Hello, Josh is away this week so I’m filling in. I’m Sophie, Head of Growth Strategy here at Ballpoint. With three years experience of growing brands like Thriva, Mother Root, Tilly Sveaas, and Origin Coffee under our belts, we’ve reflected on what it takes to do this job exceptionally well.
This is an internal document we’ve put together which we wanted to share with you. It’s inspired by Ben Horowitz’ 2012 essay Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager.
A good growth strategist thinks of themselves as the head of growth for their client’s brand. They take responsibility for all of growth, not just the ad account. Ads don’t stop at the click, and neither do they. A bad growth strategist thinks of themselves as a media buyer.
A bad growth strategist poses questions and considerations. They say things like “it’s up to you.” or “we could potentially explore...” and leave the client to decide. Clients don’t hire you to present options. They hire you to know what to do. A good growth strategist has an opinion. When performance dips or a new channel is on the table, they come with a recommendation of what to do next.
A good growth strategist pushes back. When a client asks them to do something they disagree with, they say so, clearly and with reasoning. Then they know when to concede. A bad growth strategist either does whatever the client says, or fights every battle with equal intensity and loses trust. This is about focus. A good strategist helps the client focus on what matters most right now: what decision is going to make the biggest impact on their north star, and what can wait.
A good growth strategist cares about contribution margin, not platform CPA. They know that a £20 CPA on Meta means nothing if the blended CAC is £45 and the unit economics don’t work. The metric that matters is CM3: what’s left after ad spend, COGS, and fulfilment. A bad growth strategist lives inside the ad platform and never zooms out to what actually hits the P&L.
A good growth strategist owns the data. They know their client’s dashboard inside out because they shaped it. They know where the numbers come from and what’s missing. They may not be a data engineer, but they know what questions the data should answer. A bad growth strategist opens the dashboard on the morning of the client call and hopes the numbers make sense.
A bad growth strategist doesn’t have a structured approach to testing. They launch ads without clear hypotheses, which means when results come back, they can’t tell you why something worked or didn’t. The data is harder to interpret and the results are unclear, so nothing compounds. A good growth strategist runs structured experiments. They have a hypothesis, a test, a clear success metric, and a timeline. They know how many creative concepts to test each week and why. Every result, win or loss, teaches them something they can use next.
A good growth strategist is the first person to flag a bad day. They message the client before the client checks the dashboard. They’ve already looked at why, and they have context: “Spend was up but CPAs spiked because of X. Here’s what we’re doing.” A bad growth strategist waits for the client to ask “what happened yesterday?” and then scrambles.
A good growth strategist thinks about incrementality. They know that platform CPAs flatter themselves. They ask “would this customer have bought anyway?” and adjust their view accordingly. They know Google brand campaigns look cheap because they’re catching people who were already coming. A bad growth strategist takes the platform number at face value and never questions it.
A bad growth strategist is reactive. They pause campaigns on day two, change budgets daily, and confuse activity with progress. A good growth strategist evaluates on weekly cycles. They know that a single bad day means almost nothing, and that blowing up an account structure because of a Tuesday dip is how you destroy compounding. They have faith in their strategy and stick with it.
A good growth strategist knows the customer and product inside out, not just the ad account. They know what the product actually does for people, what the repeat purchase rate looks like, and why someone buys for the first time. They’re just as bought into the product and brand as the client themselves. A bad growth strategist knows CPMs and CTRs but couldn’t tell you what the brand’s best-selling product is or why people love it.
If you think you’re a good growth strategist, then you should know we’re hiring at the moment. Either drop me an email or check out the job post here.
The incrementality point is the one most people skip, and I'd push it one step further.
The channels that flatter themselves all have a dashboard. The channels that get systematically under-credited are the ones with no platform at all: referrals, word of mouth, the warm intro from an existing customer. Nobody owns that number, so it never shows up in the weekly review, even though it is often the cheapest CM3 you have.
A good strategist instruments the channels that don't come with a UI.
92% of people trust a recommendation from someone they know over any ad you will ever run (Nielsen). That is a channel too. It just doesn't email you a CPA every morning.
The platform number is loud. The best number is usually quiet.