growth marketing Archives

10 Things You Can Do To Make Your Marketing More Regenerative

Posted on April 9, 2025 by zebragrowth

Author: Moh Al-Haifi
Co-Author: Isabelle Drury
Contributors: Odette Bester, Lee Fitzpatrick, Zac Schaap

Marketing is facing a crisis. The conventional extractive methods, obsessive growth metrics, aggressive campaigns, manufactured urgency, are burning out marketers and audiences alike. Many of us feel caught in cycles that drain more than they give back, wondering if there’s another way to connect with customers without perpetuating systems that harm people and the planet.

The good news? There absolutely is. Regenerative marketing is fundamentally shifting how we think about the entire purpose and practice of marketing.

Unlike passing marketing fads, regenerative principles are grounded in patterns that have sustained life for billions of years. It’s less about following the latest industry buzz and more about realigning our work with the fundamental dynamics of living systems.

Here are ten practical steps you can take right now to embed this philosophy into your everyday efforts:

1. Embrace holistic thinking in your strategy

Conventional marketing often fragments our work into isolated metric: conversion rates, click-through percentages, cost per acquisition. But you can’t create meaningful change by focusing solely on these numbers.

Holistic thinking means recognising that every marketing decision creates effects through an interconnected web of relationships. Let’s consider a social media campaign planning, a conventional approach might only measure engagement rates and follower growth, but a holistic view reveals how that campaign affects your customer service team’s workload, influences your environmental impact through digital energy consumption, shapes community discussions, impacts your team’s creative wellbeing, and how it either strengthens or weakens trust with your audience.

“That sounds nice and all, but how do I actually implement this?” Start by mapping your marketing ecosystem, including all stakeholders, touchpoints, and relationships affected by your work. Before launching any campaign, gather perspectives from diverse team members and ask yourself: How might this impact our various stakeholders? This simple practice begins to shift decision-making from isolated metrics toward whole-system health.

Another powerful application of holistic thinking is reducing digital waste by using existing content more effectively. Rather than constantly chasing fleeting trends and creating disposable content, focus on repurposing high-impact messages across different channels and formats. Cultivate an evergreen content garden that provides sustained value, instead of relying on short-lived promotional cycles that deplete creative energy and digital resources. This approach not only reduces your environmental footprint but also builds deeper connections with your audience through consistent, meaningful engagement rather than constant novelty.

2. Practice authentic, non-violent and culture-aware communications

At the heart of regenerative marketing lies communication that honours truth, connection, and cultural context. Conventional marketing often manipulates through artificial urgency or manufactured scarcity, depleting trust and relationship potential.

Before writing any piece of content, ask yourself: Would you say this to someone sitting across from you at a coffee shop? If it feels manipulative or inauthentic in a face-to-face conversation, it doesn’t belong in your marketing.

This means abandoning manipulative tactics that have become normalised in digital marketing. You wouldn’t tell a friend “You only have 24 hours to decide before this opportunity disappears forever!” or “Only three spots left in my program–better act fast!” when neither claim is actually true. You wouldn’t deliberately make someone feel inadequate to sell them a solution. These approaches might drive short-term conversions, but they erode trust and deplete the energy of your relationship with your audience.

Instead, focus on creating genuine value in all interactions. What challenges are you authentically addressing? What transformation are you truthfully facilitating? Communicate with clarity and honesty, trusting that the right connections will naturally emerge from this fertile ground of authenticity.

Truly regenerative marketing also embraces inclusion and accessibility. This means designing your communications,from messaging and visuals to platforms and formats,to welcome diverse audiences. Consider how your content serves people with different abilities, cultural backgrounds, and life experiences. Are your videos captioned? Is your website accessible to screen readers? Does your imagery reflect the beautiful diversity of humanity?

You can also try different communication practices, and see how they feel to you, such as non-violent communication, a method that prioritises empathy, honest expression, and needs-based connection. Remember that your words create worlds, choose ones that cultivate resilience, connection, and possibility rather than extraction and scarcity.

3. Cultivate diverse partnerships

Just as a forest thrives through countless species working in symbiotic relationships, your marketing ecosystem grows stronger through diverse partnerships.

This goes beyond conventional networking or transactional relationships. Instead, it’s about creating genuine value exchanges that benefit all participants. Look beyond your immediate industry to find unexpected collaborators who share your values, even if they serve different audiences.

You might be thinking: “Interesting… but what kinds of partnerships should I actually be looking for?” The possibilities are endless, but consider:

Community organisations that align with your values
Complementary businesses (not competitors) serving similar audiences
Thought leaders and educators in adjacent spaces
Local environmental or social justice initiatives
Artists and creatives whose work resonates with your brand

The key is ensuring these partnerships create mutual benefit and shared value. Each relationship should strengthen the entire ecosystem rather than extracting value from one party for another’s gain.

4. Adopt a continuous learning mindset

Regenerative marketers replace perfectionism with a commitment to evolution.

When a campaign doesn’t meet expectations, they don’t see failure: they see valuable information that guides their next steps. This shift is crucial because you can’t be both regenerative and perfect. Perfectionism often stems from colonial and industrial mindsets that no longer serve us.

This approach resonates deeply with Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset Theory, which distinguishes between fixed mindsets (believing abilities are static) and growth mindsets (believing abilities develop through dedication and learning). Regenerative marketing embodies this growth mindset by viewing challenges as opportunities for development rather than evidence of limitation. Just as Dweck’s research shows that students with growth mindsets achieve more, marketing teams that embrace this perspective create more innovative, resilient, and ultimately successful campaigns.

Create safe spaces for experimentation by celebrating learning rather than just outcomes. When reviewing campaign results, start with: “What did we learn?” rather than “Did we succeed or fail?” Document these insights and let them inform future strategies.

What if your manager is expecting results, not just ‘learnings’? This is where communication becomes important. Help stakeholders understand that this approach actually improves results over time by allowing your strategies to evolve naturally, just as living systems do in nature. Short-term metrics still matter, but they’re viewed as feedback for evolution rather than final judgments of success or failure.

5. Integrate different communication practices

Conventional marketing often exploits pain points, triggers insecurities, and manufactures problems to sell solutions. Regenerative marketing rejects these tactics, and instead honours the diverse life experiences of your audience and creates communications that respect their wholeness.

In practice, this looks like:

Leading with empathy rather than pain points
Creating safe, consent-based audience relationships
Using language that empowers rather than diminishes
Focusing on genuine needs rather than manufactured desires
Regularly auditing content for accessibility and cultural awareness
Inviting feedback from communities you aim to serve, especially those historically marginalised

“But doesn’t marketing need to address pain points to be effective?” There’s a crucial difference between acknowledging real challenges your audience faces and manufacturing or exploiting pain to manipulate behaviour. Regenerative marketing recognises genuine needs while approaching them with empathy and respect.

By communicating in this way, you build audiences who trust you deeply because they know you see their full humanity, not just their potential as customers or conversion statistics.

6. Market in a way that feeds energy, not drains it

Fast-paced marketing tactics–constant product launches, short term growth hacks, urgency-driven ad campaigns–have become the norm in today’s business environment. But there’s a hidden cost: these approaches burn out teams and audiences alike.

“Isn’t that just how marketing works these days?” Not necessarily. While conventional marketing often creates frenetic energy that leaves everyone feeling drained, regenerative marketing respects natural rhythms and focuses on restoring energy rather than depleting it.

This means consciously stepping away from:

Always-on campaign schedules that exhaust your creative team
Manufactured scarcity that creates anxiety for customers
Pressure-based sales tactics that feel energetically depleting
Content calendars that prioritise frequency over quality

Instead, consider:

Creating campaigns that follow seasonal or natural cycles
Building in proper recovery time between major marketing pushes
Designing customer journeys that feel spacious rather than rushed
Prioritising depth over frequency in your content

When ethical clothing brand Patagonia famously ran their iconic “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign, they weren’t just making a statement about consumerism, they were also creating space for both their team and their audience to breathe, reflect, and engage more deeply rather than just react to another sales push.

Remember: energy is the currency of life. When your marketing consistently drains energy from your team or your audience, it cannot be considered regenerative, no matter how sustainable your product might be.

7. Practice radical transparency

Transparency has become a buzzword in marketing, but regenerative transparency goes beyond simply sharing your sustainability credentials. It means being radically honest about both your successes and your struggles in your regenerative journey.

“I’m worried that admitting our shortcomings will damage our brand!” This is an understandable fear, but the average citizen is sophisticated enough to recognise and appreciate genuine efforts at change, even when they’re imperfect. What damages reputation isn’t the acknowledgment of challenges, it’s the discovery of hidden contradictions between claims and actions.

Radical transparency includes:

Openly discussing where you are in your regenerative journey
Acknowledging mistakes when they happen (and they will!)
Being honest about the tensions between current business models and regenerative ideals
Creating feedback loops with stakeholders that invite them to hold you accountable

Companies like Dr Bronner’s demonstrate this principle by publishing comprehensive ‘All One’ impact reports that discuss both their achievements and their challenges. This transparency builds deeper trust with their communities while creating accountability mechanisms that drive internal improvement.

Start small if needed, perhaps with an honest blog post about your company’s sustainability journey or an email to your customers explaining a change you’re making to become more regenerative. The key is authenticity, your audience can tell the difference between transparency as a marketing tactic and genuine openness rooted in integrity.

8. Monitoring ecosystem health

“How do we know if our regenerative marketing is actually working?” This question reveals one of the most fundamental changes in shifting to regenerative approaches: our measurement systems often remain rooted in extractive thinking.

While conventional marketing focuses almost exclusively on conversion metrics and quarterly ROI, regenerative marketing embraces financial health as just one indicator within a holistic measurement approach–one that evaluates success through the wellbeing of your entire business ecosystem.

This doesn’t mean abandoning financial metrics completely, they still remain essential. Financial prosperity is a vital sign of health for your team members, organisation, community, and broader ecosystem. However, it’s merely one element in a more complete view of success.

We strongly believe this approach is ultimately more profitable and ROI-friendly; the key difference is that we measure returns across generations rather than quarters. Try expanding your definition of success to include indicators such as:

Team wellbeing and creative vitality
Depth and quality of customer relationships
Community impact and stakeholder health
Environmental regeneration metrics
Long-term resilience indicators

Start by asking different questions: Instead of just “How many sales did this campaign generate?” ask “How did this campaign affect our relationship with our community?” or “Did this marketing approach leave our team energised or depleted?”

Consider implementing tools like stakeholder surveys, wellbeing assessments for your marketing team, or community impact evaluations. These measurement systems take time to develop, but they provide a much richer understanding of your true impact than conversion rates alone.

9. Join regenerative communities of practice

No one can build a regenerative marketing practice in isolation. Your regenerative journey will be strengthened by the relationships you build with others on the same path.

From established networks like the Regenerative Marketing Movement and Conscious Marketing Movement to emerging spaces like the With Life Community (where a dedicated marketing community of practice is forming), opportunities for connection abound. Resources like ReStoried Earth offer valuable workshops and learning spaces where marketers can deepen their regenerative practices together.

Our own Regenerative Marketing Playgrounds provide informal gathering spaces where marketers and business leaders can share their learning, challenges, and successes in an environment that nurtures both personal and collective growth.

Don’t worry about being “regenerative enough” to join these spaces. Most welcome participants at all stages of their journey, from curious beginners to experienced practitioners. The key is approaching with openness and a genuine desire to learn and contribute.

Remember that asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness,it’s a crucial part of regenerative practice. Systems thinking experts, regenerative consultants, and fellow marketers can help you navigate the complexity of this work with more confidence and clarity.

10. Align your entire organisation

Perhaps the most crucial understanding in regenerative marketing is this: marketing cannot function regeneratively in isolation. If your marketing team embraces regenerative principles but your business model remains extractive, how authentic can your message really be?

Start by mapping the gaps between your marketing promises and organisational realities. Perhaps you’re promoting sustainability while your packaging isn’t actually recyclable, or emphasising community while maintaining extractive supply chains.

Once you’ve identified these areas, find allies throughout your organisation who share your vision. These regenerative comrades exist in every company–often feeling just as isolated as you might. Informal conversations, shared articles, or lunch-and-learns can spark interest across departments.

Remember that marketing often serves as a powerful catalyst for wider organisational change. By championing regenerative principles in your work, you create opportunities for your entire business to evolve toward more life-giving practices.

Regenerative marketing is a journey

The shift to regenerative marketing isn’t about perfection or purity. It’s about progression: taking consistent steps toward practices that regenerate rather than deplete the systems we’re part of.

Whether you’ve spent years in aggressive growth marketing or you’re just starting to question conventional practices, your perspective and experience are valuable here. There’s no perfect starting point, and there’s no blame in recognising where we’ve been. What matters is our willingness to explore, learn, and evolve together.

But new stories are taking shape, and there are plenty of examples:

Kiss The Ground and Climate Farmers are championing regenerative agriculture that sequesters carbon while rebuilding soil health. Community-Supported Agriculture models directly connect consumers with local farmers, creating resilient food systems that benefit both land and community.
Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute is transforming how companies design products to eliminate the concept of waste entirely. Their certification process ensures materials remain in continuous, safe cycles.
Ecosia revolutionised the search engine model by directing the majority of their ad revenue to reforestation projects, having planted over 200 million trees across biodiversity hotspots while providing complete financial transparency.
Capital Institute is developing new frameworks like Regenerative Economics and their “8 Principles of Regenerative Vitality” to shift financial systems from extraction to regeneration.

At Zebra Growth, we’re creating spaces for this exploration through our Regenerative Marketing Playgrounds, which are informal fireside chats where we gather to share insights and practices. If these principles resonate with you, we also invite you to join our mailing list to be notified when our next course becomes available, where we’ll help you apply these principles and create marketing that feels aligned, effective, and regenerative.

Regenerative Marketing Playground Series invite

What Is Regenerative Marketing?

