Growth Marketing Agency | Ascendant

The Evolving Role of Growth Marketing for Startups

Growth marketing is frequently misunderstood as simply a collection of tactics. However, it represents a far more comprehensive process that startups should integrate early on, a process designed to scale alongside their expanding customer base and internal teams.

British growth agency Ascendant excels in this area, according to Robyn Weatherley, head of marketing at Thirdfort, as revealed in our growth marketing survey. Ascendant’s consultants have not only implemented growth strategies for the legal tech startup but have also “helped us establish the framework to consistently execute those strategies, regardless of whether we have five, 50, or 500 employees.” (If you wish to contribute your recommendations for growth marketers, please complete the survey!)

Ascendant’s Approach to Early-Stage Companies

We followed up on this recommendation with interviews of Ascendant co-founder Gus Ferguson and partner Alyssa Crankshaw, as part of our ongoing series of growth marketer profiles. Those in the U.K. may recognize them from the TechLondon Slack community or from pre-COVID OMN London digital marketing meetups, events they co-organized. Below, they discuss their work with early-stage companies, encompassing tactical planning and the creation of tools for marketers that don’t strain internal engineering resources.

Note: The following interview has been condensed for brevity and clarity.

Background and Startup Focus

Can you share your professional backgrounds and how you began working with startups?

Gus Ferguson: I have over 15 years of experience in digital marketing. In 2009, I launched one of the U.K.’s first content marketing agencies. While we served large travel brands, a challenge arose: large corporations often operate in silos, hindering their ability to leverage cutting-edge marketing approaches.

I began working with startups while based in East London, and around this time, I partnered with Alyssa. We observed that startups were often hampered by conventional marketing practices—traditional marketers brought problems common in large corporations to startups, while a startup’s strength lies in its adaptability and agility.

This led us to develop processes for building businesses from the ground up, particularly when lacking historical data for marketing strategies. We emphasized the need for short-term planning: a broad three-month plan, a detailed one-month plan, and ideally, two-week sprints, rather than lengthy annual plans.

Client Profile and Funding Sweet Spot

What types of clients does Ascendant typically work with?

Gus Ferguson: Our established growth framework allows us to collaborate with virtually any new business lacking a pre-existing marketing process. We work across fintech, healthcare, legal services, e-commerce, and both B2C and B2B sectors. We assist both startups and businesses operating with a startup mindset.

We’ve also collaborated with corporate ventures, such as Canon, and venture capital firms like Forward Partners, providing valuable insights as we worked with businesses at earlier stages than usual. A funding level of around one million dollars represents our ideal client scenario.

This is because bringing experienced growth specialists into a business requires investment. Below this level, founders should first develop their own understanding of growth. This early experience builds a strong foundation of audience-centricity for the business. Much of our work involves integrating audience-centricity into product-focused companies—and encouraging founders to consider why their target audience should care about their solution.

Helping Founders Avoid Common Pitfalls

It’s a common mistake for founders to assume “build it and they will come.” Can you elaborate on how you assist them?

Gus Ferguson: We typically begin by analyzing their existing foundation and comparable businesses, creating an initial growth model. We then formulate hypotheses regarding the most effective channels for achieving their short-term goals, if they have already defined them. Often, a crucial part of the process is defining which metrics are most important for the business and establishing methods for measuring them.

We always collaborate with founders and sales teams, and generally work with a company that has at least one initial marketing hire. We project results based on their sales funnel, but frequently, product-centric businesses lack a defined funnel. We help establish this funnel thinking and put it in place.

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Beyond that, numerous foundational frameworks must be established before launching traditional campaign-based marketing. We focus on data frameworks, ensuring a shared understanding of key metrics and an objective truth for the business. When teams suffer from turnover or operate in silos, we streamline these frameworks and ensure seamless functionality, enabling marketing automation.

Startup Size and Lifecycle

It’s surprising to hear about siloed teams at an early stage. What is the typical size of the startups you work with?

