GROWTH VS BRAND MARKETING: PART ONE – UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCE

Every business in the gun trade has the same challenge: where should you put your marketing spend? Do you chase measurable results through growth marketing, or invest in the slower burn of brand? The truth is, both matter. But they’re very different beasts, and if you don’t understand the difference, you risk burning money on the wrong thing, writes Philip Montague.

IMAGE: ISTOCK -ATAKAN

WHAT GROWTH MARKETING REALLY MEANS

Growth marketing is often misunderstood. Too many people dismiss it as a set of short-term “hacks”. But at a technical level, growth marketing is a discipline. It’s about running constant experiments, measuring the results, and scaling what works to grow the number of sales you’re going to see.

The key thing to understand is that growth marketing happens across three horizons: short, medium and long term.

Short-term growth is about fast experiments. A clay ground might test two different ads for its introductory lesson package, or a gunroom might try two subject lines for its email offer on seasonal servicing. A rifle stock maker could experiment with wording on their landing page to see which version produces more enquiries. These are rapid tests, the kind that give you feedback within days, and improve conversion.

The point of short-term growth marketing isn’t only to grab a quick sale. It’s to generate learning. You discover which headline works, which channel is worth investing in, which offer resonates. The real prize is not the one-off uplift, but the ability to scale that improvement again and again.

Medium-term growth is slower, but still measurable. Think email nurture campaigns, loyalty schemes, and referral programmes. A gun shop might set up a “points for purchases” system that encourages repeat sales. A clay ground could build a six-email welcome series that keeps new members coming back and helps them to understand the range of services. A shooting coach might offer discounts to clients who bring a friend. These initiatives take months to show results, but they extend customer lifetime value and reduce churn.

Long-term growth is where strategies like SEO, content marketing and community building live. This is the slowest but most powerful lever of all. A rifle maker who publishes calibre guides and stalking articles can, over time, dominate Google search results. A clay shooting school that builds a YouTube library of tips gradually creates a global audience. A gunroom that fosters an online community of shooters builds loyalty that can’t be copied overnight. These efforts don’t show instant ROI, but once established they generate consistent, compounding growth.

What unites growth marketing across all three horizons is measurement. Whether you’re running an ad test, nurturing customers with email, or building an SEO content library, you know what’s working because the numbers tell you. That makes growth marketing especially appealing in the gun trade, where every pound needs to be justified.

THE DIFFERENT NATURE OF BRAND MARKETING

Brand marketing is something else entirely. It’s not about tweaking offers or optimising click-through rates. It’s about how you’re seen, remembered, and valued.

Where growth marketing is measurable and efficient, brand marketing is often expensive, slow, and difficult to quantify. It’s the glossy film of your engravers at work, the polished brochure that tells your heritage story, the sponsorship of a high-profile clay competition.

Brand marketing creates associations. Done well, it gives you pricing power, loyalty and prestige. It’s why Purdey, Holland & Holland and Rigby command their prices. Their brand is not just about a logo; it’s a centuries-old story that sets them apart.

The challenge is that brand spend feels risky. You can run a Facebook campaign and see within a week how many leads you generated. You can’t sponsor a competition and point to exactly how many sales came out of it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. It means it works differently.

COMPARING THE TWO

To put it simply:

• Growth marketing is about performance and efficiency.

• Brand marketing is about perception and prestige.

Growth marketing can deliver results today and set up compounding growth for tomorrow. Brand marketing is slower, harder to measure, and usually costs more — but it’s the thing that makes people choose you even when you’re not the cheapest.

THE GUN TRADE CONTEXT

Imagine two businesses.

Business A is a clay ground that leans on growth marketing. They run ads, test offers, and build their SEO presence. They can see exactly how many new members come from each channel. They’re efficient, but outside their local patch they’re invisible.

Business B is a heritage gunmaker that leans on brand. They produce films, brochures, and sponsor events. Their name is recognised across the industry, but they can’t easily tie the spend back to sales.

Neither is wrong. But the businesses that endure do both. They build reputation and loyalty through brand, and they keep the sales pipeline flowing through growth.

WHY THIS MATTERS

If you’re running a business in the shooting world, you need to be honest about where your spend is going. Growth marketing is attractive because it’s measurable. Brand marketing is harder because it’s costlier and you can’t easily prove ROI. But without brand, you risk being a commodity. Without growth, you risk being forgotten.

LOOKING AHEAD

This first part has been about defining the two disciplines and drawing the line between them. Growth spans short, medium and long-term strategies, each measurable and performance-led. Brand is slower, more expensive, and harder to measure, but it builds the trust and pricing power that no competitor can easily steal.

In Part Two, we’ll look at how the smartest businesses combine them, and why the balance is the difference between being just another name in the trade and being a business customers wouldn’t dream of leaving.

As always, I’m happy to help. Reach out to me via Instagramor drop me an email.