Posted on March 11, 2025 by zebragrowth

Author: Moh Al-Haifi
Co-Author: Isabelle Drury

Marketing isn’t working anymore. Not for people, not for the planet, and if we’re really honest, not even for most businesses. While your LinkedIn feed might be full of “growth hacks” and “foolproof scaling strategies,” there’s an uncomfortable truth lurking beneath the surface: conventional marketing often takes more than it gives back.

“But wait,” you might be thinking, “isn’t marketing just about connecting products with people who need them?” That’s what we’d all like to believe. The reality is more complex. Today’s marketing practices are deeply rooted in systems that prioritise rapid profits and scaling at all costs, while viewing competitors as enemies to be dominated rather than potential collaborators in solving real problems.

At Zebra Growth, our team and clients have witnessed firsthand how conventional marketing can drain not just our collective energy, but our hope for a better future. We’ve seen how chasing quarterly targets and aggressive growth metrics can disconnect us from the very people we’re trying to serve.

But what if there was a different way?

Understanding Regeneration and Marketing

Before we dive into regenerative marketing, let’s talk about regeneration itself. Think about the most resilient natural systems you know: perhaps a forest recovering after a fire, or a coastal ecosystem adapting to changing tides. These systems don’t just survive; they continuously renew and evolve.

From the soil beneath our feet to the communities we build, regeneration is the constant process of birth, growth, maturity, death, and rebirth. It’s not just a nice metaphor, it’s the operating system of life itself.

“That’s lovely, but what does this have to do with my marketing strategy?” The connection runs deeper than you might expect. Just as natural ecosystems thrive through cycles of renewal and interconnected relationships, our businesses and marketing efforts can follow the same patterns.

The Evolution of Marketing

To understand where we’re going, we need to understand where we’ve been. Marketing didn’t start as the data-driven, conversion-obsessed machine we know today. Its earliest forms were simply about human exchange: farmers trading goods at local markets, artisans sharing their crafts with neighbouring communities.

But something shifted during the Industrial Revolution. As mass production became possible, businesses needed ways to sell more products to more people. Marketing transformed from a tool for community connection into a mechanism for mass consumption.

Over time, marketing became increasingly extractive and mechanistic, shaped by colonial mindsets that prioritised efficiency and competition over resilience and ecosystem health. Today’s conventional marketing practices aren’t just accidents of history, they’re direct products of systems designed to maximise short-term profits at the expense of long-term wellbeing.

(We’ve written a full piece on marketing’s history if you’d like to learn more: “Marketing’s Origin Story: The Good, The Bad, And The Colonial“.)

“But that’s just how business works, right?” Yes, that’s how business has worked. But as we face novel social and environmental challenges, more and more marketers are asking: Is this how business needs to work?.

A New Marketing Paradigm

“So if conventional marketing is part of the problem, what’s the alternative?” You might be wondering this as you look at your current marketing metrics, your team’s KPIs, your quarterly targets. The answer lies in understanding how living systems actually work.

Regenerative marketing isn’t just a set of new tactics or a different way to write social media posts. It represents a fundamental shift in how we approach the entire function of marketing, moving from a mechanical, extractive system to one that mirrors the patterns of life itself.

At its core, regenerative marketing operates through three essential patterns that we observe in all living systems:

Holism: Seeing the whole picture

Living Systems and Regenerative Marketing

Conventional marketing often breaks everything down into isolated metrics–conversion rates, click-through percentages, cost per acquisition. But just as you can’t understand a forest by only counting trees, you can’t create meaningful change by focusing solely on metrics.

Holism means recognising that every marketing decision exists within a complex web of relationships. Consider a decision to launch a major social media campaign. Through a conventional lens, you might only measure engagement rates and follower growth. But through a holistic view, you see how that campaign affects your customer service team’s workload, influences your brand’s environmental impact through digital energy consumption, shapes community discussions, impacts your team’s creative wellbeing, and either strengthens or weakens trust with your audience. Each decision creates ripples throughout your entire ecosystem. This interconnected view leads us naturally to the next pattern.

Evolution: Learning through change

This is where we introduce the Theory of Emergence, an adaptation of the conventional Theory of Change framework. Instead of trying to control outcomes through rigid planning, the Theory of Emergence helps teams map out how their actions can catalyse positive systemic change.

In practice, this means:

Deeply connecting with your team’s foundational beliefs
Questioning assumptions about growth and success
Mapping the systemic problems you’re trying to solve
Identifying leverage points for positive change
Creating conditions for natural evolution rather than forced growth

Interdependence: The web of relationships

Interdependance In Regenerative Marketing

An ecosystem isn’t just a collection of separate entities–it’s the relationships between them that create life. In marketing terms, this means understanding that your business exists within an interconnected web of stakeholders, relationships, and environments.

This shifts everything about how we approach marketing strategy:

Every strategy must prioritise partnership development
Value exchange must be genuinely reciprocal
The more diverse your relationships, the more resilient your ecosystem
Growth happens through nurturing relationships, not extracting value
Success is measured by ecosystem health, not just profit

Now that we’ve explored these fundamental shifts in marketing strategy, the next step is turning them into action. Understanding these principles deeply is crucial, it forms the foundation for everything that follows. Let’s examine how these insights transform into regenerative marketing in practice.

Regenerative Marketing in Practice

After understanding these living systems patterns, the next question becomes obvious: How do we actually apply this in our daily marketing work? The shift begins not with changing tactics, but with transforming our fundamental approach to marketing itself.

Let’s start at the strategic level. Before creating any marketing plan, regenerative marketing requires us to deeply connect with our team’s core beliefs. This is about questioning everything we’ve been taught about growth, success, and impact. What do we actually believe influences how we see the world? How does that shape the way we run our business? What’s our real intention behind every action we take?

This mindset shift manifests in three key areas:

Firstly, authenticity in communication stands at the heart of regenerative marketing, especially when we consider how conventional marketing often creates artificial urgency or manufactured scarcity to drive sales. Regenerative marketing takes a radically different approach by returning to the fundamental truth of human connection. Before writing any piece of content, ask yourself: Would you say this to someone sitting across from you? If it feels inauthentic in a face-to-face conversation, it doesn’t belong in your marketing.

This means embracing new communication principles such as non-violent communication or taking a trauma-informed approach to audience engagement. Every email, social post, or campaign should be created with the full humanity of your audience in mind. Instead of relying on manipulation tactics or false scarcity, focus on creating genuine value and ensuring full consent in all interactions. The goal isn’t just to sell–it’s to build authentic relationships based on trust and mutual benefit.

Secondly, continuous learning over perfection is where regenerative marketing truly diverges from conventional approaches. Instead of seeking perfect campaigns or flawless execution, we embrace a continuous learning mindset. When a campaign doesn’t meet expectations, regenerative marketers don’t see failure–they see an opportunity for evolution. Teams come together with joy and curiosity to analyse results and identify learnings that will inform future strategies.

This shift away from perfectionism is crucial because you can’t be both regenerative and perfect. Perfectionism often stems from colonial and industrial mindsets that no longer serve us. By creating safe spaces for experimentation and adaptation, we allow our marketing efforts to evolve naturally, just like living systems do in nature.

Thirdly, partnership and value exchange form the foundation of growth in living systems, and the same principle applies to regenerative marketing. Every strategy must explicitly consider how we build and nurture partnerships across our ecosystem. This goes beyond conventional networking or transactional relationships, it’s about creating genuine value exchanges that benefit all participants.

The key is diversifying these relationships as much as possible. Just as a healthy ecosystem contains many different species working in harmony, regenerative marketing thrives on connecting with diverse stakeholders. This might mean collaborating with unexpected partners, engaging with community groups, or finding new ways to create value for your entire business ecosystem.

“This sounds all great in theory,” you might be thinking, “but what about metrics? Targets? KPIs?” This is where the Theory of Emergence comes into play. Instead of rigid planning and control, we map out how our actions can catalyse positive change while still achieving business objectives. This means creating marketing strategies that:

Address systemic problems rather than just symptoms
Consider impact across multiple time horizons
Build capacity for long-term resilience
Create conditions for natural growth
Measure success through ecosystem health indicators

But here’s where we encounter both a challenge and an opportunity. While transforming our marketing approach is powerful, it can’t exist in isolation. This brings us to perhaps the most crucial understanding in regenerative marketing–the principle of holism.

Beyond Marketing: Incorporating The Whole System

After exploring how to implement regenerative marketing practices, we encounter a crucial truth: marketing cannot function regeneratively in isolation. This brings us back to our first pattern of holism, but at an organisational level.

Consider this: If your marketing team embraces regenerative principles but your business model remains extractive, how authentic can your message really be? When your marketing promises positive impact while your supply chain creates hidden harm, how long can that disconnect survive?

The reality is that regenerative marketing reaches its full potential only when it’s part of a larger organisational transformation. Let’s examine what this means in practice:

Business model integration

At its core, a regenerative business model must actively solve social and environmental challenges as it grows, not create new ones. This requires a fundamental shift in how we think about value creation and distribution. We must design business models that actively regenerate the systems they operate within.

This means taking a hard look at your supply chain relationships and understanding their true impact. How does money flow through your stakeholders? Does your growth model strengthen or weaken ecosystem health? When we examine business through this lens, we see how modern practices have strayed from their roots. While businesses originally formed to help communities thrive and build resilience over generations, today’s focus on quarterly profits often undermines these longer-term goals. The pressure to maximise short-term returns can lead to decisions that compromise future stability and growth.

Regenerative business models reclaim this longer view. By considering impact across generations, not just our children, but their children’s children, we make fundamentally different choices about how to structure our operations, manage our resources, and measure our success.

Governance and investment

Conventional corporate structures often force short-term thinking through their very design.

Quarterly profit pressures and conventional ownership models can make it nearly impossible to prioritise long-term ecosystem health over immediate financial gains. This is why regenerative businesses need to explore alternative models like steward ownership and patient capital.

When your governance considers all stakeholders and your investment vehicles prioritise long-term value creation, your marketing naturally becomes more authentic because it reflects real organisational values, not just aspirational messaging.

(Shout out to Purpose Foundation for accessible learnings on keeping businesses independent and purpose-driven. For an economy that works for people and the planet.)

Leadership and culture

Marketing often acts as a powerful catalyst for organisational change, but this potential can only be realised with full leadership commitment to regenerative principles. This means cultivating a team culture that truly embraces continuous learning and evolution. Your recruitment processes, internal communications, and decision-making practices all need to align with your regenerative values.

A regenerative organisation weaves this thinking into every department and function. The impact extends far beyond dedicated sustainability initiatives, transforming how each team approaches their work within the larger ecosystem.

The challenge here is significant, particularly for larger organisations. The bigger the company, the more complex this transformation becomes. Yet this is precisely where marketing can play a crucial role, helping to shift organisational consciousness from the inside out.

This might all sound overwhelming, which brings us to perhaps the most important part of the regenerative journey…

Authenticity vs. Greenwashing

“Is this just another green marketing trend? How do we even begin to make such big changes?” By now, you might be feeling overwhelmed. The scope of change required can seem daunting, and with it comes a legitimate fear: are we just engaging in another form of greenwashing?

This concern sits at the heart of many organisations’ hesitation to embrace regenerative marketing. And it should–the business landscape is littered with examples of companies whose sustainability claims proved hollow.

The difference between greenwashing and genuine regenerative practice begins with intention. Regenerative transformation starts with an honest recognition of current extractive practices in your organisation. This can be uncomfortable, it means acknowledging where your marketing, and perhaps your entire business model, may have contributed to systemic problems.

This recognition must be shared across your entire team, especially leadership. Without aligned intention at every level, regenerative efforts risk becoming surface-level marketing initiatives rather than genuine transformation. Remember: regeneration is the opposite of perfection. The goal isn’t to present a flawless green image, but to commit to authentic evolution, even when it’s messy.

Real regenerative practice demands radical transparency about both your successes and your struggles. This means being vulnerable with your audience about where you are in your journey. If you make a mistake, and you will, acknowledge it openly. Create clear feedback loops with all stakeholders so they can hold you accountable and help guide your transformation.

Some organisations fear this level of transparency might damage their reputation. However, audiences today are sophisticated enough to recognise and appreciate genuine efforts at change, even when they’re imperfect. What damages reputation isn’t the acknowledgment of challenges–it’s the discovery of hidden contradictions between claims and actions.

Take when Blackrock, a major venture capital firm, purchased Oatly, for example. This serves as a powerful reminder of how business model decisions can impact brand authenticity. When Oatly was sold, it highlighted a crucial question for regenerative businesses: Can a company maintain its regenerative principles when its ownership structure prioritises rapid financial returns? The era of being able to claim regenerative values while maintaining conventional extractive business models is coming to an end.

Finally, remember that you don’t have to figure it out alone. An entire ecosystem of support exists: systems thinking experts, regenerative consultants, and communities of practice are all available to guide your journey. Many have navigated these same challenges and can help you avoid confusion and missteps. The key is recognising that asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a crucial part of regenerative practice. Just as natural ecosystems thrive through interconnection, your regenerative journey will be strengthened by the relationships you build with others on the same path.

Your Regenerative Journey

The shift to regenerative marketing isn’t about political ideologies or pointing fingers. It’s about our collective future and the health of the systems we’re all part of.

Whether you’ve spent years in aggressive growth marketing or you’re just starting to question conventional practices, your perspective and experience are valuable here. In fact, some of our greatest insights come from those who’ve witnessed the limitations of extractive systems firsthand.

This is an invitation to everyone–regardless of your industry, background, or current practices. There’s no perfect starting point, and there’s no blame in recognising where we’ve been. What matters is our willingness to explore, learn, and evolve together.

At Zebra Growth, we’re creating spaces for this exploration through our Regenerative Marketing Playgrounds, informal fireside chats where we explore these ideas together, and our transformative 4-week course in partnership with With Life. But more importantly, we’re part of a growing movement of marketers, business leaders, and change-makers who believe in marketing’s potential to regenerate rather than extract.

The future of marketing isn’t about perfection, it’s about progression. And your voice matters in this conversation.

