchpoints through attribution modeling. Externally, understanding macroeconomic forces, such as economic downturns, inflation, consumer sentiment, and their impact on demand and performance is crucial. You also need to be aware of industry-specific challenges, like increased competition and changing customer preferences. Overall, understanding the customer journey and each marketing channel’s contribution, from the offsite impression to onsite conversion, from acquisition to lifetime value is vital.

The Power of Mindset

What truly distinguishes exceptional growth marketers is their strategic mindset, especially when facing pressure. It's like the iceberg hidden below the surface, the powerhouse that drives enduring success, especially when the pressure is on. Growth marketing's impact on the business topline often makes it the go-to for driving growth, resulting in ever-increasing expectations year after year. Those times necessitate a calm and focused mind, mental resilience, and focused execution:

• Put the customer first. Consider the entire customer journey. Be obsessed with understanding your audience, their needs, and strive to deliver great customer experience. This is the key to long term sustainable growth.

• Build a future-proofed growth strategy. Stay ahead of evolving customer behaviors and new technologies, such as influencer channels, the creator economy, social commerce, search answer engines and other emerging trends. Embrace a test & learn approach, diversify your channels. 

• Create a culture of experimentation and innovation. Take risks, appreciate wins but celebrate learnings too. Have a high velocity of testing new ideas. AI and ML are disrupting and reshaping the landscape. Embrace change. 

• Be collaboration catalysts, within and outside the organization. This is often overlooked but it is important to break down silos internally, have shared roadmaps across teams, and build strong partnerships with external media partners. Similarly ensure open communication and feedback loops with leadership about goals, expectations, and progress. 

• Align everything with business goals and long-term vision. Advocate for clear and aligned goals across the organization, as well-defined goals are crucial for exceptional results.

• And most importantly, celebrate and appreciate your team and people, even more so in times of higher pressure and facing ambitious targets. Motivation, support, and recognition go a long way. 

Conclusion

In the end, while challenging times present unique obstacles, they offer the greatest opportunities for growth marketers to shine. By mastering both the visible skillset and the powerful, unseen mindset, growth marketers can drive long-term impact, and flourish in their careers.

About Nidhi

Nidhi has full funnel marketing experience across ecommerce, payments, and consumer packaged goods industries. She currently serves as the Vice President of Growth & Performance Marketing at Etsy, supporting their mission of Keeping Commerce Human. Before joining Etsy, Nidhi held key leadership roles at eBay, overseeing full-funnel paid media on the marketing team, and product marketing and platform partnerships for eBay’s payments business. Prior to that, Nidhi held diverse roles at Western Union and Nestlé, from brand marketing and strategic partnerships, to launching new products internationally.

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