Chewy is the premier online pet supplies retailer, with 20.1 million active customers and $11.15 billion in sales for fiscal year 2023. Its growth strategy marketing approach is rooted in trust and convenience:

“Our mission is to be the most trusted and convenient destination for pet parents (and partners) everywhere. We view pets (and pet parents) as family and are obsessed with meeting their needs and exceeding customer expectations through every interaction.”

Building trust with marketing campaigns may seem like an unrealistic goal—isn’t marketing primarily supposed to build revenue? These three growth strategy marketing examples show how Chewy is doing both.

1. Surprise Pet Portraits
2. Holiday Wishlist Charity Drive
3. First-Time Customer Offer

These three growth strategy examples show a variety of diverse growth possibilities. There are many strategies companies can employ to drive growth, such as:

• launch brand extensions
• create new products 
• expand into new markets 
• acquisitions
• and many more 

However, what works for one company, might not work for the next, given a variety of factors, including industry, brand and company dynamics. Today more than ever, leaders are keen on making sure they have an effective growth strategy that will allow them to capitalize on evolving consumer behavior and preferences.

Let’s take a look at three innovative growth strategy examples and an analysis of why they worked. 

WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment, is a decades-old brand whose origin story dates back to 1953. My experience with WWE dates back to 2002, when my superfan boyfriend took me to a Raw live event. And I had fun! Fast forward to 2024, when my now-husband and I took our three children to their first WWE live event, a taping for SmackDown. Over the years, I’ve watched the brand expand its appeal with new audiences. These customer segmentation examples show how WWE carefully cultivates characters to give every fan someone to root for.

WWE Superstar Customer Segmentation Examples:
Roman Reigns

We’ll start with the superstar brand meant for the core youth fan: boys aged seven and up. Roman Reigns is a modern-day Hulk Hogan, with the impressive Superman Punch finishing move. In the storyline, he’s “The Head of the Table” and “Tribal Chief” who rules a powerful faction of muscular superstars (In WWE parlance, wrestlers are called superstars). For one of my 11-year-old sons, Roman Reigns represents everything wrestling should be.

When it comes to Halloween spending, the specter of tariffs appears to have been a boogeyman. As early as March, retailers were relating spooky tales of canceled shipments and reduced outlooks. But recent data tell a different story. And purveyors of costumes get creative with positioning strategy marketing.

Americans seem more thrilled than ever about Halloween. National Retail Federation (NRF) reports record Halloween spending of $13.1 billion, with 73% planning to celebrate the holiday. In 2024, we saw a significant dip in overall spending, prompting many to wonder, “Is this the beginning of the end?” This year, we have the succinct answer: No.

A competitor analysis framework provides a structured way to go about researching and understanding the competitive landscape.  For any brand, knowing who the competition is and what they are doing is important. It’s a general good practice to tease out opportunities and stay ahead. 

When Should I Create a Competitor Analysis Framework?

There are several scenarios that might trigger the need for a competitive analysis due-diligence project including:

• Understanding performance on key metrics relative to competitors, e.g., market share, growth, pricing, distribution, marketing spend, etc.
• Identifying portfolio gaps or new product/white space opportunities
• Identifying opportunities to drive greater differentiation and improve profitability
• General strategic planning best practice

There’s a new marketing acronym in town, GEO. It stands for Generative Engine Optimization, and it has one customer segment: AI chatbots. It’s the top growth strategy marketing approach your brand needs to plan for right now.

Through GEO, companies attempt to bring their brand into the conversation and influence AI chatbots to recommend their products and services. Across markets, the user journey might look something like this:

Wouldn’t you like your brand to be at the top of a chatbot’s recommendation?

These four pricing strategy examples explore one valuable tool in the pricing toolbox: price anchoring. In their book Dollars and Sense, Dan Ariely and Jeff Kreisler write:

“Which would you buy? A dress shirt priced at $60, or the very same dress shirt, priced at $100, but ‘On Sale! 40% off! Only $60!’?”

When consumers purchase a single product, they are making several choices (whether consciously or not). The most basic choice is to buy or not to buy. Once they move past that binary, the choice becomes which one to buy—and when to buy it. The selection criteria can include:

• Brands, i.e., Name brand or private label
• Product options, i.e., size, color, features, performance claims
• Channel, i.e., online or in-store
• Price, i.e., good, better or best pricing

In this article, we’ll demonstrate how price anchoring creates a sense of urgency and increases the perceived value of products consumers buy every day.

Folk music doesn’t seem like a likely candidate for a positioning strategy marketing analysis. Isn’t its main “position” anti-establishment? Au contraire. Music is also a business, as any musician knows.

In America, folk music has a purposefully fuzzy boundary, weaving through the history of jazz, bluegrass, country, gospel, blues and other cultural music. I’m calling this the “folk penumbra.”

But you know what folk music isn’t? Artificial. In July 2025, one million fans of new folk-rock-inspired The Velvet Sundown were shocked and dismayed to learn their new favorite listen is completely generated with AI. Here are some reactions from a recent Reddit forum titled, “The Velvet Sundown Hate Thread.”

New back-to-school shopping trends for 2025 buck expectations, as certain consumer groups prefer to shop earlier and in-store, instead of online procrastination. In 2023, we explored “Customer Segmentation Examples for Back-to-School,” which focused on three different segments of moms: public school, private school and homeschool. This year, we’re highlighting families by generation and income level.

Customer Segmentation Examples: Back-to-School Spending Gets a Boost

Before detailing our customer segmentation examples, let’s get an understanding of overall back-to-school spending expectations for 2025. Coresight Research US Back-to-School 2025 reports growth in spending this year.

Considering the slowing US birth rate, there may be fewer students now than previously, which could explain a higher growth rate for per-student spending compared to overall market growth. The most recent enrollment data is from 2021, which does show a decrease from enrollment highs in 2017.

Globetrotting may not be the future for trendy US travelers. North American destinations have seen a surge in popularity from top travel guides Tripadvisor, Travel + Leisure and Lonely Planet. Over the last decade, these trusted sources have increasingly turned their attention to the Western Hemisphere. Vacation spots in Canada, the United States and Mexico benefit from growth strategy marketing, with nearly 20% more recommendations from 2015 to 2025.

Removing the duplicate recommendations from years’ past shows an even bigger shift. Here’s a comparison chart of the different destinations featured by my three sources. In 2025, unique North American travel spots more than doubled, from 16 to 41. In 2015, it turns out almost all travel guides recommended NYC and Washington D.C. Today, their editors are casting a broader look at the geography.

For Travel + Leisure, a North American destination even made the list for Top Destinations for Adventurous Travelers, Universal Studio’s new Epic Universe in Orlando (although, I wonder if that was a feat of Universal’s PR team). For growth strategy marketing travel trends, I identified three areas that appear to have seen an increase in organic interest…