The Problem With Marketing As Usual

Posted on February 4, 2025 by zebragrowth

Author: Moh Al-Haifi
Co-Author: Isabelle Drury
Contributors: Odette Bester, Lee Fitzpatrick, Zac Schaap

Something feels profoundly broken in marketing today. As purpose-driven leaders and change-makers, we sense the disconnect between our aspirations for positive impact and the manipulative tactics we’ve inherited. Marketing has become a sophisticated system of psychological triggers designed to drive consumption at any cost, whether it’s selling shoes or squeezing toothpaste ads into every corner of the internet.

To learn more about how we arrived at this moment, check out “Marketing’s Origin Story: The Good, the Bad, and the Colonial.”

This wasn’t always the case. What began as the art of connecting people with genuine solutions has transformed into something more harmful. Yet, here’s the plot twist: in this moment of crisis lies an opportunity for transformation. We can reimagine marketing not as a tool for extraction, but as a catalyst for regeneration. (Think of regeneration as the opposite of “take, take, take”, it’s about giving back, restoring balance, and making sure the pie gets bigger for everyone.)

By understanding the true impact of conventional marketing practices, on individuals, communities, and living systems, we open the door to creating approaches that nurture rather than deplete. (Spoiler: it’s not just about planting trees after your ad campaign.)

For those feeling the tension between purpose and conventional marketing practices, join us as we explore what regenerative marketing could look like…

What Is Marketing Today?

The roots of modern marketing run deeper than most realise. In the early 20th century, Sigmund Freud (yes, the “tell me about your childhood” psychoanalysis guy) had a nephew named Edward Bernays, who revolutionised how businesses approached consumer behaviour. His insight? That humans are fundamentally irrational, driven by unconscious desires and fears that could be harnessed to drive consumption.

This shift marked a turning point. Marketing grew from simply informing people about products to actively manufacturing desires. Through sophisticated psychological techniques, marketers learned to bypass rational decision-making and tap directly into our deepest insecurities, hopes, and fears. The goal was no longer to meet existing needs, but to create new ones.

Today, this approach has reached its peak. Algorithms track our every move, analysing our behaviours to predict and shape our desires before we’re even aware of them. We’re sold not just products, but identities, lifestyles, and the promise of unrealistic fulfilment. The freedom of choice we believe we have is carefully orchestrated through psychological triggers and manufactured scarcity.

For more inspiration and deeper thinking on aligning business and marketing with life, explore the Regenerative Marketing Movement–a growing community redefining what’s possible.

What’s Broken With Marketing As Usual?

The cracks in conventional marketing are becoming impossible to ignore. Our planet sends urgent signals through rising temperatures and collapsing ecosystems. Our addiction to fast fashion fills landfills with mountains of discarded clothing, our desire for the newest gadgets creates toxic electronic waste, and our hunger for convenience generates endless plastic pollution. Each new product launch, each planned obsolescence cycle, each “must-have” trend pushes us further toward environmental breaking points.

But something else is breaking too: consumer trust. People are waking up–not just to the manipulation and the calculated use of psychology to exploit their deepest insecurities, but also to the unrealistic expectations of working harder and longer in a world where wealth gaps grow wider and financial security feels increasingly out of reach.

The mental health crisis gripping younger generations speaks volumes about a system that profits from perpetual inadequacy. This isn’t just about individual choices–it’s about the bigger picture.We’ve created a society of “happiness machines“, consumers trained to seek fulfilment through purchasing rather than genuine connection or purpose.

The burden of our excess falls heaviest on those who can least afford it, when we in the Global North try to wash our hands of this waste–whether through recycling electronics, donating clothes, or shipping our plastic–it often ends up in communities in the Global South paying for our overconsumption with their health and wellbeing.

Why Is It Relevant Today?

A new wave of conscious consumption is emerging. People aren’t just buying differently, they’re questioning whether they need to buy at all. They seek brands that offer transparency, repairability, and genuine commitment to regenerative practices.

Industry leaders too are acknowledging this shift and are calling for fundamental change:

✨ Philip Kotler, once known as the father of modern marketing, now advocates for marketing that serves societal wellbeing over pure profit.

✨ Eric Liedtke, after decades at Adidas, left to create a waste-free fashion company, recognising that conventional marketing’s focus on endless growth and artificial needs is incompatible with the challenges we face.

✨ Seth Godin, renowned marketing expert, challenges us to move beyond interruption marketing to building genuine connections.

And many organisations already demonstrating what business aligned with life can look like:

🌱 With Life reimagines marketing and business through living systems thinking, offering pathways to design for thriving futures by aligning work with life itself.

🌱 Framework boldly challenges the tech industry’s obsession with planned obsolescence, designing laptops meant to be repaired and upgraded rather than replaced, putting repairability and longevity at the heart of their business model.

🌱 nRhythm brings together diverse global perspectives across 52 nationalities, reimagining organisational systems that work with life rather than against it, proving that transformative change is possible when we align business with natural principles.

🌱 WoolKind redefines fashion industry standards by crafting sustainable knitwear for every body, prioritising inclusive representation and environmental stewardship over trend-driven consumption, showing how fashion can celebrate diversity while respecting planetary boundaries.

🌱 Climate Farmers supports the transition to regenerative agriculture in Europe, building a community of farmers and organisations to scale solutions that heal the land and restore ecosystems.

🌱 Purpose Economy is creating a business model revolution, helping organisations embed stewardship and purpose into their ownership and governance structures, ensuring long-term alignment with the common good.

🌱 Capital Institute explores and promotes regenerative economics, showcasing a new paradigm for finance and business that respects planetary boundaries and nurtures human flourishing.

🌱 FairPhone challenges the electronics industry with its ethical smartphone, prioritising fair wages, sustainable sourcing, and repairable design to ensure technology serves people and the planet.

🌱 Vyld innovates sustainable menstrual care, creating products made from renewable marine resources like seaweed while promoting inclusive and eco-conscious solutions that work in harmony with nature.

They aren’t just changing their marketing, they’re transforming entire business models, governance models, and leadership styles to align with life. As the true costs of extractive marketing become clearer, purpose-driven organisations face an opportunity: embrace regenerative practices and help create the future our world is calling for.

What Is Life Aligned Marketing?

So, what does regenerative marketing actually look like? It begins with a fundamental shift in intention. Rather than manipulating desires, regenerative marketing starts with truth–about our products, their impact, and the real needs they serve.

This means moving beyond polished perfection to authentic communication that builds genuine trust. We ask different questions: How does this truly serve our community? What problems are we genuinely solving? What impacts ripple out from our marketing choices?

Regenerative marketing transcends individualistic consumption to create community resilience. Instead of selling personal identity through products, it creates spaces for collective value and shared purpose. This looks like building communities around repair and reuse, creating educational content that empowers rather than exploits, and celebrating collective impact over individual consumption.

Perhaps most radically, regenerative marketing abandons the myth of endless growth. It acknowledges planetary boundaries and designs within them. This means embracing circular systems where every “end” becomes a new beginning. Beyond conventional KPIs, success is measured through the full spectrum of impact: customer wellbeing flowing into community resilience, ecosystem health intertwining with resource circulation.

And while we’re here, let’s softly introduce a concept that’s guiding our thinking more and more: the importance of coming back to place. Regenerative marketing invites us to reconnect with history, context, and story, rooting our work in the natural ecosystems and bioregional contexts we’re part of. It’s a shift from a globalised, one-size-fits-all approach to something grounded in specific places, people, and shared histories.

This approach isn’t perfect, and it’s not supposed to be. We’re at the beginning of a new evolution in marketing–a lens we’ll spend decades refining. But the direction, this deep curiosity, and the initial shift from Ego to Eco (from “I” to “We All”) are crucial right now. In facing mounting environmental and social challenges, regenerative marketing offers a pathway toward genuine sustainability and deeper meaning in our work.

The Future Of Marketing

We can continue with practices we know are harming society and the planet, or we can embrace marketing’s potential as a force for regeneration. The choice is ours, but the stakes have never been higher.

To become a catalyst for the necessary change, begin by deepening your understanding. Documentaries like Buy Now and Century of Self reveal the historical roots and hidden impacts of today’s marketing practices. They offer crucial insights into the systems we must transform. Take time to reflect deeply on what you learn: How do these revelations connect to your own marketing work? What patterns do you recognise in your campaigns?

As you examine your current marketing practices, consider:

Messaging: How might your brand story celebrate collective wellbeing rather than individual status? What messages could create genuine connection instead of insecurity?
Channels: Where are you meeting your audience–in spaces of anxiety and scarcity, or in communities of learning and growth? How could your content nourish rather than drain attention?
Metrics: Beyond tracking conversions, how might you measure the depth of relationships you’re building? What would success look like if you valued ecosystem health alongside business growth? And how can you shift intentions away from obsessing over a final outcome, focusing instead on setting healthy conditions for all stakeholders–from your team to your consumers, suppliers, partners, and the wider society you’re a part of?

You’re not alone in sensing that marketing needs to change. Through our network of partners–including the Regenerative Marketing Movement, Conscious Marketing Movement, Agency for Nature, and many others–we’re part of a growing community reimagining what’s possible. These networks are just one part of the broader ecosystem of practitioners actively transforming marketing practices, and we invite you to connect with these spaces.

As we explore these vital questions together, frameworks like our Go-to-Ecosystem (GTE) help us reimagine marketing as a source of emergence rather than extraction. We invite you to join this learning journey, with tools like the GTE Cards offering pathways for discovering what regenerative marketing could mean for your work.

This is just the beginning, though. We’ll soon be rolling out more regenerative marketing tools to support this shift, including playground fireside virtual chats and both live and on-demand training offerings. These resources are designed to help you approach marketing and growth through a living systems and regenerative lens.

As we face the challenges ahead, we have a profound opportunity to reshape marketing’s role in society. The path toward regenerative marketing starts with a single question: How might your work contribute to a thriving future for all?

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Marketing’s Origin Story: The Good, The Bad, And The Colonial

Posted on January 29, 2025 by zebragrowth

Author: Moh Al-Haifi
Co-Author: Isabelle Drury
Contributors: Odette Bester, Lee Fitzpatrick, Zac Schaap

Marketing, as we understand it today, is a product of centuries of human exchange. While its earliest forms were rooted in trade and community, its evolution is also steeped in exploitation, colonialism, and hyper-capitalism.

To truly understand marketing’s trajectory, and its potential for good, we must grapple with its “dirty” history, shaped by power dynamics, extraction, and cultural dominance.

Early Beginnings Of Marketing

While the formal concept of marketing didn’t exist in ancient times, systems of trade and commerce were sophisticated, culturally embedded processes that shaped societies.

In pre-colonial Africa, for instance, trade networks such as the trans-Saharan trade routes were active from around 500 A.D. until the late 19th century, connecting West African empires to North Africa and the Mediterranean.¹ These routes facilitated the exchange of gold, salt, ivory, and other goods. Similarly, in Southeast Asia, the Austronesian maritime trade network, established as early as 1500 BCE, linked the region with Southern India and Sri Lanka, forming early foundations for the Maritime Silk Road.²

Across these contexts, pre-colonial marketing and trade prioritised relational connections, communal welfare, and the symbolic value of goods, emphasising long-term relationships and social cohesion over profit maximisation.³

These practices evolved differently across cultures. In the Mediterranean, Herodotus documented the rise of “silent trade,” a form of barter where parties exchanged goods without direct interaction—a clever workaround for language barriers (or perhaps just ancient awkwardness). The Lydians later revolutionised trade by introducing gold and silver coins in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). These coins spread through Greek cities, streamlining commerce and setting a foundation for monetary systems. Still, this was just one expression of trade among many global approaches.

As communities became more complex, specialised skills led to natural divisions of labour. This made production more efficient—after all, one person couldn’t craft tools, weave textiles, and tend crops all at once. However, this separation also created a gap between producers and consumers. To bridge these divides, intermediaries emerged, adapting to the unique social and economic contexts of their respective cultures.

Philosophers like Plato and Aristotle observed these shifts and posed questions that continue to resonate: How do economic systems impact social cohesion? What makes an exchange fair? Their reflections, alongside the wisdom of diverse trading traditions, remind us that commerce has always been about more than transactions. It is a force that connects, transforms, and challenges societies—whether in ancient marketplaces or on today’s digital platforms.⁴

Marketing Under Empire

As we trace the history of trade and commerce, it’s worth pausing to reflect: how did we get from communal exchanges and relational trade to today’s vast global economies? It’s tempting to think these shifts were natural or inevitable, but the truth is more complex. Enter colonialism, a system that reshaped the world in ways we’re still grappling with today.

For those less familiar, colonialism refers to the political, economic, and cultural domination of one region or people by another, often through force. Between the 15th and 20th centuries, European powers like Britain, France, and Spain established vast empires, seizing land and resources while imposing their systems of governance, labour, and trade. The driving force? Economic gain, whether through extracting raw materials, exploiting labour, or opening markets for European goods.⁵

At this point, you might wonder, “What does this have to do with marketing?” The connection runs deeper than it might seem. The systems established under colonial rule weren’t just about controlling land or resources; they were about controlling narratives. Colonisers needed people, both at home and in the colonies, to buy into their vision. Marketing became a powerful tool to shape perceptions.

These marketing strategies did more than sell products; they sold entire worldviews. Advertisements often portrayed colonised regions as distant, exotic sources of raw materials, ignoring the rich cultural and economic systems that existed there. For example, campaigns promoting African cocoa frequently depicted cheerful workers in plantation fields—an image that misrepresented the harsh realities of forced labour and exploitation.⁶

This narrative wasn’t just inaccurate; it was harmful. By presenting these sanitised images, such campaigns erased the suffering of workers and legitimised systems of exploitation in the eyes of consumers. It encouraged people to view goods like cocoa, tea, and sugar not as products of human labour and struggle but as simple commodities to enjoy. This framing shaped consumer consciousness, creating a disconnect that still lingers in today’s global market, where the origins of goods and the conditions under which they are produced often remain invisible.⁷

Take the British Empire Marketing Board (EMB), founded in 1926, as an example. Its campaigns promoted ‘exotic’ goods as symbols of imperial success. Posters and advertisements presented products like tea and spices as everyday luxuries for British households, glossing over the human and ecological toll of their production. The EMB didn’t just sell goods, it sold the idea that empire was something to be proud of.⁸

These legacies laid the groundwork for many modern marketing practices. From branding strategies to global supply chains, the systems that emerged during colonialism still shape our world today. Understanding this history isn’t about assigning blame; it’s about recognising how deeply these legacies influence our economic, business, and marketing systems—and how they continue to shape consumer behaviour.

