Silos Are Killing Your Growth Strategy 🚫
Welcome to your latest edition of Welcome Tomorrow Insights, your go-to source for the latest in growth marketing strategies and impactful industry updates.
TL;DR:
Paid media isn’t always the problem . More often, the real issue lies in poor alignment between product and marketing.
Most funnels don’t break at the top, they fall apart at activation.
And if your growth strategy doesn’t consider retention from the start, you’re not growing , you’re just burning through budget. 🔥
It’s a pattern we’ve seen far too many times. The growth team is spending big on paid media, reporting healthy numbers on impressions, CPMs, and even installs. Everything looks great until you zoom in on product metrics, where retention is low and activation is almost non-existent.
And yet, when things start slipping, the blame tends to circle back to media performance:
“Maybe our ads need refreshing.”
“Let’s revisit targeting.”
“We should run a brand lift campaign.”
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: the issue often isn’t with your ads , it’s with how disconnected your teams are. Marketing is pushing one narrative, product is building another, and users are caught in the middle.
That disconnect? It shows up in your funnel.
The root of the problem 👇🏾
Many teams still operate with this classic growth model in mind:
Awareness → Acquisition → Retargeting → Repeat
While that framework isn’t wrong, it misses two of the most crucial components of real growth: activation and retention.
When those steps are overlooked, you end up with campaigns that drive traffic but very little traction.
Most funnels fail at activation ⚠️
Activation is the turning point where a new user goes from simply signing up to actually taking a meaningful action that reflects the product’s value. It might be ordering a first ride, sending money, listening to a playlist, or checking out a cart.
Unfortunately, most products aren't built with that moment in mind and it shows.
Mobile apps, in particular, are brutal. Churn is sky-high: 85% on iOS and 95% on Android. That means if you’re paying $2 per install, your cost per retained user after a month could easily be $40 or more.
That’s not just a leaky funnel ,it’s a financial drain.
Still, so many teams keep tweaking top-of-funnel media, hoping that better creative or sharper copy will fix what is actually a product and alignment issue.
The moment of value should guide everything 💡
Every product has a core value-driving action and your growth strategy should be designed to make it happen as early and easily as possible.
🚗 For Uber, it’s getting that first ride.
💸For a fintech app, it's sending or receiving money.
🎧For Spotify, it’s listening to a playlist tailored to you.
🛍️For e-commerce, it’s completing a checkout.
The faster a user reaches that moment, the higher your retention and the more efficient your paid media spend becomes.
Yet, in siloed teams, this gets lost. Acquisition teams celebrate sign-ups, while product teams are left to handle disengaged users with no context on the promises that got them in the door.
Marketing and product rarely speak the same language 💬
Here’s a typical scenario:
The marketing team runs ads shouting about “instant loans.” The messaging is strong, conversion rates look good. But after clicking, users land in an app onboarding flow that starts by talking about savings, referrals, and virtual cards not loans.
It’s a disconnect. And users bounce.
This isn’t just a UX oversight. It’s a silo problem. The teams building the acquisition funnel and the teams building the product experience are operating on separate tracks and users are the ones falling through the cracks.
Great growth requires cross-functional thinking 🛠️
The best growth examples don’t come from isolated campaigns or clever ads. They come from moments where product and marketing are working in sync.
Spotify Wrapped wasn’t just a campaign ,it was a feature that doubled as shareable content.
Notion AI didn’t need a massive launch. It lived quietly in the product, spread through word of mouth, demos, and content.
In all these examples, growth wasn’t treated as a separate channel, it was baked into the user experience. Marketing didn’t work around product; it worked with it.
Retention doesn’t start with CRM 📬
Too many teams treat retention as a problem to solve after the user drops off ,with emails, push notifications, and re-engagement flows.
But by that point, it’s often too late.
Retention starts with how fast and clearly a user experiences value. That’s a product decision, supported by marketing not the other way around.
If your onboarding is confusing, if your first session lacks direction, if there’s friction before value… no Day 3 email is going to change that.
So what should growth teams do differently? 🧠
Stop blaming media performance. If your funnel breaks after install, your problem is activation not CTR.
Make your moment of value the centre of your strategy. Don’t just know what it is , optimise everything to get users there fast.
Tear down the silos. Product marketing should be a bridge, not an afterthought.
Track retention with the same rigour as CAC. Not “our CPC dropped,” but “our cost per activated user fell from $25 to $7 after we rebuilt onboarding.”
So, next time someone says, “We need to fix the funnel,” don’t just fire up Ads Manager or rewrite your copy.
Instead, ask:
Are users getting to value fast enough?
Are product and marketing aligned on what that value is?
Are we designing growth as a system or running campaigns in isolation?
Because your funnel isn’t broken.
Your teams just aren’t building it together. 💔
App Growth Summit Africa 2025 📲
Thank you to everyone who joined us in Joburg ! we’re so grateful you came, and we’re excited to bring more of these conversations to cities across Africa.
You came, you saw, you networked 🙌🏾
Now here’s the photographic evidence 😂
This space is all about learning together 🙌🏾
Got your own lessons or fresh insights to add? Drop them in the comments, we’d love to hear from you. 💬
And if you’ve got a question for the Welcome Tomorrow team ,we’re all ears. Let’s keep the conversation going! 🚀✨
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