Growth Strategy
A growth strategy is not a revenue target. It's the explicit choice of which of the three levers, acquisition, retention, or expansion, gets the scarce capital this year.
“A growth plan that says 'we'll do everything a bit better' is not a strategy. It's the absence of a choice dressed up as ambition.”
Otto GTM ObservatoryThe three levers and their real cost
Every euro invested in new acquisition carries a CAC that, in mature B2B, is often 5-7 times higher than the cost of generating the same euro from expansion on existing customers. Despite this, most growth budget continues to be allocated to acquisition out of organizational habit, not an explicit return calculation.
A solid growth strategy explicitly states which lever gets priority in a given year, and aligns budget, team, and KPIs to that choice, instead of spreading resources evenly across all three to avoid choosing.
Anti-patterns
Common mistake: setting a percentage ARR growth target without specifying which lever should generate it, letting each function interpret on its own where to focus effort.
Second mistake: continuing to invest in acquisition at a rising CAC while ignoring an underdeveloped expansion revenue engine that would have a much higher marginal return on the same capital.
Practical Application
A company with a 25% ARR growth target invests 80% of its growth budget in new acquisition (€9,600 CAC, 9.5-month payback) and only 20% in customer success/expansion (cost per euro of expansion equal to a seventh of CAC). Reallocating the budget 50/50, the same 25% growth is achieved with 34% less total spend, freeing up capital to accelerate further the following year.