Marketing Meets Mass Production

To understand how marketing might serve regeneration rather than extraction, we must first examine a pivotal moment in its evolution: the Industrial Revolution.

Regeneration, in this context, refers to practices that restore and renew rather than deplete—focusing on long-term well-being for people, communities, and the planet. It’s a vision of systems designed to sustain and heal, offering a stark contrast to extractive models that prioritise short-term gains at great cost. This perspective is vital to reimagining the role of marketing in today’s world.⁹

During the late 18th and 19th centuries, the Industrial Revolution ‌reshaped marketing’s purpose. As factories produced goods at extraordinary rates, businesses faced a new challenge: how to create enough consumer demand to match their production capacity. This need for mass consumption led to increasingly sophisticated marketing techniques that combined colonial trade promotion with emerging psychological insights.

The Psychology Blueprint

By the early 20th century, marketing professionals began applying psychological theories, ideas about how people think, feel, and behave, to influence consumer behavior on a large scale. These theories explored human motivations, unconscious desires, and emotional responses, giving marketers new tools to craft campaigns that resonated deeply.

Edward Bernays, often called the “father of public relations,” played a pivotal role in this transformation by applying the ideas of his uncle, neurologist Sigmund Freud. (Remember Freud? That weird guy that always comes up when discussing deep-seated sexual impulses that we’d rather not talk about at the dinner table?)

Bernays used Freud’s insights into human psychology to revolutionise marketing. His infamous “Torches of Freedom” campaign framed cigarettes as symbols of women’s liberation, proving that marketing could create desires, and even cultural movements, where none existed before.

In his influential book Propaganda (1928), Bernays made his intentions chillingly clear: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.” His work didn’t just change how businesses marketed products; it redefined how leaders and institutions shaped public opinion. Bernays became a key figure in modern public relations, advising governments and politicians on how to control narratives and influence the masses. Notably, his techniques were adopted not just in democracies but also in authoritarian regimes, including campaigns that aided leaders like Adolf Hitler in solidifying their power.¹⁰ ¹¹

This marriage of psychology and marketing laid the groundwork for decades of consumer manipulation. As television and mass media evolved, campaigns grew increasingly bold in their use of psychological tactics. Coca-Cola’s Christmas ads¹² didn’t just sell fizzy drinks; they redefined how we see the holidays. The Marlboro Man¹³ didn’t just sell cigarettes; he turned smoking into a symbol of rugged masculinity. Through clever manipulation of human desires and cultural narratives, brands began embedding themselves into celebrations, identity, and everyday life.

The Digital Age of Hyper-consumption

Our digital landscape has amplified consumption to unprecedented levels, building upon decades of marketing psychology that we’re only now beginning to fully comprehend. As we excavate the layers of marketing history, we discover how deeply these patterns are embedded in our collective psyche, even as we become increasingly conscious of their influence.

Social media platforms have dissolved the boundary between entertainment and shopping: TikTok Shop turns every video into a potential point of purchase, while Instagram makes every image shoppable. Amazon’s one-click ordering and next-day delivery eliminate any pause between desire and acquisition. Mobile payment systems and buy-now-pay-later services remove the psychological friction of spending.¹⁴

The mechanics of digital marketing have supercharged these patterns. Recommendation algorithms create infinite loops of personalised product discovery. Push notifications interrupt our daily lives with targeted promotions. Loyalty programs gamify spending through points and rewards. The result? A constant stream of micro-purchasing decisions that bypass our rational decision-making processes.

This evolution has generated extraordinary economic growth but at mounting human and ecological costs. Digital platforms perfect what economists call “commodity fetishism”, where products appear magically on our screens, disconnected from their true social and environmental costs. Fast fashion marketing normalises disposable clothing while obscuring its real impact: water pollution, carbon emissions, and challenging working conditions. Marketing optimises for engagement rather than wellbeing, creating addictive consumption patterns that drain both attention and resources.

The rise of digital marketing didn’t create these dynamics so much as amplify patterns that were already deeply ingrained in consumer culture. Advanced targeting and endless scrolling created new forms of consumer behaviour, while algorithms optimised for engagement rather than genuine human connection or planetary health. Many marketers found themselves caught in a system that rewarded short-term metrics over long-term wellbeing.

Yet, this growing consciousness of marketing’s legacy also points toward possibility. The same tools that powered hyper-consumption can be reimagined for regeneration, informed by our deeper understanding of how marketing shapes behaviour and society. The algorithms, targeting capabilities, and creative strategies that accelerated consumption can now strengthen human connection and planetary health–but only if we remain mindful of the historical patterns we’re working to transform.

Reimagining Marketing’s Future

As the world grapples with ecological collapse and the limits of growth, marketing must evolve into a discipline that nurtures life rather than exploits it. The transformation begins by redefining success.

The lens we inherited from modern marketing, one of extraction, infinite growth, and individual gain, now meets its counterpoint. Rising from our growing ecological awareness emerges an alternative view: a lens of resilience, collective health, and regeneration. It’s a perspective that sees beauty in the reciprocal, that honours emergence, and that celebrates the intricate dance of life itself. Where the old lens fragmented and reduced, this new vision connects and restores.

Traditional marketing metrics like ROI and market share tell only part of the story. When we expand our definition of success to include ecosystem health, new possibilities emerge. Imagine measuring campaigns by their contribution to biodiversity, community wellbeing, and cultural flourishing. This shift becomes essential as consumers and companies recognise their health as inseparable from our living systems.

We can learn from both marketing’s missteps and its moments of genuine connection. What wisdom exists in pre-colonial trading systems that honoured reciprocity? How might marketing preserve rather than erode culture? What emerges when campaigns prioritise the wellbeing of all life—human and non-human?

I know, I know. A lot of questions. Take a deep breath in, annnddd release. Let’s just give ourselves permission to become curious through these questions.

As you reflect on marketing’s past and consider its future, you might want to ponder upon:

How your current marketing practices either perpetuate or heal historical patterns of extraction, and how does this relate to staying true to your purpose when faced with pressures to scale?
Where might you measure impact beyond traditional metrics, particularly when considering the hard lessons learned about balancing purpose with profitability?
As your business grows and pivots, what assumptions about growth and success might you need to question in your current marketing approach? (Consider reviewing our North Star Metric framework in Miro for guidance on XYZ)
In what ways could your metrics be expanded to measure regenerative impact while ensuring you stay anchored to your original mission?

We’re fortunate to be part of a growing movement of organisations and frameworks reimagining marketing’s role in building regenerative futures. Our partners in this work include:

🌟 Regenerative Marketing Movement: A collective of marketing practitioners and thought leaders working to transform marketing into a force for regeneration through educational resources and community building.

🌟 With Life: Pioneers in bio-inspired approaches to business and marketing, helping organisations learn from nature’s patterns to create more resilient and regenerative systems.

🌟 Capital Institute: Leaders in reimagining economics and finance through their Eight Principles of Regenerative Economics, providing a framework for holistic system change.

🌟 Purpose Foundation: Experts in alternative ownership models and steward-ownership, helping companies maintain their purpose and independence while scaling impact.

🌟 Impact Shakers: A global community dedicated to supporting and amplifying impact-driven entrepreneurs and initiatives

🌟 Considered Capital: Pioneers in mindful investment approaches that integrate regenerative principles, supporting businesses that create positive social and environmental impact while building long-term value.

🌟 Unity Effect: Facilitators of transformative learning and collaboration, helping organisations and individuals develop the capabilities needed for systemic change through innovative learning journeys and community building.

Each brings unique frameworks and approaches to transforming business practices. At Zebra Growth, we explore these questions of the intersection of marketing and growth through our Go-To-Ecosystem (GTE) Framework, which reimagines marketing as a source of emergence rather than extraction. By shifting from “market” to “ecosystem,” we recognise that sustainable growth depends on nurturing the entire web of relationships within a system. Our GTE Cards offer practical guidance for teams ready to implement these regenerative marketing practices.

While frameworks offer guidance, the true transformation lies in our collective reimagining of marketing’s role in society. As we evolve, we must fundamentally shift how we understand value, success, and our place in the web of life. What role will you play?

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Source References

From Go-to-Market to Go-to-Ecosystem: Reimagining How Impact-Driven Organisations Enter New Markets & Approach Growth (Free Resource)

Posted on December 4, 2024 by zebragrowth

Free Regenerative Go-to-eccosystem card deck

With four years of insights from Zebra Growth’s work with regenerative organisations, this framework helps you launch offerings, adapt messaging, and create partnerships that support both impact and financial health. It’s a practical, balanced path to achieving lasting growth and impact without compromising values.

As an impact entrepreneur, you’ve likely felt it—that disconnect between your mission to create positive change and the traditional marketing approaches that seem to pull you away from your values. You’re building solutions for a better world, yet the conventional growth playbook feels extractive, perhaps even toxic to everything you stand for.

The current marketing landscape has become a barren field. Traditional Go-to-Market (GTM) strategies, rooted in colonial mindsets of extraction and control, have created environments where teams wither and creativity struggles to take root.

Marketing departments have become pressure cookers of reactive decisions and fragmented campaigns, where creativity bows to campaign calendars, team wellbeing is sacrificed for pipeline targets, and deep stakeholder connections dissolve under the tyranny of monthly revenue goals. This cycle leads to burnout, complacency, and a frustrating sense of moving too slowly toward your impact potential.

Impact-driven organisations, despite their best intentions, find themselves adopting these same destructive patterns because they see no alternative path to growth. This extractive approach severs our connection to purpose and breaks down the delicate ecosystem of relationships that sustainable growth requires. When our teams lack the nutrients of strategic thinking and creative space, we’re not just underperforming—we’re actively contributing to a system that harms both people and the planet.

Yet marketing holds untapped transformative power in the present moment. While organisations set distant sustainability targets for 2030 and beyond, marketing is the daily catalyst that shapes how organisations show up in the world—influencing decisions, communities, and stakeholders with every campaign and customer interaction. We don’t need to wait decades for change when marketing has the potential to reshape business impact today.

Your journey toward regenerative marketing begins with understanding the tools that will guide your way. Let’s explore the Go-to-Ecosystem (GTE) framework—an alternative approach that puts life at the centre of how impact-driven organisations grow…

The Go-to-Ecosystem Framework and Tools

This insight led us to explore and develop the Go-to-Ecosystem (GTE) framework—an alternative approach that puts life at the centre of how impact-driven organisations grow. As you begin this journey, you’ll discover a framework that reimagines marketing as a source of abundance—where campaigns nurture communities, metrics measure flourishing, and growth strengthens the entire ecosystem. By shifting our language from “market” to “ecosystem,” we acknowledge the interconnected nature of sustainable growth and the importance of every relationship within it.

To support teams in adopting these principles, we’ve created the GTE Cards—a practical tool designed to help organisations learn and implement regenerative marketing practices. Available first in digital format and soon in physical form, these cards will be your guide, offering prompts and guidance for integrating regenerative thinking into daily operations and strategic planning.

Get the Card Deck Free

Building a Regenerative Alternative To Traditional GTM

This framework and its accompanying tools emerged from our recognition that impact-driven organisations needed a different approach to bringing products and services to market—one that would respect natural business rhythms, embrace sustainable growth patterns, and place human dignity at its centre. An approach that will help you break free from the toxicity of traditional marketing.

In collaboration with nRhythm and their With Life framework, and inspired by our role in the Regenerative Marketing Movement, we’ve developed an approach grounded in living systems principles—meaning it mirrors how healthy, natural systems function through resilience, interdependence, and adaptation. Living systems principles unlock a different way of working–just as a forest thrives through the smooth flow of nutrients between all its elements, organisational health depends on how effectively energy and information flow within teams.

This manifests in tangible ways: team motivation, connection to purpose, and excitement for responsibilities. Instead of rigid, extractive structures that prioritise short-term efficiency—often leading to burnout and depleted creativity—we consider how energy flows through an organisation, creating space for natural growth and innovation to emerge.

Over the past four years, your fellow impact-driven organisations have helped shape this vision through partnerships across the globe, from government accelerator programs and university classrooms, from early-stage startups to established B Corps. Our approach has been further shaped by deep collaboration with thought leaders in regenerative design, including our strategic partnership with the With Life Ecosystem by nRhythm and Capital Institute.

The shift to regenerative practices unfolds naturally. Each interaction has deepened our understanding of how living systems principles can transform marketing from a tool of extraction into a force for regeneration, catalysing not just organisational growth, but personal transformation within teams. Through this framework, you’ll discover how to build financial stability while fostering ecosystem health, finding that sweet spot where personal alignment meets impactful growth.

The GTE framework and cards represent a living system themselves—continuously evolving through practical application and community feedback. Built on principles of resilience, interdependence, and adaptability, they offer practical tools for sustainable growth aligned with your values. While we’ve seen promising results across continents and contexts, we remain transparent about its emergent nature, actively gathering case studies and learning alongside our community as we navigate this new territory together.

The Framework: A Living Systems Approach

As you navigate toward more aligned and sustainable growth, the Go-to-Ecosystem framework takes practical form through a set of digital cards—a format chosen to make these principles accessible and actionable in daily work. Each card becomes a stepping stone on your journey, offering guidance to align marketing with purpose, while honouring your values and wellbeing.

Each card builds upon the last, guiding regenerative leaders and marketeers through a structured yet adaptable process. This approach recognises the deep scaling potential that emerges when we honour the interdependencies within our ecosystem—reducing costs and effort while nurturing organic, sustained growth that benefits entire communities.

