How to Design a Growth Team That Drives Results

Building a growth team used to be straightforward. You'd hire a Facebook ads specialist, a Google ads expert, maybe someone who lived and breathed email marketing. Each person owned their channel, optimised their metrics, and everyone stayed in their lane.

That playbook is dying.

Why channel specialists are losing their edge

Here's what's happening: the barriers between marketing channels are crumbling. Your "Facebook ads specialist" might be great at campaign optimisation, but when iOS 14.5 killed attribution and AI started writing ad copy, suddenly their deep platform knowledge mattered less than their ability to think strategically across channels.

Meanwhile, your email marketing guru might know every feature of Klaviyo, but if they can't connect email performance to your broader funnel metrics or understand how email fits into your customer journey, they're just pushing buttons.

The tools are getting easier to use. The strategy is getting harder to execute.

The case for growth generalists

In an AI-powered world, we need marketers who can see the bigger picture. Not specialists who optimise in isolation, but generalists who understand how all the pieces fit together.

Think about it: ChatGPT can write your ad copy. AI can optimise your bids. Automated email sequences can nurture your leads. But no tool can figure out your positioning, understand your customer psychology, or decide which experiments to run next.

That's where growth generalists shine. They're not trying to become the world's best Facebook ads manager. They're trying to understand what drives growth across your entire business.

What makes an AI-native marketer

The marketers who'll thrive in the next five years aren't the ones who resist AI tools. They're the ones who use them to become more strategic.

An AI-native marketer:

• Uses AI to handle routine tasks, then focuses on strategy and experimentation

• Understands multiple channels well enough to spot opportunities and connections

• Can interpret data across the entire funnel, not just their piece of it

• Thinks in terms of customer lifetime value, not just campaign metrics

• Knows when to trust the algorithm and when to override it

They're not trying to compete with AI. They're trying to direct it.

How to actually structure your growth team

Here's what I'd recommend:

Start with generalists, not specialists. Hire people who've worked across multiple channels and understand how they connect. They don't need to be experts in everything, but they should be curious about everything.

Build in experimentation from day one. Your team structure should make it easy to test new ideas quickly. If it takes three weeks and five meetings to launch a simple experiment, your structure is wrong.

Create clear ownership without silos. Someone should own each major channel, but that ownership should include understanding how their channel affects everything else. Your email person should care about how email impacts your paid acquisition costs.

Hire for learning ability, not just experience. The marketer who taught themselves TikTok ads in 2020 is more valuable than the one who's been running Facebook ads the same way for five years.

Plan for constant change. New channels emerge. Attribution breaks. Algorithms change. Your team structure should be flexible enough to adapt without a complete reorganisation.

The broader experience advantage

Here's something most companies get wrong: they think deep expertise trumps broad experience. But growth is about finding connections between different parts of your business.

The marketer who's worked at a B2B SaaS company, an e-commerce brand, and a marketplace doesn't just have three different experiences. They have pattern recognition. They can spot what works across different business models and adapt tactics to your specific situation.

That's way more valuable than someone who's run the same type of campaigns for the same type of company for years.

Making the transition

If you're building a growth team from scratch, this is easier. Just hire growth generalists and build AI-native processes from the start.

If you already have a team of channel specialists, the transition is trickier. You can't just tell your Facebook ads person to start caring about email marketing. But you can:

• Create cross-channel projects that require collaboration

• Share data and insights across the team regularly

• Encourage experimentation in adjacent channels

• Hire new team members who bridge different areas

The goal isn't to turn specialists into generalists overnight. It's to create a team culture where everyone understands how their work affects the bigger picture.

What this means for you

Whether you're hiring your first growth person or rebuilding your entire team, the principles are the same:

Hire curious people who can adapt. Build processes that encourage experimentation. Create structures that break down silos. And always remember that in a world where AI handles the execution, strategy and creativity become your biggest advantages.

The growth teams that win won't be the ones with the best Facebook ads managers. They'll be the ones who understand growth as a system and know how to make all the pieces work together.

Growth Method is the GrowthOS built for marketing teams focused on pipeline — not projects. Book a call to see how we can help you build a more effective growth team.

"We are on-track to deliver a 43% increase in inbound leads this year. There is no doubt the adoption of Growth Method is the primary driver behind these results."

Laura Perrott, Colt Technology Services