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KPIs Every Head of Growth Must Track

The Head of Growth owns the full loop from acquisition to activation to retention, optimizing the unit economics that decide whether growth compounds or stalls.

Head of Growth
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Why These Metrics Matter

The Head of Growth is responsible for the compounding loop that turns spend and content into durable revenue, which means owning metrics across acquisition, activation, and retention rather than any single channel. On acquisition, CAC and organic traffic (including share of voice) measure how efficiently the top of funnel is being filled, while ROAS gauges paid efficiency. But acquisition without activation is wasted spend, so activation rate and conversion rate are the hinge metrics that determine whether acquired users ever reach value. Retention rate and expansion revenue then decide whether that value persists and grows. The discipline that separates growth from marketing is unit economics: LTV/CAC ratio and CAC payback period tell the Head of Growth whether the loop is self-funding or subsidized, and MRR ties the whole system back to the revenue the business can bank. The best growth leaders instrument this entire loop so they can find the single constraint — a leaky activation step, a channel with degrading payback, a retention cliff — and fix the metric that unlocks the rest.

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Questions You Should Be Able to Answer

If you cannot answer these, you are missing critical visibility into your function.

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Your Core KPIs

Every metric includes definition, formula, platforms, causal drivers, and Q&A.

Customer Acquisition Cost
CAC
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) measures the total sales and marketing expenditure required to acquire one new paying customer over a given period.
Customer Lifetime Value
LTV
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) estimates the total net revenue a business expects to generate from a single customer relationship over its entire duration.
LTV:CAC Ratio
LTV:CAC
The LTV:CAC Ratio compares the expected lifetime value of a customer against the cost to acquire that customer, providing a single efficiency score for the growth model.
Conversion Rate
CVR
Conversion Rate (CVR) measures the percentage of users who complete a desired action out of all those who had the opportunity to do so, such as the percentage of website visitors who complete a purchase or form submission.
Activation Rate
Activation Rate measures the percentage of newly signed-up users who complete a defined set of onboarding actions that indicate they have experienced initial product value and are likely to continue using the product.
Retention Rate
Retention Rate measures the percentage of users or customers who continue to use a product or service in a given period after their initial acquisition.
Organic Traffic
Organic Traffic refers to website visitors who arrive through unpaid search engine results, driven by SEO content strategy, technical site health, and domain authority.
Return on Ad Spend
ROAS
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) measures the gross revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising.
Monthly Recurring Revenue
MRR
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is the total predictable recurring revenue a SaaS business expects to receive each month from all active subscriptions.
Expansion Revenue
Expansion Revenue is the additional recurring revenue generated from existing customers through upsells, cross-sells, seat additions, or usage growth beyond the original contract.
CAC Payback Period
CAC Payback Period measures the number of months required for a newly acquired customer to generate enough gross profit to recover the cost of acquiring them.
Share of Voice
SOV
Share of Voice (SOV) measures a brand's proportion of total advertising or media presence within its competitive category, expressed as a percentage of total category impressions, mentions, or spend.
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How Causal Analysis Changes the Game

For Head of Growths: Holdout and incrementality tests let the Head of Growth causally measure whether a channel or experiment actually drove new activation and revenue, rather than taking credit for conversions that would have happened anyway.
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Explore Other Role Guides

Each guide covers the full set of KPIs for that function with role-specific context.

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Related Resources

askotter capabilities and guides that help this role act on these metrics.

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Know Why Every Metric Is Moving

askotter gives Head of Growths causal visibility into every metric on this list, so you can act on root causes, not symptoms.

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