[mattbarrie]

Growth is marketing- it's just done with a different set of people than you would do a decade or more ago. Instead of people with MBAs or marketing backgrounds you do it with computer scientists and statisticians, and you base your actions on science; lots of testing and data.

[rfergie]

That is the point I need clarification on.

For a site like freelancer.com (large number of users, entirely online, lifetime value very important) testing and data work very well.

So since marketing is growth, isn't this the approach that would be used by a good marketing department?

Obviously a bad marketing department would do things differently, but a good one would find the activities that gave the steepest growth curve