What Do We Actually Mean By Growth?

In the coming weeks Left Hand Agency will be releasing a series of blog posts around business growth and measurement for CPG brands. It’s one of the most misunderstood and miscalculated areas of measurement for brands, and we’re hoping to fix that.

If you like what you see here, please subscribe to receive our blog updates via email - we would never sell your data to a  third party and promise to respect your time. 

Let’s get down to the business of growth! 

“Growth” is one of those words that gets used constantly in marketing conversations and rarely defined.

Sales increase? Growth.

ROAS improves? Growth.

A new retailer brings in incremental revenue? Growth.

But those outcomes don’t all mean the same thing. When we begin planning media for a client one of our first questions is the primary business objective. It may seem obvious that “growth” is usually top of the list, but the objective falls apart without alignment on the definition. 

And if we are not aligned on the definition - we could wind up buying, measuring and optimizing the wrong way. 

Before we talk about metrics, media mix, or performance channels, it’s worth asking a simple question:

What do we actually mean by growth?

Because the definition shapes everything that follows.

Growth Isn’t Just a Sales Spike

We get it. Short-term revenue increases are important. They keep businesses healthy and teams employed. Promotions, retail media, and lower-funnel channels absolutely have their place.

But sales spikes can come at the expense of longer term durability. 

If sales increase because we ran deeper discounts, leaned harder into high-propensity audiences, or intensified promotions, we may have improved this quarter’s numbers without improving next year’s position.

In some cases, we may have made future growth harder. 

The Wizard of Advertising has a great chapter about this phenomenon aptly titled “The Cocaine of Advertising” comparing the addictive nature of promotions to hard drugs. Discounts and promotions can feel great in the short term but eventually you have to increase your discounting to keep getting the same results and you’ve actually damaged your brands pricing power. 

Oops! 

So: True growth isn’t just revenue that goes up. It’s revenue that becomes easier to sustain. 

Durable Growth Has Different Characteristics

In CPG, durable growth tends to look like:

• More households buying the brand

• A broader revenue base rather than concentrated heavy buyers

• Less reliance on discounting to maintain velocity

• Stronger brand recognition in buying moments

• Maintained (or improved) pricing power

When those elements are present, growth compounds. When they aren’t, teams often find themselves working harder each year to achieve the same results.

That’s where measurement starts to matter. 

Efficiency and Expansion Are Not the Same Thing

This is where brand teams can unintentionally drift.

Efficiency metrics like ROAS are incredibly useful. They help teams allocate budget wisely. They reduce waste. They provide fast feedback.

But efficiency is not the same as expansion.

You can improve efficiency by focusing on consumers who are already likely to purchase. In fact, that’s often how efficiency improves.

What that strategy doesn’t necessarily do is expand the total number of buyers. Talking to the same audience over and over and asking them to spend more and more is a dead-end strategy. It may slow customer attrition, but it does not lead to growth.  

Without total customer expansion, growth tends to plateau. Costs increase. Frequency rises. Marginal returns diminish. What once felt scalable starts to feel fragile.

That doesn’t mean performance channels are flawed. It means they serve a specific role: capturing demand, not always creating it.

Why the Definition Creates Tension

Many of the measurement debates inside organizations stem from this one issue.

Finance tends to prioritize:

• Predictability

• Margin protection

• Return on investment

• Risk management

Marketing tends to prioritize:

• Reach

• Memory and salience

• Penetration

• Long-term demand

Both perspectives are rational. Both are necessary.

But if “growth” is defined differently by each group, the metrics that follow will naturally conflict.

When growth is defined only as short-term efficiency, the measurement system will favor narrow, fast channels.

When growth is defined only as brand awareness or reach, the measurement system may feel disconnected from financial accountability. (This is truly where we see the biggest CFO CMO disconnect happening). 

The solution isn’t choosing one definition over the other. It’s recognizing that sustainable growth requires both short-term performance and long-term expansion.

Growth Is a Structural Question

The most important growth question isn’t simply, “Did sales increase?”

It’s:

Is the business becoming stronger — or more dependent?

Are we expanding our buyer base?

Or asking the same buyers to purchase more often?

Are we protecting margin?

Or trading it for temporary volume?

Are we building future demand?

Or extracting current demand?

Those questions require different types of measurement. Some move quickly. Others take time. But all of them matter if the goal is durable growth.

Why This Matters for CPG Growth Measurement

Once growth is clearly defined, measurement becomes less chaotic.

Instead of asking a single metric to answer every question, we can begin to build a portfolio of metrics, each responsible for a different part of the growth story.

Some metrics will help manage efficiency in real time.

Others will validate incremental impact.

Still others will reveal whether the buyer base is expanding or stagnating.

But all of them should tie back to the same shared definition.

Because dashboards don’t drive growth.

Decisions do.

And better decisions start with agreement on what we’re actually trying to build.

The Series Ahead

In the coming posts, we’ll break down the most common metrics brands use to measure growth and the pros and cons of each measurement framework. These will include: 

• Incremental sales lift

• Velocity

• ROAS

• Household penetration

• Brand health

• And the metrics that look convincing, but aren’t

Because once we define growth properly, we can evaluate whether our measurement systems are actually capturing it.

Our next post will cover the CMO vs CFO measurement fight (and why it happens). 

---

We are Left Hand Agency, a CPG media buying agency helping brands grow with short and long-term strategies. Our memory-driven strategies deliver results your marketing and finance teams will champion.