Gus Ferguson: We begin working with small startups, but we often maintain long-term relationships. For example, we collaborated with Elder, a health tech startup, starting with a team of 12 and growing to hundreds. Soldo is another example: when we began, the marketing team consisted of one person, and by the time we concluded our work, they occupied three floors at WeWork.

Our engagement typically ends at the Series B funding stage, as by this point, all necessary frameworks are in place, and they are prepared to bring everything in-house. This represents a successful outcome for us—helping clients reach substantial Series B funding rounds. We then move on to assist the next startup in achieving similar success.

However, to address your question, issues arise because these are venture-backed companies experiencing rapid growth in both customers and internal teams. Everyone is multitasking, new to their roles, and internal processes are often lacking, creating a degree of chaos. This is where the need for cross-functional teams emerged—to create an environment of shared objectives and order amidst individual chaos.

Alyssa Crankshaw: Effective communication is paramount. We often become a catalyst for team interaction—our external perspective adds value to tasks that might otherwise be overlooked.

Practical Implementation and Overcoming Dependencies

How does this work in practice?

Gus Ferguson: For instance, we’re currently implementing a CMS system for a client where salespeople, marketing personnel, and customer service representatives all utilize it—teams that were previously quite siloed.

We also recognize that a significant obstacle to growth is marketers’ dependence on developers, a scarce resource. We address this by implementing basic marketing frameworks that empower marketers to control fundamental marketing operations directly.

A key process we introduce is the cross-functional team, with a representative from each department. This ensures that at least one person on each team understands the objectives, fostering collaborative problem-solving.

Adapting to Remote Work

Did COVID-19 impact this process?

Gus Ferguson: Remote work may have actually simplified it. We typically identify a key person on each team—usually the team leader—and involve them as a spokesperson in the cross-functional team. Remote environments make this easier, as everyone can readily join Zoom calls.

Alyssa Crankshaw: Even before COVID-19, we weren’t consultants who spent several days a week at a client’s office. We are problem-solvers across the entire company, and we’ve always operated this way, whether from our office or remotely.

Gus Ferguson: Our own model proved exceptionally adaptable during the pandemic. We have a core team of three and a network of specialized freelancers. This allows us to avoid fixed overheads and engage trusted partners, adapting to our clients’ evolving needs. Given the rapid change inherent in startups, long-term plans are often impractical. From an agency perspective, this means our work is always different from month to month.

Alyssa Crankshaw: We intentionally avoid a traditional agency model, as it allows us to be flexible and bring in specialists when needed, rather than relying solely on existing personnel. This benefits everyone involved.

Differentiating Growth Marketing

What’s something people might not understand about your work?

Gus Ferguson: Growth marketing is a process—that’s how I distinguish it from traditional marketing. Many define it as the AARRR funnel, but is that fundamentally different from traditional marketing? Not necessarily. You might have a broader range of channels than a traditional marketer would focus on. However, the true difference lies in the process that gives our clients confidence they’re on the right track, even without prior experience. That’s how learning occurs.

One challenge with tackling something new for the first time, within a team of people also experiencing novelty and lacking historical data, is that you may not even know how to frame the problem. If you don’t have a growth marketing background, you may struggle to define the issue, let alone solve it. This is why much startup marketing is tactical rather than strategic, or even worse, tool-driven. People think, “If I use this tool, all my problems will be solved,” when, in reality, you need to formulate hypotheses and understand the objectives those hypotheses address.

Alyssa Crankshaw: We provide our clients with a roadmap, a foundation, and an operational structure for running campaigns, retention efforts, acquisition strategies, or whatever their target may be. This is incredibly valuable, as creating everything from scratch often leads to excessive testing. We appreciate a good test—we’re both marketers—but we only like to test significant variables. When working with inexperienced teams, we often see numerous tests focused on minor details, which is a waste of time and resources. There are foundational elements that experienced marketers instinctively recognize.