How to Become a Growth Product Manager [+Tools and Resources]

Embarking on a career as a growth product manager involves a combination of education, skills development, and practical experience.

Whether you’re just starting out or looking to transition into this role, understanding the key steps and requirements is essential.

This guide will provide you with a comprehensive overview of the path to becoming a successful growth product manager.

Let’s dive in!

TL;DR

• Growth product manager is a specialist position within product management focusing on identifying and executing product-led growth opportunities in acquisition, engagement, and retention.
• Growth product manager career path:
  • Junior Growth Product Marketer
  • Growth Product Manager
  • Senior Growth Product Manager
  • Product Growth Director
  • Head of Product Growth
• The first step to becoming a growth product manager is to earn a bachelor’s degree in a relevant field, like business, marketing, computer science, data, or something similar.
• However, even if you don’t have the requisite educational background, you can become a growth product manager by gaining appropriate work experience, starting with internships.
• Try finding internships in product management, growth marketing, or data analytics. The internships should offer an opportunity to develop a strong analytical and technical skillset along with exposure to analytics and A/B testing tools.
• Best tools for growth product managers
  • Best tool for data analytics and visualization – Userpilot: Enables you to track in-app user behavior across multiple touchpoints and perform comprehensive analytics, utilizing custom dashboards and charts for easy visualization.
  • Master efficient project management with Trello: Organize growth strategies into smaller, deliverable tasks, easily coordinate across multiple teams, assign necessary resources, monitor resource utilization, and track progress.
  • Transform product management workflows with Confluence: Simplify collaboration and information sharing amongst various teams by establishing a centralized knowledge base, helping align decision-making throughout the product lifecycle.
  • Top design tool for optimizing user experiences – Figma: Unlock customer experience insights by using this collaborative platform for designing and prototyping new features and developments, ensuring that they align with customer needs.
  • Leverage Zendesk to proactively resolve CX issues: Stay on top of customer support interactions, extract useful feedback, and identify recurring issues. Use all this information to prioritize proactive product improvements.
• Looking into tools for growth product managers? Userpilot is an all-in-one product platform with engagement features and powerful analytics capabilities. Book a demo to see it in action!

What is a growth product manager?

Growth product manager is a specialist position within product management focusing on identifying and executing product-led growth opportunities in acquisition, engagement, and retention.

Unlike traditional product managers responsible for owning a specific product’s vision and roadmap, growth product managers focus on a specific business goal or metric. That goal can relate to any point of the customer journey, from acquisition to retention and expansion.

Along with such goals, growth managers are also in charge of growth metrics, like improving Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and activation rate.

Growth product manager’s main responsibilities

The main goal of any growth product manager is to drive sustainable growth by focusing on three key elements within the customer lifecycle: acquisition, engagement, and retention.

To ensure success in either of these components, there are multiple other responsibilities the growth manager must perform well. Let’s look at what these are.

• Define the company’s growth goals and prioritize direction, ensuring alignment with overall business objectives.
• Identify experience gaps through various analyses performed, such as funnel or path analysis.
• Measure progress by tracking select metrics, interpreting the results, preparing detailed reports for all to understand, and uncovering any product problem points or improvement areas.
• Regularly analyze customer behavior through both quantitative and qualitative means. This includes product usage and trend analysis, usability tests, and feedback collection.
• Build and execute experiments and tests, typically in collaboration with marketing, development, and design teams, to understand what customers engage with better.
• Increase the customer lifetime value by identifying opportunities for upsells and cross-sells to ultimately drive revenue retention.
• Optimize user onboarding to improve the initial customer experience, creating supplementary onboarding materials and guides to help customers reduce time to value.
• Stay on top of the changing market dynamics through continuous research on the industry and competitor actions.
• Effectively communicate growth goals and progress across departments to ensure cohesive commitment and execution.
• Manage the budget for all growth initiatives, keeping an eye on ROI for all growth activities and campaigns.

