KPIs Every Head of Growth Must Track

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.