The journey begins with the foundational ‘Essence’ card. Created in collaboration with the With Life Approach, this card guides you through exercises that ground your marketing activities in your organisation’s core beliefs and purpose—preventing the all-too-common disconnect between marketing actions and mission that leaves many impact entrepreneurs feeling frustrated and misaligned.

The framework and accompanying cards unfold across three interconnected phases that mirror natural rhythms, supporting your path to sustainable growth:

Ponder: An annual practice of deep reflection where you step back to align your vision and map your ecosystem relationships. Through thoughtful consideration rather than rushed strategy, this phase helps you explore your essence, release anxiety, and ensure your goals remain rooted in your foundational beliefs and values. The cards in this phase guide you through connecting your strategic vision with your deeper purpose.
Prepare: A seasonal planning phase where teams transform insights into action with mindful readiness. During this quarterly cycle, you’ll design your presence, nurture partnerships with intention, and create marketing structures that energise rather than drain your organisation. The cards help you define priorities and craft resonant messaging that aligns with your ecosystem.
Play: The phase of active experimentation and engagement, including essential periods of rest and renewal—because regenerative growth requires both action and recovery. Through iterative cycles, you’ll test ideas, launch initiatives, and adapt based on feedback while staying responsive to your ecosystem. The cards support this dynamic process of meaningful engagement while honouring the need for sustainable pacing.

Who This Framework Serves

When you’re building solutions for a better world, every marketing decision should move you closer to your impact goals, not further away. These tools resonate with organisations at different stages who share a common challenge: bringing their impact-driven offerings to the world without compromising their values or wellbeing.

We developed these tools for change-makers like you who recognise the potential in your offerings but find yourself caught between growth and purpose. You might have tried everything you can think of, exhausted your current approaches, and now need a structured pathway forward. Perhaps you’re feeling the strain of financial instability, or your current marketing approach lacks the structure needed to create meaningful traction. Maybe you’re preparing to launch something new and want to begin with integrity, aligning health and financial goals from day one.

The framework and cards are your companions when your team feels disconnected from purpose and drained by constant stress, when you’re tired of reactive, uncoordinated approaches to growth, or when you seek to create genuine impact rather than just maximising profit.

How To Make The Most Of The Framework

Your journey into regenerative marketing deserves thoughtful guidance. To support your exploration of the GTE framework and cards, you’ll find everything needed to get started: practical guides for using the cards and clear pathways for implementation that align with your values and goals.

Each card in the framework mirrors the interconnected nature of living systems, structured to guide you from purpose through to practical action:

The Purpose section grounds you in ‘why –connecting each marketing activity to your deeper mission
The Outcome section reveals what becomes possible when marketing flows naturally–showing you clear indicators of success
The How section provides practical steps that honour both growth and wellbeing – giving you actionable pathways forward

Begin by setting aside 1-2 hours to familiarise yourself with the core principles and explore the first set of cards. We recommend starting with the Essence card and moving through each phase at a pace that works for your organisation. These tools aren’t a quick fix or rigid template; they’re an invitation to thoughtfully reshape how your organisation approaches growth while maintaining financial stability and team wellbeing.

You can explore the framework as a leader seeking to chart a new direction, with your team to align purpose and action, or alongside partners to strengthen ecosystem relationships. Use it to guide specific projects and launches, or as a foundation for long-term organisational transformation.

As these tools continue to evolve, we’re learning alongside organisations like yours. The GTE Framework and cards represent our first iteration, built from our experience implementing regenerative marketing approaches with clients globally. We’re continuously gathering insights and refining our approach through real-world application.

If these principles resonate with you and you’re seeking more hands-on guidance, we’d love to explore how we can support your regenerative marketing journey. Whether you’re looking for structured implementation support or simply want to learn more, let’s connect and discuss how these tools can serve your unique context.

Join other impact-driven organisations exploring this regenerative approach to growth. Download the free digital cards and begin your journey today.

Get the Card Deck Free

Impact Shakers Lightning Talk: The next generation of marketing is regenerative

Posted on September 6, 2023 by zebragrowth

This summer at the Impact Shakers Summit in Brussels our co-founder Moh shared his journey to discovering regenerative marketing. Watch Moh delve into the art of nurturing businesses in a way that not only sustains but also regenerates, breathing new life into industries and ecosystems alike.

What’s the Impact Shakers Summit?

The Impact Shakers Summit is the inaugural European startup event with a sharp focus on inclusive entrepreneurship and impact. This significant summit united key players in the innovation ecosystem, all dedicated to advancing inclusivity and sustainability for our shared future.

Who are Impact Shakers?

Impact Shakers form connections, foster growth, and invest wisely. In their eyes, entrepreneurship serves as the engine of change. Yet, they recognise that unraveling intricate challenges demands a tapestry of diverse minds. That’s where the Impact Shakers ecosystem shines, tilting the playing field and rewriting the entrepreneurial story.

Their mission spans the life journey of impact-driven enterprises, from the spark of inspiration to the flourishing stages of growth and successful exits. In this transformative journey, they partner with both visionary entrepreneurs and savvy investors to make the world a better place, one step at a time.

Start your regenerative marketing journey today

Unlearn the toxic and outdated business paradigm and embrace a regenerative growth marketing approach.

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Soulful Content Creation that Elevates Early and Scaling Regenerative Ventures to Amplify Their Voice

Posted on April 19, 2023 by lee

Introducing our “Regenerative Design & Communicate” Services

In the beautiful complexity of life, nature offers us valuable lessons in resilience and adaptability. At Zebra Growth, we are inspired by the natural world to create marketing and branding stories that not only connect with people’s hearts but also help heal our planet.

Our mindful audiences face a daily barrage of marketing messages, making it essential for impact-driven ventures to produce content that is both extraordinary and deeply meaningful. The rise of AI and chatGPT has only increased this challenge, filling our customers’ minds with dull content lacking substance.

For impact ventures to truly thrive, they must clearly communicate their value propositions. Inspired by mother nature herself, our “Regenerative Design & Communicate” services provide tailored solutions for non-profits, social enterprises, and impact-driven businesses while embracing elegance, authenticity, and honest expression in our conscious approach.

What can you expect from our services?

A team of experts in design, copywriting, and website development, inspired by nature’s adaptability and regenerative processes

Customized, eco-centric solutions for your organisation’s unique needs
Flexible options, including one-time projects, pay-as-you-go services, or retainer packages
Consistent, high-quality content that embodies your brand identity and ecological values
Meaningful, data-driven content creation with a focus on regeneration and healing
Measurable results that align with your goals and foster a healthier planet

Now, let’s delve into the details.

Our “design and communicate” services provide impact-led ventures access to the copywriting, design and website development talent they need in the most flexible way.

There are three easy ways to access this support:

One off projects

Our core team works closely with you to create compelling messaging and design. Working with an extended team of specialist freelancers, we also support the production of branded videos, product photography and experience design.

We take a holistic approach to communication, ensuring that your brand is applied consistently across all channels. From website design and development, to brochure and deck design, we offer a wide range of brand assets.

Take a look at a few recent examples of one-off projects below:

Accelerating an end to homeless with Crisis Venture Studio – Brand deck design and copy

Facilitating flexible working with a global network of on-demand workspaces – Video production

Pay-as-you-go

We provide impact ventures with an on-demand option to choose the services you need when you need them. We can help with brand guideline creation, landing page design, and copywriting.

Pay-as-you-go services are ideal for occasional needs where flexibility is a high priority..

Whether it’s a one off landing page design like this one for Intelligent Growth Solutions, or flexible video production for Grand Bequest, we will most likely have an option to suit your needs.

Retainer

Our retainer services are for those looking for more regular support. We provide content packages to ensure your brand message is always on point so your customers hear from you consistently.

Whether it’s SEO copywriting, or regular design support, our retainer customers enjoy discounted pricing that isn’t available with our other packages.

Check out this vertical farming blog we produced as part of a retainer package to create content for technical products and services that boosts SEO

Embrace the resilience and adaptability of nature with our “Regenerative Design & Communicate” services, tailored to help your impact-driven venture heal, grow, and thrive.

So, what type of work do we specialise in?

Brand Guidelines:

Do you already have a strong brand identity, but find that your communications are still inconsistent across different channels? Establishing a clear set of rules and standards will provide continuity and allow your brand to shine. We’ll make sure your brand is represented consistently to build trust with your audience.

UX/UI Digital Design Systems:

Do you already have a robust set of brand guidelines? Take them to the next level with a digital design system. Remove the guess-work with a working tool to ensure a seamless user experience, from initial interaction to final conversion. Design that is intuitive, functional and visually appealing.

Website and Product Design and Development:

We specialise in creating custom-designed websites and products that are beautiful and effective in driving business growth and customer engagement.

Photography and Videography Production:

Capture your brand’s story in visually and emotionally compelling ways through video and photography, whether it’s short social reels, or a long form documentary.

Print Media Design and Copywriting:

Highly effective print media that engages your audience and communicates your brand’s message. Our holistic approach ensures a consistent brand experience between the physical and digital worlds.

Events and Experiences Design:

The spaces we occupy and invite people into are an extension of your brand and a physical and experiential representation of it. We craft rich brand environments that leave a positive lasting memory for people to take home.

Deck Design and Copywriting:

Create compelling visual presentations that effectively communicate your brand’s message and story. We understand the pressure to impress investors, and a well crafted presentation can make a world of difference to communicate your mission.

SEO Blog Research, Copy and Design:

Our experienced content creators provide research-driven blog copy and design to attract organic traffic and drive engagement.

Newsletter Copy and Design:

Eye-catching and effective newsletters that deliver value to your audience and keep them engaged with your brand.

Watch the video below to learn more about the different types of copywriting we can support with:

We’ve covered the what, now let’s explore the why…

Why is content creation important for your impact venture?

Content creation is a vital aspect of any impact venture’s success. It’s the backbone that supports the connection between your organisation and your audience. Without it, your mission and vision can easily get lost in the noise of the digital world.

One of the key benefits of content creation for impact-driven organisations is its ability to inspire action and create meaningful change. With the right messaging, you can attract individuals who share your values and encourage them to take action towards a common goal. This tribe effect can create momentum, and allow your mission to be realised much quicker.

Consistent and high-quality content also plays a critical role in establishing trust with an audience. By producing valuable and informative content on a regular basis, you can establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry and build credibility. A strong content strategy helps you to attract new supporters, and keep existing ones.

Moreover, investing in content creation helps you to create a strong brand identity. By developing a consistent tone of voice and visual style, you can create a recognisable brand that continues to strengthen over time. A strong brand identity will help you differentiate from competitors and build trust.

Who’s content game is strong?

Guayaki is a regenerative brand that creates sustainable products with environmental and social well-being in mind. Their content creation strategy aligns with their brand mission, and it reflects their commitment to sustainability and regenerative practices.

Here are a few ways in which Guayaki’s content creation strategy is doing good:

Educating consumers: Guayaki’s content educates consumers about regenerative agriculture and sustainable practices, and shares information about the environmental benefits of their products.

Highlighting their values: Guayaki’s content showcases their commitment to sustainability and social responsibility through their mission statement, sustainability goals, and progress updates on social media.

Storytelling: Using storytelling, they connect with their audience and showcase the impact of their products and practices, such as their partnership with the Ache Guayaki community in Paraguay.

Visuals: Their content includes visually appealing images and videos that highlight the natural beauty of the environment and the communities they work with.

Patagonia are leading the way with SEO content

Patagonia’s successful SEO strategy can be attributed to their focus on creating high-quality content that aligns with their brand values and mission to have a positive impact on the environment and society. They use a variety of formats, including articles, videos, and infographics, to educate their audience on topics related to sustainability and ethical manufacturing practices.

Patagonia also pays attention to technical SEO best practices, such as optimising their website structure and ensuring mobile-friendliness and fast page load speeds. Their commitment to environmental and social responsibility has helped them earn backlinks from high-authority websites, increasing their domain authority and improving their search engine rankings.

This SEO success is reflected in their website traffic, with over 10 million monthly visits, and their large number of backlinks from over 120,000 referring domains. Patagonia’s SEO success has also been recognized by industry publications, including winning the award for Best Integrated Campaign at the US Search Awards in 2018.

How can you work with us?

We have a simple 5 step process to establish if we are the right fit to support you with your content needs:

Step 1 – You’ll start with a 90 minute diagnosis call with one of our growth experts. Be completely authentic, we want to get under the layers, to find out your ‘why’ and what’s holding you back. This gives us a clear understanding of your needs and how we could help.

Step 2 – This is the start of the magic. We’ll present our solution to you, then together we co-create a proposal that fits your needs.

Step 3 – Onboarding plan – Once the proposal is accepted, It’s time to get aligned and connected. Your account manager will arrange a kick off call to introduce you to the project team, gather all necessary documents, and select the tools required for project success.

Step 4 – Most of our projects have an element of strategy to them. This could involve a few interactive workshops, followed by our strategists preparing a detailed project plan.

Step 5 – The final stage is where the rubber meets the road. It’s time for implementation and our team of experts will get to work delivering the project and realising your goals.

Your team

Led by our Senior designer Keiron, our Design & Communicate pod includes designers and copywriters from our core team, supported by an extended group of specialist vetted freelancers with experience ranging from website development, technical SEO, video production and motion graphics.

Here’s a video of Keiron talking about our in-house team and extended team of specialist freelancers.

Still unsure if we’re the right fit?

We cover a broad range of specialisms, yet there are a few areas where we have certainly earned our stripes.

Regenerative marketing

Combining the marketing tools from Silicon Valley, with regeneration. Taking inspiration from nature itself. We know our stuff when it comes to growing brands and building movements, but our primary focus is to use marketing to heal people and the planet.

B2B growth marketing

Build predictable B2B sales and growth strategies for your impact driven organisation. With a strong understanding of buyer behaviour, an obsession about full funnel marketing and a track record in delivering high pressure account based marketing strategies, we’re a trusted partner for some of the world’s leading impact brands.