Growth product manager career path

• Junior Growth Product Marketer: The focus at the very start is on gaining a deep understanding of growth metrics and strategies, acquisition channels, and different analytical tools.
• Growth Product Manager: In this role, you will be given more responsibilities to find growth opportunities and design and execute appropriate growth strategies to capitalize on them.
• Senior Growth Product Manager: This role demands more ownership, as you will lead growth initiatives and partake in strategic decisions for all products while mentoring junior peers as well.
• Product Growth Director: At this point, you oversee the overall growth strategy and implementation, coordinating between departments and actively dealing with stakeholders.
• Head of Product Growth: Once you reach the top, you’re responsible for defining the company’s growth objectives and ensuring they are aligned with the company’s business goals.

How to become a growth product manager?

The first step to becoming a growth product manager is to earn a bachelor’s degree in a relevant field, like business, marketing, computer science, data, or something similar.

However, even if you don’t have the requisite educational background, you can become a growth product manager by gaining appropriate work experience, starting with internships.

Try finding internships in product management, growth marketing, or data analytics. The internships should offer an opportunity to develop a strong analytical and technical skillset along with exposure to analytics and A/B testing tools.

Similarly, if you have work experience in jobs that have been data-heavy and focused on driving growth within the SaaS domain, you can easily transition into the role of growth product manager.

Lastly, to further cement your growth product management credentials, consider pursuing suitable certifications. For example, Google Analytics Certification by Google Analytics Academy and Product Management Certification by Product School are both highly valued.

What skills should a growth product manager have?

Growth product management is a complex and multi-faceted field, one that requires keeping an eye on several variables at once. To excel at such a role, here are the key skills you need to master:

• Data-driven and analytical mindset: A growth manager should be comfortable analyzing data and interpreting the results to uncover valuable insights.
• Collaboration skills: Growth product managers work with a diverse set of teams, ranging from marketing and design to engineering and development. This requires seamless collaboration to ensure success.
• Communication skills: Excellent verbal and written communication skills to present data-heavy findings in an easy-to-digest way and manage stakeholders efficiently.
• Resilience and agility: Being a growth manager requires perseverance and agility because improvement takes time, and you have to iterate strategies based on new trends and findings.
• Project management: Successful growth management requires managers to know how to organize tasks, coordinate across teams, and assign resources to get work done.
• Attention to detail: When dealing with piles of data, it is imperative that growth product managers be detail-oriented so nothing slips through the cracks.

Best certifications for growth product manager

Based on reviews across sources and learning communities, here are our picks for the best certification a growth product manager should consider:

• Growth Hacking Certification: This certification by GrowthHackers offers practical, community-driven learning in growth marketing tactics and frameworks. It can be valuable for beginners looking to grasp core growth concepts like user acquisition and activation.
• CXL Institute Growth Marketing Minidegrees: CXL Institute provides in-depth minidegrees on various growth marketing topics like growth strategy, product experimentation, and retention. It’s most suitable for Growth PMs looking to deepen their knowledge in specific growth areas or those who prefer a structured learning path.
• Udacity’s Digital Marketing Nanodegree (with a Growth Marketing Specialization): Udacity’s Nanodegree offers a broader digital marketing curriculum with a specialization track focusing on growth marketing. If you plan on gaining a well-rounded understanding of marketing channels and how they contribute to growth, you can go for this course.
• Product School Growth Certification: The Growth Certification gets a nod for its focus on growth frameworks and product-centric strategies for user acquisition and engagement. It teaches how to leverage product strategy for user growth.
• HubSpot Inbound Marketing Certification: This free certification from HubSpot provides a solid foundation in inbound marketing principles, valuable for Growth PMs who need to understand user attraction through content and SEO.
• A/B Testing and Experimentation Courses: Look for courses on A/B testing and experimentation design, a crucial skill for Growth PMs. Providers like Coursera, Udemy, and platforms like Optimizely offer such courses.

Best resources for growth product managers

There are a ton of resources available out there to utilize for growing your growth product management portfolio. Here, we list down the best books, webinars, podcasts, and more that you should definitely check out!” with “There are a ton of resources available out there to utilize for growing your growth product management portfolio. Here, we list down the best books, webinars, podcasts, and more that you should definitely check out!

