What Does a Director of Growth Do?

A director of growth—sometimes called a head of growth—is a marketing leadership role responsible for expanding a company's marketing presence and increasing revenue. It requires a deep understanding of different marketing efforts, including scaling efforts to drive customer acquisition, as well as analytical thinking and communication. If you enjoy marketing, thinking critically and creatively, and leading teams, this may be a good fit for you.

Learn more about this multifaceted role, including job duties, skills, and salary potential. If you're interested in building key skills in growth marketing, consider enrolling in the Meta Marketing Analytics Professional Certificate, where you'll learn how to collect, sort, evaluate, and visualize marketing data.

What is a director of growth?

The director of growth—sometimes referred to as director of growth marketing or head of growth—is a marketing management role responsible for growing a company's business through marketing and sales efforts primarily focused on acquiring new customers. To achieve that goal, they may be tasked with expanding a company's marketing to new channels or new geographic locations.

Duties and responsibilities

The director of growth often has to analyze data to formulate an expansion strategy and then identify which marketing initiatives will best achieve that expansion. This could include expanding marketing to a new social media channel that hasn't been active yet or launching content marketing efforts in a new country using translation.

Typical duties include:

• Using data to model growth opportunities

• Developing a company's growth strategy

• Analyzing areas of improvement for marketing strategies

• Communicating your findings and planning

• Using marketing levers like email marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) to increase revenue

Essential skills of a director of growth

A director of growth requires an interconnected skill set that pulls from marketing, data analysis, sales, and more. Let's review the more common technical and workplace skills you'll need in this role:

Technical skills

• Marketing strategy

• Customer acquisition

• Data analysis

• Digital marketing

• SEO and SEM

• CRM

• ROI monitoring and reporting

• Business intelligence

Workplace skills

• Leadership

• Collaboration

• Communication

• Analytical thinking

Director of growth: salary and job outlook

According to Glassdoor, the estimated annual salary for a director of growth in the United States is $126,476 [1]. However, depending on the company you for work, you may also be entitled to additional pay, such as bonuses and profit-sharing.  

This role falls under the larger umbrella of advertising, promotions, and marketing managers, which the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates will grow by 6 percent from 2022 to 2032 [2]. That is faster than average.

Director of Growth vs. Business Development Manager

While a director of growth primarily focuses on marketing and sales efforts to drive customer acquisition and increase revenue, a business development manager is responsible for finding new business opportunities—often via sales channels—that a company can pursue.

Director of growth career path

Being a director of growth often means acquiring around 7-10 years of experience. If you're interested in advancing your career to become a director of growth, it can be helpful to start off in an entry-level marketing, sales, or business role and gain experience from there. Let's review some of the steps that can lead toward this position.

1. Earn a degree.  

While you may not need a bachelor's degree to get started in a marketing or sales career, you may find that employers expect that credential as you advance. For instance, 75.4 percent of marketing managers have a bachelor's degree and 12.8 percent have a master's degree, according to Zippia [3].

Consider earning a degree in marketing or a related field, such as business administration or data analysis.

2. Gain experience in an entry-level role.

Some jobs that can eventually lead to a director of growth role include:

• Marketing coordinator

• Social media manager

• Sales representative

• Junior business analyst

• SEO analyst

Once you've gained experience, you can move into management roles, including marketing manager, sales manager, brand manager, or SEO manager, and continue developing your skills in business intelligence, data analysis, and marketing.  

3. Develop your skill set.

A director of growth has a unique skill set. If you're set on this role, you can work on strengthening this skill set as you move through more junior and mid-level positions. It may be useful to search job boards for this title, making a note of the skills required.

Some helpful skills to develop will be: data analysis, marketing strategy, and revenue growth.

Build your growth marketing skill set on Coursera

You'll find lots of opportunities to develop your marketing, data, and business skills on Coursera. Here are two ways to get started:

• Learn about important marketing channels with the Google Digital Marketing & E-commerce Professional Certificate, where you'll learn to attract and engage customers through search and email.

• Build valuable marketing data skills with the Meta Marketing Analytics Professional Certificate, where you'll learn how to collect, sort, evaluate, and visualize marketing data.