B2C growth marketing

Build your B2C brand, grow your community, and achieve MoM growth. Whether you’re an E-commerce brand or provider of SAAS solutions, creating a community of advocates and building virality effects into your product offering are some of the challenges you will face. Get more customers, keep them for longer, and rely less on paid acquisition channels.

Impact branding and communications

Communicate innovative products, stories and innovations to educate and inspire the market and drive systemic change. Building a brand that is both distinctive and regenerative is tough and the language we choose to communicate the social and environmental challenges we face is more important than ever. We help simplify your message to build trust with your customers.

Sarah Hopley

Crisis Venture Studio

“We asked Zebra Growth to assist us with the design of an important deck, and the team and final product exceeded our expectations. They were professional, friendly and helpful so we really enjoyed working together. We especially appreciated the persistence to understand our complex models to accurately portray these through design. Thanks again!”

Finally, check out our pricing

Get in touch

And that’s it! Hopefully you now have a better understanding of how our “Design & Communicate” pod can help your impact organisation.

We understand the challenges that come with growing a regenerative business. It’s all too easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day and lose sight of the bigger picture.

Our growth diagnosis is a free tool that allows us to identify bottlenecks, share insights to overcome them and signpost you to the most suitable solutions to increase revenue and create a roadmap to maximising impact.

Book your growth diagnosis

How to start experimenting with growth marketing: An overview of the G.R.O.W.S. process

Posted on January 30, 2023 by zebragrowth

In this article, we’ll introduce you to growth marketing as a driving force for regenerative growth in social impact startups. We’ll look at how the G.R.O.W.S. process can save you precious time and resources, while helping to grow your startup effectively.

We break down what growth marketing is and each step of the G.R.O.W.S. process. We’ll give practical examples at each stage to help you optimise your growth for maximum social impact.

We’ve even included our free Growth Experiment Planning Tool at the end of the article, so you can start running your own experiments.

What we’ll cover

What is growth marketing?
Traditional marketing VS Growth marketing
The 70/30 Experimentation Rule
Experimenting with growth marketing
How Lean Startup methodology inspired Growth Marketing
The G.R.O.W.S. process
Getting Started with Growth Marketing

Growth Marketing Experimentation Glossary

Before we dive right into what growth marketing is, let’s get a quick rundown of some key terms that’ll pop up in this article:

Experiment – Testing out different marketing techniques, product features & brand messages in a rapid, data-driven manner, to identify which ones are the most effective at driving user growth and impact.

Growth Cycle – The lifetime of the G.R.O.W.S. process from start to finish (steps 1-5).

Growth Lead – A dedicated team member that makes growth the central focus for everyone in your startup, they are responsible for embedding the process into your team and running experiments.

Growth Lever – The immediate improvements and processes you can implement to drive growth for your startup – these are quick wins for your business that have the most impact.

Hypothesis – The testable solution to improve your startup’s growth by focusing on improving one key area of your business.

Iterative – The process of running multiple experiments where the results from the previous experiment inform the starting point for the next one.

What is Growth Marketing?

Growth Marketing is the process of running a series of experiments and implementing processes over a short period of time. It aims at growing your company’s reach and revenue through cost-effective, creative strategies.

By approaching your marketing strategy as a series of experiments with a quick turnaround, social impact startups can discover the best methods for optimising their growth without being cost and resource intensive.

And Growth marketing is about approaching your growth with a curious mindset, with the focus on one key area where your business can improve, then testing this assumption in the shortest time possible.

We’ve touched on it here, but let’s now look at what sets growth marketing apart from traditional methods.

Traditional Marketing VS Growth Marketing

We’ll start here with an offbeat similarity between traditional and growth marketing. They’re both about assumptions. Marketers need to make assumptions about how potential customers will respond to their value proposition and product, that’s kind of the whole idea behind a marketing strategy.

But, the main difference here is what we do with these assumptions. Traditional marketers sometimes run the risk of basing their entire strategy on assumptions they’ve made and put this into a lengthy, expensive campaign. In these cases, they are essentially trying to predict the outcome of a constantly shifting market.

So is this the best option for a newly formed social startup looking to increase their reach and steadily grow their business?

Of course not. Most startups need to focus on staying afloat, let alone run an expensive campaign that may not yield the results they assumed. The time and energy of such campaigns just isn’t worth the potential growth your business could see.

This is where growth marketing comes in. Like we’ve mentioned, growth marketing is the iterative process of running a series of rapid experiments and measuring their success over a short period of time.

By doing so, your startup can effectively test your hypothesis and measure outcomes far quicker and adapt to a changing market. And the benefit here for early startups is growth marketing is designed to be fast, efficient and cost effective.

So by beginning to experiment with growth marketing, social impact startups can have a faster time to market, a higher return on investment and the capacity to scale marketing activity that yields positive results quickly when compared to traditional marketing methods.

We’ve only scratched the surface of growth marketing here but if you’re feeling extra curious, we delve deeper into ethical marketing and social impact in Ethical Growth Marketing 101.

So you’re interested in experimenting with growth marketing? Great! But how do you decide how much time to spend on this and maximise your growth potential?

The 70/30 Experimentation Rule

The main blocker for early startups and novice growth marketers is the thought that running experiments will be too costly and time consuming. Luckily we already know that isn’t the case.

But you can’t base your entire growth strategy on experimentation alone. That’s why it’s really important to follow the 70/30 rule when it comes to experimentation.

When planning your growth strategy, you’re aiming to identify the main growth levers you can pull to gain early traction and quick wins for your growth.

70% of your time, resource and budget investment should focus on pulling the 1 or 2 growth levers we’ve identified at the growth strategy stage.

By doing so, we can focus on driving early traction that creates runaway momentum and motivation for your team.

Spend the remaining 30% on embedding the growth marketing mindset and experimentation process into your startup.

This is where we begin running rapid experiments across product, brand, sales and marketing to create a roadmap to diversify our growth levers. It’s all about optimising your growth here, as we’re mitigating the risk of our early growth levers reaching saturation point.

By taking the time to embed the growth marketing process into your startup, you’ll instil an innovation mindset that unlocks the next big growth lever towards and beyond product-market fit.

Particularly in the early days of a startup, this laser focus is critical in coordinating limited budgets, resources and stakeholders to focus on what matters the most.

Now that we’ve got an idea of how much time we should devote to experimentation, let’s see what that looks like in growth marketing.

Experimenting with Growth Marketing

It might seem daunting but the real success in growth marketing comes from following the process over results.

When beginning to experiment with growth marketing, it’s important to remember that you’ll be running consecutive experiments over short periods of time.

So, if your first, second, or even seventh experiment doesn’t yield the results you expect, that’s totally fine – it’s part of the process.

According to Grow with Ward for first time growth marketers (or growth hackers as they put it) having 1 in every 10 experiments succeed is considered a great result. For seasoned growth marketers, this can increase to 1 in 3 experiments.

We’ve thrown the word around a few times now, but what is experimenting with growth marketing?

Let’s say you’ve noticed that the open rate on your newsletter has steadily dropped over the past 3 months. You’ve highlighted the issue and decide to A/B test the next newsletter using a different subject line.

The following month you find that Subject line B increased your open rate 30%. Using the data collected from the A/B test, you now know how to effectively increase your engagement with your community and reach a wider audience. Congratulations! You’ve just run a successful experiment.

Of course, that doesn’t mean your newsletter is now perfect, you might then realise you’re losing engagement and subscribers once they’ve clicked through. So it’s back to the drawing board for another hypothesis and experiment.

This is the essence of growth marketing. You consider one key pain point in your business that you can improve. Then, look at what action you can take in the shortest amount of time, using the least resources and within your team’s capabilities to tackle this issue.

Before we get into the process behind how you actually run growth experiments, it’s important to consider where the idea of growth marketing came from in the first place.

How Lean Startup methodology inspired Growth Marketing

It’s no surprise that growth marketing is a great fit for scaling growth for startups. The base principles are inspired by lean startup methodology, as set out by Eric Reis. The lean startup is the most fundamental framework that has taken over the startup world over the last decade.

The principles of Build, Measure, Learn are the core of lean startup. Taking an iterative approach to your ideas, being open to testing your hypothesis and knowing when to pivot is crucial to your startup’s success.

And it’s now adopted in the marketing world and, more specifically, in growth marketing channels. The method at the centre of growth marketing is the G.R.O.W.S. process.

The G.R.O.W.S. process

Adopted from the GrowthTribe, the G.R.O.W.S. process is the core process that every growth marketer or team needs to adopt, over anything else. Developing from the lean startup model, it’s the blueprint used to efficiently optimise your startup’s growth.

And the process is set out in simple 6 simple steps;

Gather Ideas
Rank Ideas
Outline Experiments
Work, Work, Work
Study Data (see where we get G.R.O.W.S.)
Repeat

Like we’ve mentioned, the important thing isn’t to spend weeks pouring resources into a lengthy campaign. It’s about giving yourself over to the process and continuously coming up with new hypotheses, testing them out and determining what works and what doesn’t.

Typically, the entire process should last anywhere between 2 weeks and up to 2 months. But we’ll get to that later.

The key here is embedding the G.R.O.W.S. process into everything your startup does. Your priority is following this process of generating fresh ideas, continuously analysing the data and learning from the results.

In doing so, you’ll gain a far better understanding of how to optimise your strategy for growth, without wasting resources.

So what makes the process so important to social impact startups?

While following this process, it’s essential for growth marketers to have a central metric to optimise for.

We can see here that in the centre of the iterative process, we have social impact. This is particularly important for you Changemakers. Since the ultimate goal of your startup is creating maximum impact in balance with profitability.

Channelling social impact at the centre of this, then, ensures that your growth is always built around the key purpose of your business and help to push our society towards a regenerative economy.

Now that we’ve got an overview of the process, let’s look at each step in more detail.

1. Gather Ideas

The first step of the process is to gather ideas. This is where you’ll sit down and consider one specific pain point where you see an opportunity for growth and generate ideas to tackle this.

We’re really wanting to consider what specific value we’re offering to potential customers or partners, at a specific part of the funnel. Then, we want to look at how we are planning to communicate this to them.

It may seem obvious but a pivotal step is to gather your team and allow everyone to give their input in the planning process.

It’s important here to have a diverse range of opinions in the session. In our 10 Step Masterclass to achieve growth in 2023, our co-founder Moh suggests:

“The Gathering ideas stage usually consists of a 2 to 3 hour meeting including multiple team members that are cross departmental…you as a Growth Lead have the responsibility to choose the best people who can show a fair representation of your diverse team and mindsets that could feed into growth ideas and hypotheses.”

So It’s useful here to use a collaborative tool for brainstorming. At Zebra, we use Miro Boards as a great way of getting everyone in the team involved. And the added bonus is having all of your ideas collected in a single board that’s accessible for everyone.

Useful tip: Using a Miro Board is a great way of gathering your ideas. We’d also suggest keeping notes throughout the session and finalising this in a report to make the next step easier!

You don’t want to spend too long gathering ideas. Choice is good, but don’t get bogged down on the small stuff! We’d recommend this step taking 1 – 2 days, including your meeting and follow up report.

2. Rank Ideas

So you’ve found the focus for your experiment and had an insightful brainstorming session with your team and an abundance of great ideas to build your growth?

Fantastic! You’re now ready to take those ideas and rank those ideas.

So how do you know a good idea from a bad one? Just kidding, there’s no bad ideas. But there are ideas that can be easily achieved and have a big impact on your growth.

To rank ideas, we Zebras recommend using the I.C.E. matrix (Yep, it’s another acronym). The I.C.E. matrix consists of Impact, Confidence and Ease.

The I.C.E. matrix is a way to weigh the different hypotheses you’ve gathered. You do this by measuring the impact it could have on your growth against a potential ease level and the ‘confidence’ of your team.

Let’s take a quick look at each of these.

Not to be confused with the social impact you’re trying to achieve, the Impact you’re measuring is on the growth of your business. There’s no use in focusing on something that will bring little results. Remember, we’re optimising for the most efficient growth in the shortest amount of time – think big!

What we mean by Confidence is does your team really believe that this idea will have a strong impact on your growth. Or rather, do you truly have the confidence that this idea will work?

While Ease is where you ask yourself how complex is the idea and if you can achieve (or prove) it within the short timeframe.

When using the I.C.E. matrix, it’s important to remember the 20-80 rule. You want to put in 20% effort to achieve 80% output. We look at this in more detail in our previous article.

You’ll want to have a similar meeting as when gathering ideas and once you’ve settled on the best hypothesis to test, you’re ready for the next step.

3. Outline Experiments

Now that you’ve got a shiny new hypothesis and you’re itching to test it out, we need to outline the experiment. This is another key stage, particularly for the Growth Lead.

For this stage, you’ll need to clearly outline what the purpose of your experiment is. It’s best to do this in a 1 – 2 page report. The key things to note here are:

The purpose of the experiment.
What is the timeline of the experiment?
What are the outcomes?
What is the main metric you’re measuring for validation/non validation?

This stage not only solidifies your idea but it should inform the implementation stage.

It’s important here to go into detail of what you expect through the experiment and clearly communicate this. This way, every team member involved has an easy understanding of how the experiment will run.

We know we’re laying it on thick here. But, particularly for new growth marketers, having a strong reference point throughout your early (and future) experiments will keep you on the right track and having your experiment running smoothly.

Along with the previous 2 steps, we’d suggest spending no more than 1 week planning. But make sure not to rush through the steps and only proceed to testing your hypothesis once everyone has a clear understanding of your outline.

Just last week we outlined 3 experiments for one of our clients and our Senior Growth Marketer, Patrick, sent a Loom video detailing the outlines to all team members involved in the project. Loom’s another handy tool for growth marketers that ensures your team is aligned even when working across departments at a busy startup.

Now, let’s get to work!

4. Work, Work, Work

This is the step we’ve all been waiting for. It’s now time to run your experiment and test your hypothesis.