Best books for growth product managers

• “Hacking Growth: How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success” by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown
  • Description: Discusses the proven tactics and implementable techniques used by high-growth companies to achieve rapid expansion.
  • Where to find: Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other major book retailers.
• “The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses” by Eric Ries
  • Description: Discusses Ries’ lean startup strategy, applicable to agile SaaS companies as well, of rapid experimentation and iterative product development.
  • Where to find: Available on Amazon, Apple Books, and other major book retailers.

Best webinars for growth product managers

Growth product managers are the strategists behind user acquisition and engagement. So here’s a curated list of top webinar sources to empower you across user acquisition, product engagement, and growth strategies:

• Userpilot Events remains your go-to for user onboarding and product growth. Their webinars delve into user acquisition strategies, feature adoption tactics, and user engagement optimization – all crucial for growth PMs.
• Chargebee hosts webinars focused on subscription billing and revenue optimization strategies. These are crucial aspects for growth product managers, especially for SaaS products.
• GrowthHackers hosts webinars featuring industry leaders on growth hacking strategies, user acquisition techniques, and growth experimentation methodologies.
• Product School offers webinars on a range of topics, including growth product management. You can look for webinars on growth hacking, user acquisition channels, and experimentation frameworks.

Best blogs for growth product managers

• Userpilot’s blog: Discover a wealth of articles, guides, and case studies revolving around product management, user experiences, and product-led growth. Available on their website under the resources section.
• Andrew Chen’s Blog: A guru in the field of growth hacking, Chen’s blog offers in-depth analysis and tried-and-tested advice on growth strategies, especially around acquisition and retention.

Best podcasts for growth product managers

• “Masters of Scale” by Reid Hoffman
  • Description: Learn from iconic business leaders as they share insights on how they scaled their companies to drive growth and become some of the greatest in the world.
  • Where to find: Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and the Masters of Scale website.
• “Growth Podcast” by Sean Ellis
  • Description: Hosted by a pioneer of growth hacking himself, the podcast includes interviews with leading experts in growth marketing and product management to learn lessons on driving product growth.
  • Where to find: Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts.

Best tools for growth product managers

• Best tool for data analytics and visualization – Userpilot: Enables you to track in-app user behavior across multiple touchpoints and perform comprehensive analytics, utilizing custom dashboards and charts for easy visualization.
• Master efficient project management with Trello: Organize growth strategies into smaller, deliverable tasks, easily coordinate across multiple teams, assign necessary resources, monitor resource utilization, and track progress.
• Transform product management workflows with Confluence: Simplify collaboration and information sharing amongst various teams by establishing a centralized knowledge base, helping align decision-making throughout the product lifecycle.
• Top design tool for optimizing user experiences – Figma: Unlock customer experience insights by using this collaborative platform for designing and prototyping new features and developments, ensuring that they align with customer needs.
• Leverage Zendesk to proactively resolve CX issues: Stay on top of customer support interactions, extract useful feedback, and identify recurring issues. Use all this information to prioritize proactive product improvements.

Growth product manager FAQs

• What is the difference between a growth product manager and a traditional product manager? Traditional product managers focus on building the product in line with its long-term vision. In contrast, growth product managers concentrate on specific business goals, such as driving engagement and defining strategies to achieve that goal.
• What is the future of growth managers? Given the consistent rise in digital platforms and data-driven customer-centric solutions, trends suggest that the role of growth product managers is here to stay.
• Is a growth manager a good career? A growth product manager is a unique role as it requires expertise in several domains, namely marketing, strategy, product development, and data analysis. Due to this intersectionality, it is a good career path because it offers the opportunity to transition and grow in any of the above fields as you like.
• What is the difference between growth manager and business development? Business development involves discovering new market opportunities and ways to expand the customer base. Growth hacking focuses on experimentation and data to optimize customer experiences throughout the funnel to drive growth.

Conclusion

Becoming a successful growth product manager requires dedication, continuous learning, and a proactive approach to developing relevant skills.

By following the outlined steps and leveraging the resources available, you can effectively navigate your career path and achieve your professional goals.

We hope this guide has provided you with valuable insights and practical advice to help you on your journey to becoming a proficient and impactful growth product manager!

Looking into tools for growth product managers? Userpilot is an all-in-one product platform with engagement features and powerful analytics capabilities. Book a demo to see it in action!