The reason why there’s three works is that it signifies the pace you’ll be working at. This is the lengthiest step but it’s where working fast creates results.

Moh discusses this further at our 10 Step Masterclass to achieve growth in 2023:

“This is where speed matters in growth marketing. It’s about asking yourself how can we execute as fast as possible and gather the minimum amount of data in the shortest time to validate or invalidate our hypothesis…In all the other stages of the process you want to zoom out and take your time. But within step 4, you want to try to execute as fast as possible.”

So having a strong outline for reference, you’re really wanting to put a focus on working quickly to gather the minimum amount of data.

Of course, we’re not saying you want as little data as possible. Rather, you’re gathering as much data as needed to prove (or disprove) your hypothesis within the time limit of the experiment.

Depending on the experiment, this step should last between 1 – 3 weeks. For first time growth marketers, you wouldn’t want to take longer than. The important thing when starting out is that you’re embedding the G.R.O.W.S. process into your way of working and learning how to use the process to achieve maximum growth.

It’s also important during this stage to focus on the work, but of course you’ll be wanting to meet regularly to review the progress of the experiment.

We’d recommend a weekly meeting per experiment you’re running. This ensures all team members involved are aligned and you’re keeping on schedule as set out in your outline from step 3. There’s also the added benefit that you might already be able to find some insights that’ll inform the next step of the process.

If you want to learn more about how you can achieve your growth goals this year, why not sign-up to our 2-part Masterclass running at the end of February.

5. Study Data

Congratulations, you’ve now run your first experiment! The hard part’s over and it’s time to look at your results.

Studying data is crucial to growth marketing – how else are you going to validate your experiments?

This is a more straightforward (but pivotal) step. Here, you’ll analyse the data that you’ve measured over the length of the experiment in step 4. What we’re really doing here is finding out if your hypothesis is proven.

Remember – if you find the results invalidate your hypothesis, that’s totally normal! The focus is on studying the data to gather insights and key learnings that will inform your next growth cycle or experiment.

The important thing here is remaining curious and open to understanding the results. If the results aren’t what you expected – why? What could you do differently? What have you learned about your target segment? Or have you discovered something in your value proposition that isn’t being communicated?

These questions aren’t exhaustive, of course. They’re just a way to get you to start thinking about how growth marketing uses data to continuously improve how you manage your growth.

As a Growth Lead, it’s your job to collect these results and share them with your team. Collaboration is key here, again (notice a theme here?).

For the final week of the cycle, we’d recommend taking time to collate the results and have a retrospective meeting with everyone involved in the experiment. This allows you to consider what worked, reflect on your insights and plan how these results will inform your next cycle.

6. Repeat

We’re sure you know where we’re going with this but it felt rude to leave the final step of the G.R.O.W.S process out. The last step in the growth cycle is to do it all over again.

Of course, you’re not just starting from scratch, you’re now armed with solid data from the previous cycle and have a clearer understanding of the next logical steps for future experiments.

For the entire cycle (steps 1 – 5) of the G.R.O.W.S. process, the total time spent is really dependent on the size of your team and the maturity of you adopting growth marketing. Usually, this spans from between 1 – 2 months per cycle period.

And you can, of course, run multiple experiments at the same time. But for first time growth marketers, we’d highly recommend beginning with just 1 experiment at a time.

This will really help embed the process into your startup, whilst shifting the mindset of your team. And, in time, this will allow for greater results.

Growth Marketing & the G.R.O.W.S. Process Recap

So let’s do a quick recap of what we’ve discussed in this article:

Growth Marketing is the process of running a series of experiments and implementing processes over a short period of time

Growth marketing can offer a faster time to market, a higher ROI and isn’t as cost or resource intensive as traditional marketing

You want to focus 70% of your time resource & budget on pulling the growth levers that gain traction for your startup and 30% embedding the growth marketing mindset and experimenting

Lean Startup methodology of Build, Measure, Learn inspired growth marketing

Growth marketers use the G.R.O.W.S. process to optimise their growth

The 6 steps to the G.R.O.W.S. process are Gather Ideas, Rank Ideas, Outline Experiments, Work x3, Study data

A full cycle of the process should last between 1 – 2 months

First time growth marketers should run 1 experiment at a time

Proving 1 in every 10 experiments when starting out is a success

Focus on one key area to improve, don’t just look for maximum results

Collaboration is key to the success of experiments and including teams from across departments generate better hypothesis

Embedding the process into your startup and adopting a curious mindset will allow you to optimise your growth towards maximum social impact

Getting Started with Growth Marketing

Now that you’re clear on what growth marketing is and we’ve talked you through the G.R.O.W.S. process, let’s see how you can get started.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a solo impact founder or a growing team of Changemakers. You can start experimenting with growth marketing right away!

Of course, the first step is to introduce the idea of growth marketing to your team and familiarise them with the concept (this article should come in handy!).

If you’re wanting to expand your own understanding, we’d recommend doing some further research and Grow with Ward gives some great insights into the subject.

Then, it’s important to appoint your Growth Lead, if you don’t already have one. They are responsible for running the experiments, leading ideation sessions and ensuring your team is aligned throughout the projects. Plus they’ll keep track of your progress and results.

When your team is inspired and ready to get experimenting, we recommend making sure you have the right tools for the job. We’ve already mentioned some of our favourites for the different steps of the process.

We know that getting started is the most daunting part of the process. That’s why we’ve also created our free Growth Experiment Planning Tool.

This includes everything you need to start mapping out your own experiments. You’ll receive:

Hypothesis Planner and ICE Scoring Template
Experiment Tracker Template
Ideation Miro Board Template

And that’s it! You’re now ready to start optimising your growth for maximum social impact with growth marketing.

Ready to experiment with growth marketing but don’t know where to start? We’d love to collaborate! Get in touch to discuss your startup’s growth today.

Ethical Growth Marketing 101: Combining Growth hacking With Social Impact

Posted on March 22, 2022 by dwinnbrown

Within this article, we will go through the 6 principles of ethical growth marketing, and explain how social impact startups that are building the new, purpose-driven economy, need to create sustainable growth (with a limit) to make this movement the norm of our economy.

Want to get straight to the 6 principles? Click here and skip the background info!

Or are you in a more curious mood and want to deep dive into what growth marketing is all about? Just keep reading on.

Entering the purpose economy

Socially focused startups and business models are the future of business. According to The Entrepreneur, social impact businesses are on the rise and are attracting the top talent as well as more investment appetite.

We are moving away from the “get rich, to donate” model – also known as CSR, and are moving into an economy that places positive social and environmental change at the core of business and entrepreneurship. *Finally* you’re probably thinking.

According to Aaron Hurst, the foremost expert on the science of purpose and fulfilment at work, the purpose economy is “an economy that is driven and organised around the creation of purpose for people, not just information, goods and services.”

But startups that are focusing on purpose often struggle to survive, yet alone reach their ambitious, life-changing and often systemic goals. The constant internal battle between social impact and revenue generation is something that often feels uncomfortable. Yet relying on donations and grants would just take us back to the charity model – one that has been facing massive criticism about its efficiency for decades.

Taken from Silicon Valley’s greatest minds, social impact firms are now incorporating lean, high-growth, and data-driven based innovation to their mix, taking lessons from Dropbox, Twitter, Netflix, and a slew of other “successful” digital titans. The three basic pillars of a lean company, according to Fast Company, are to “think large, start small, and persistently pursue impact.” However, it looks as though the wave hasn’t quite caught up when it comes to marketing one’s business.

And so, we introduce you to an adaptation of the lean impact which can be applied to a company’s marketing function; Ethical Growth Marketing. I’m sure you’re probably now starting to think ‘wait, how can growth be ethical?’ or ‘we need de-growth, not more growth’.

And you aren’t completely incorrect. Emphasis on “completely”.

The fact is that for a social impact business, and especially a startup, to create the positive change it is relentlessly seeking, brand, revenue and impact growth is a must-have for its survival.

We aren’t talking about growth with no limits or at all costs. We aren’t talking about growth for the massively disproportionately few who own the company. We aren’t talking about using manipulation to grow. We also aren’t talking about making the biggest corporations of this world grow even more, so that they can ensure that their shareholders keep getting their hefty payouts at the end of each quarter.

We are talking about the widely tabooed topic of revenue generating and impact focused growth that impact startups rely on to survive and make a positive change.

Okay so let’s get into it, what actually is growth marketing?

Traditional marketing meant you needed to plan ahead. You needed to predict. You needed to assume. Whilst most marketers have been applying this long-term planning approach, the most innovative businesses out there noticed that it wasn’t the most effective way they could adapt to their market.

‘How can you grow as your market grows, and the environment changes?’ is a question you’re undoubtedly thinking about right now.

When Sean Ellis became VP of Growth at Dropbox in 2008/2009, he focused on this question. According to Houston, he helped the SAAS firm go from a situation where their cost per acquisition was costing them money to one where Dropbox’s customer acquisition soared by more than 60%.

So, what did Sean Ellis bring to the table that was so different to traditional marketing? It was all in the approach. He adopted theories from the Lean Startup by Eric Reis, a methodology that allows today’s startups to launch and grow their organisation in a lean, iterative manner.

You might think – argh. Growth marketing sounds cool, but it’s not something we have the budget for. One day, we might. That’s where most early stage startups miss the point. Growth marketing primarily focuses on applying the Pareto law throughout all activity and decisions.This means that growth marketers should constantly be thinking “what is the 20% input that will give me 80% of the output?” They also run varying tactics, campaigns, messaging, channels and product iterations, as a set of experiments.

This primarily means one thing – marketing activity in the long run becomes a lot more cost effective.

“With growth marketing, brands have a blueprint to test frequently, learn quickly and adapt effectively. Growth marketing takes the traditional aspects of marketing, like print, TV, radio and billboards, and shifts the conversation from “how can we attract our customer?” to “how can we keep our customers longer?” With this new conversation comes the ability to reach your target audience through data-backed decisions. The result of this? Long-term, sustainable growth“ – Forbes, 2021

We will dive deeper into what frameworks are used by growth marketers that you can start using this week, but first, let us explain what a Zebra is.

What is a Zebra?

What does a business actually serve in today’s society? Is getting rich as an entrepreneur or investor really going to give you that fulfilment you’re seeking? Has overconsumption and growth at all costs been the destined outcome of capitalism? These are all questions we know are weighing on your mind everyday. We know the feeling too well…

A new wave of conscious system changers, entrepreneurs and early pioneering businesses all around the world see things differently though. *Shout out to all you inspiring Zebras out there!

We are in the midst of a Zebra movement, where founders all over the world are wanting to make the world a fairer, cleaner and more enjoyable place to live in and with, rather than aiming to become the next unicorn and becoming a billionaire.

In 2017, a movement sprang up online that quickly manifested in cities around the world. It’s now a growing community of business founders who reject the venture capital investment model and support the creation and discovery of alternative funding methods. This ‘Zebra movement’, as it’s called, was started by four inspiring women: Astrid Scholz, Mara Zepeda, Jennifer Brandel, and Aniyia Williams, who want to encourage fellow startup founders to build zebras rather than unicorns.

But, if a unicorn is defined as a startup that is valued at a billion dollars (really, only a handful of startups make this stamp and usually have to neglect society or the environment to get there), then how can we define a Zebra?

This is nicely defined by the founders of the Zebra Movement, one we at Zebra Growth are proud to be a founding member of.

The Zebra Movement

Zebras: Let's Get In Formation. By Jennifer Brandel, Mara Zepeda… | by Jennifer, Mara, Astrid & Aniyia | Zebras Unite | Medium

To state the obvious: unlike unicorns, zebras are real.
Zebra companies are both black and white: they are profitable and improve society. They won’t sacrifice one for the other.
Zebras are also mutualistic: by banding together in groups, they protect and preserve one another. Their individual input results in stronger collective output.
Zebra companies are built with peerless stamina and capital efficiency, as long as conditions allow them to survive.

Wanting to find out what the Zebra Movement is all about? Make sure to read our Manifesto here.

Growth Marketing can create sustainable revenue-generating growth for your startup

So now you know what growth marketing is, and what it means to be a Zebra, but what are the advantages of using this approach we’re raving about?

The benefits of growth marketing include a faster time to market, a higher return on investment, and the capacity to scale marketing activity that is yielding positive results quickly. It will also enable you to form an emotional bond with your target audience, depending on where they are in the funnel, giving them a comprehensive offering that is tailored to their needs.

Companies can use a variety of tools to improve their processes using this data-driven growth marketing method. Not to mention that having access to data makes demonstrating the return on investment of all growth marketing operations much easier. No more stressing and struggling to show stakeholders return on investment.

Having a full-funnel, scalable growth marketing approach offers value at every stage of the marketing funnel, attracting, engaging, keeping, and eventually converting customers into brand ambassadors.

We’re back again to that intriguing little term we call Ethical growth marketing

Let’s get straight to it; The 6 core pillars of Ethical Growth Marketing:

1) Growth mindset

Carol Dweck studies human motivation. She spends most of her time analysing how humans are wired, why some tend to progress in life at a faster rate whilst others don’t. Her theory of the two mindsets and the difference they make in outcomes is incredibly powerful – not just for business growth and startup culture, but in life in general.

She states that we often adopt two types of mindsets. These mindsets can shift, and are in no way permanent. Yet, as the early childhood psychologist Dweck pointed out within her mindset theory – we often adopt either a fixed or a growth mindset. And these are in no way permanent. You and I have both been in both those states of the mind. Yet becoming aware of them and actively aiming for the growth mindset can be life-altering.

When being faced with a fixed mindset, your sense of ability comes to the surface. One automatically shifts focus to prove, to show off and to become defensive. This (fixed) mindset often leads to a lack of ability to learn, as mistakes are seen as failures. Failures to one identity. The reason? Primarily due to the fact that you, when in a fixed mindset, think that skills, personality traits and characteristics are things you were born with. Not things that are under your influence. And with that, comes your inner voice that is constantly telling you that you are not worthy, and that this is the way ‘it has always been done’. Who cares if this is the way it has always been done? This is the ultimate innovation and growth blocker. We’re here to say this is the way it has to be done now!

Carol Dweck, on the other hand, optimistically highlights that there’s another mindset. ‘A mindset in which these characteristics aren’t just a hand you’re dealt and have to live with, where you’re always trying to persuade yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you’re secretly terrified it’s a pair of tens. In this perspective, the hand you’re dealt is only the beginning of your journey. This growth mentality is founded on the idea that you may improve your basic attributes by putting in effort.’

A growth mindset encourages continuous learning. It encourages risk taking. It encourages being comfortable in the uncomfortable.

And you guessed it. That’s a massive shift in perspective to traditional marketing approaches.

What’s the most effective campaign we should launch early next year? No clue. Who does, really? We can have some ideas that feel right at the moment, but the ability to drop your assumptions, starting with your ego, can unlock new opportunities your team would have never been able to encounter before. Instead, this mindset forces the team to become more data and learning focused.

2) Experiment led and “Lean” – The G.R.O.W.S. process

It’s okay to assume. It’s not okay to believe these assumptions are right before testing them. In order to make sure you are utilising the best growth levers out there, a growth marketer sets hypotheses, to then test them out. Putting one’s ego aside, a growth marketer goes to the market with a curious mindset, gathering initial data that can validate the best hypothesis to support the company’s growth.

At the heart of growth marketing lies the continuous, iterative and data-gathering process. The key is to trust the process. This means that at times of wanting to launch this next big campaign idea, you have to take a step back, focus on where you are within the growth process (aka G.R.O.W.S. process) and add it to the backlog of ideas you are needing to weigh up when the time comes.

The process consists of 5 steps, these are as follows:

G – Gather Ideas: Brainstorm as many experiment-ideas as possible with your team.

R – Rank Ideas: Use the ICE-framework (impact + confidence + ease) to prioritise which ideas have the highest ROI (=potential x effort). This is basically an easy and systemic way of sticking to the 20/80 rule.

O – Outline Experiments: Choose your next steps and design your experiment as quick and small as possible. The main question here is: what is the one metric that matters the most within this experiment, and what is the minimum amount of data required to validate it?

W – Work work work: Execute your experiment in a 2-4 week window. (The time period of running your experiment may vary based on your business size, industry and model).

S – Study (and Implement) outcome: Analyse the data from your experiment and decide on the next steps to take: learn or implement!

*The G.R.O.W.S. process was adopted from GrowthTribe.

3) The Ethical Growth Funnel (AAARRR(I))

The marketing funnel is what defines your customer journey. In the marketing world, especially when it comes to data-driven marketing, the funnel is the basis of your whole strategy.

However, most marketers have so far only been concentrating on “making noise”. Meaning getting the attention of people might sometimes lead to them becoming interested in making a purchase. When it comes to growth marketing, however, the marketing funnel must be viewed through a much more holistic lens.

Aside from having the full funnel in sight, it’s also very important to note that the growth marketing funnel is somewhat different to your typical ToFu, MoFu, Bofu. It’s also somewhat different to your business-school “AIDA” model.

This model is adopted by the growth funnel, aka the ‘pirate funnel’. To ensure that this can also fit the Zebra Startup approach, for startups with a business model that is focused on creating a positive social and/or environmental impact, the funnel should end with a measurable impact. Ideally, an impact that can be optimised towards. This changes the whole paradigm and mindset of your growth team, and company as a whole. Instead of having to constantly battle between social impact and revenue generation, this ensures that the both are in one funnel. One journey. Where impact is the ultimate goal.

The funnel consists of 6 key stages:

1. Awareness

This first step is often left out within the growth marketing world. However, especially in the social impact space where behaviour change is often so crucial, we always recommend our clients to start measuring the first touchpoint any user would have outside any referral schemes. How many users are you reaching for the very first time, and how effective are they moving to the next stage? Think all the TikTok traffic is great? Look at how much of that traffic is converting to stage two, and then judge the effectiveness of it!

2. Acquisition

This is where you first have a user spend some time with you as a brand. Usually, traffic is the main metric one would measure here. Some startups might be even more specific and only count traffic in certain pages or for a certain session duration. In any case, the user has not only seen your ad on social media or on that press release, but they have actually shown a bit of interest and have ended up on your brand asset.

2. Activation

This is where a relationship starts to flourish. This is where the user clearly indicates that they are interested in what you do. This is where you should WOW your users. Where they should be most impressed. Here, a user should be willing to give something up, often their data like an email address or an app signup, in exchange for starting a conversation with you. Receiving more content. Or getting access to a service or product that can fill a pain-gap. Important: this is not to be confused with the purchase of your product.

4. Retention

Within the retention stage, you should ask yourself “how can I ensure that the activated users come back and gain from the content?”. Whether you want to measure the number of emails they’ve opened since signing up to your mailing list, the number of free webinars or training they’ve attended, or the number of days it took them to re-open the app again. Here the focus is on tracking how many users actually care about the content you are offering them vs. those who entered their email address and regretted it the next second.

5. Referral

The main question within this stage is: “How do I ensure that my users are sharing my brand or solution with their friends, families and colleagues?”. If you have a solid product, newsletter and/or brand, then they surely will anyway, right?! Surely not. You don’t get what you don’t ask for. Ensuring a strong value proposition that connects with your users, to incentivise and guides them by referring people is most likely the most important stage of the whole growth funnel. It is what creates virality, and what could potentially 5X your ROI for your marketing activity, if not more.

We all know how Word of Mouth is the most effective channel. This just ensures that it is part of your marketing strategy.

6. Revenue

This is where the business hat comes in. Here you should ask yourself, “how can I turn potential customers into paying customers?” This is where you count how much money your business model can actually bring on, as without it, any social impact startup or scaleup would be relying on outside funders which would make it less lean, less flexible and less financially sustainable. The main three metrics one should keep in mind are:

Number of paying users
Average order value per user
Customer lifetime value

7. Impact

Finally, impact is the stage where you should ask yourself “how many people am I positively effecting”? This is the most flexible one to measure, and we would highly recommend you first having a look at the Theory of Change social impact measurement tool to understand how you can start measuring your social and/or environmental impact.

Do you witness revenue going up, yet your impact is suffering? Then you are not optimising your marketing and growth activity appropriately! This doesn’t have to measure the full impact you are making in the long run, especially if the impact you are making will take years and years to measure. It should however give your growth function an indication if you are positively aiding your social impact, or not.

4) Growth with a limit – The S-shaped growth curve

You would have probably heard of the hockey stick growth curve. A curve indicating your growth will only increase over time – for EVER. Doesn’t sound sustainable, ey?

However, when we look at how plants grow (and thrive) in nature, we realise that they follow “a pattern of growth in which, in a new environment, the population density of an organism increases slowly initially, in a positive acceleration phase; then increases rapidly approaching an exponential growth rate as in the J-shaped curve; but then declines in a negative acceleration phase until at zero growth rate the population stabilises.” The encyclopaedia states that this is because the plant eventually gains resilience.

How can we adopt this pattern to our businesses? Do businesses really need to focus on fast paced growth once they become resilient? We don’t believe so. Instead, it becomes their duty to help other smaller organisations with aligning purposes to thrive faster! Competition you must fearlingly say? We call them allies.

5) Transparency & Honesty

Running growth focused marketing campaigns can become a risky game to play whilst looking at one’s ethical radar. Manipulation, unconsented data gathering, targeting the most vulnerable, have all become common practices within growth marketers and startups wanting to grow quickly.

Yet it doesn’t have to be this way. And let me tell you one thing, the last thing a potential paying customer will want to find out is that an impact focused brand isn’t honest or transparent with their communications.

Are you adding someone to your CRM? Let them know straight away. Are you sourcing materials that aren’t yet 100% regenerative? Let them know about it, and show how you are wanting to change that. 100% transparency and honesty is the only way forward.

Being transparent and fully honest within marketing campaigns and communications in general requires vulnerability. And with vulnerability comes trust and a more loyal customer base.

6) Above all: Balance

I’m sure we’re all starting to see how business has lost its balance. Entrepreneurs and teams have been leaning on extremes, and that rarely creates long-term, sustainable growth.

The business world rewards quantity over quality, consumption over creation, quick exits over sustainable growth, and shareholder profit over shared prosperity. It is built on ego and the power of the individual.

On top of that, building and running a high growth startup that wants to do the world justice and potentially help people in serious issues such as mental health, brings a lot of stress with it.

To truly grow ethically and sustainably, balance has to be at the core of your team’s culture.

Your team has to start balancing;

Between financial stability and social impact.
Between form and function.
Between quality and speed of execution.
Between creativity and performance.

In order to excel your company’s growth whilst still being able to stay authentic and true to your purpose, a strong sense of balance will allow your team to flourish. It will allow you and your team to flow within this experiment-led approach of growth. It will allow your team to constantly come up with innovative ideas, and it will give you the space to be reflective and critical from an ethical lens, whilst still seizing opportunities for your company to grow and scale its impact in the long run.

—————————

Okay so let’s go over what we’ve covered. We know that because of capitalism’s main principles, society is living in a profit-driven culture that values overconsumption and an endless pursuit of growth at all costs. We know a new economy, one that values social and environmental well-being, as well as economic advantages, is needed. This is why socially focused startups and business models are the future of business.

However, the reality is that many purpose-driven startups are battling just to stay afloat, nevermind attain these lofty, systemic aspirations of making positive change. The fact is that social impact entrepreneurs who are developing this new, purpose-driven economy must achieve sustained growth (within reason) in order to make purpose-driven movements the standard in our economy. The real lingering question therefore is ‘How can these start-ups strike a balance between their financial stability and their social effect?’

And the answer is Ethical Growth Marketing. Revenue generating, impact focused, data-driven growth.

Having a growth mindset, using an experiment-led, lean strategy, utilising the Ethical Growth Funnel (AAAAARR(I), realising growth has a limit, valuing transparency and honesty, and above all, reaching a state of balance, are the 6 basic pillars of Ethical Growth Marketing.

Faster time to market, a stronger return on investment, and the capacity to scale marketing activity that is yielding positive results quickly will all be benefits of adopting this lean, experiment-driven approach. This scalable, full funnel growth marketing strategy offers value at every stage of the marketing funnel, attracting, engaging, retaining, and ultimately converting customers into brand advocates.

You’ve come this far, want to learn more about how you can grow your brand, revenue and impact with a lean approach? Join our mailing list and be the first to receive exclusive event invites, new blog posts like these and a bunch of free resources you can start using with your team straight away.

We'd love to hear from you

Author: Moh Al-HaifiCo-Author: Isabelle DruryContributors: Odette Bester, Lee Fitzpatrick, Zac Schaap

1. Embrace holistic thinking in your strategy

2. Practice authentic, non-violent and culture-aware communications

3. Cultivate diverse partnerships

4. Adopt a continuous learning mindset

5. Integrate different communication practices

6. Market in a way that feeds energy, not drains it

7. Practice radical transparency

8. Monitoring ecosystem health

9. Join regenerative communities of practice

10. Align your entire organisation

Regenerative marketing is a journey

Author: Moh Al-HaifiCo-Author: Isabelle Drury

Understanding Regeneration and Marketing

The Evolution of Marketing

A New Marketing Paradigm

Holism: Seeing the whole picture

Evolution: Learning through change

Interdependence: The web of relationships

Regenerative Marketing in Practice

Beyond Marketing: Incorporating The Whole System

Business model integration

Governance and investment

Leadership and culture

Authenticity vs. Greenwashing

Your Regenerative Journey

Author: Moh Al-HaifiCo-Author: Isabelle DruryContributors: Odette Bester, Lee Fitzpatrick, Zac Schaap

What Is Marketing Today?

What’s Broken With Marketing As Usual?

Why Is It Relevant Today?

What Is Life Aligned Marketing?

The Future Of Marketing

Author: Moh Al-HaifiCo-Author: Isabelle DruryContributors: Odette Bester, Lee Fitzpatrick, Zac Schaap

Early Beginnings Of Marketing

Marketing Under Empire

Marketing Meets Mass Production

The Psychology Blueprint

The Digital Age of Hyper-consumption

Reimagining Marketing’s Future

The Go-to-Ecosystem Framework and Tools

Building a Regenerative Alternative To Traditional GTM

The Framework: A Living Systems Approach

Who This Framework Serves

How To Make The Most Of The Framework

What’s the Impact Shakers Summit?

Who are Impact Shakers?

Start your regenerative marketing journey today

Introducing our “Regenerative Design & Communicate” Services

Now, let’s delve into the details.

One off projects

Pay-as-you-go

Retainer

So, what type of work do we specialise in?

We’ve covered the what, now let’s explore the why…

Who’s content game is strong?

Patagonia are leading the way with SEO content

How can you work with us?

Your team

Still unsure if we’re the right fit?

Finally, check out our pricing

Get in touch

What we’ll cover

Growth Marketing Experimentation Glossary

What is Growth Marketing?

Traditional Marketing VS Growth Marketing

The 70/30 Experimentation Rule

Experimenting with Growth Marketing

We’ve thrown the word around a few times now, but what is experimenting with growth marketing?

How Lean Startup methodology inspired Growth Marketing

The G.R.O.W.S. process

So what makes the process so important to social impact startups?

1. Gather Ideas

2. Rank Ideas

3. Outline Experiments

4. Work, Work, Work

5. Study Data

6. Repeat

Growth Marketing & the G.R.O.W.S. Process Recap

Getting Started with Growth Marketing

Author: Moh Al-Haifi
Co-Author: Isabelle Drury
Contributors: Odette Bester, Lee Fitzpatrick, Zac Schaap

Author: Moh Al-Haifi
Co-Author: Isabelle Drury

Author: Moh Al-Haifi
Co-Author: Isabelle Drury
Contributors: Odette Bester, Lee Fitzpatrick, Zac Schaap

Author: Moh Al-Haifi
Co-Author: Isabelle Drury
Contributors: Odette Bester, Lee Fitzpatrick, Zac Schaap