Marketing has gone through leaps and bounds in the presence of technology and smart tactics. It’s getting hard to stand out for any company. To break through the noise, it’s now increasingly important to have a marketing strategy that is creative and widely compelling. A strategy like this not only helps with customer acquisition, but becomes a breeding ground for versatility, word of mouth, and organic growth. This intriguing way of building a loyal user base has a name: growth marketing.
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What is Growth Marketing?
Marketers must have come across the word “growth marketing” many times before. Interestingly, the concept stems from the term “growth hacking,” coined by Sean Ellis in 2010. It was used to describe how agile organizations like Amazon approach the concept of growth. Both growth marketing and growth hacking are completely experimental at their cores, which means there is built-in room for either failure or success. Growth marketing is known to transform pre-defined marketing calendars into ever-changing, personalized lifecycle messaging. Over the past decade, growth marketing has replaced traditional marketing as a direct consequence of the internet age we live in. This magical revolution is down to data accumulation.
Basically, what is growth marketing? It is marketing 2.0. Taking the traditional marketing model and adding layers comprising A/B testing, extensive value-additive blog posts, SEO optimization, creative ad copy, and technical analysis of a user’s experience. The insights acquired from these tactics are implemented to achieve robust and sustainable growth.
What Makes Growth Marketing Different?
Traditional marketing is famous for its set and forget strategy. They usually burn through the budget and never guarantee results. The best example of this is Google adwords and its display campaigns with basic ad copy service. Yes, it can be a great way to build organic traffic and top the sales funnel. It may even increase a company’s user acquisition. But, this is where the value suffers.
On the other hand, growth marketing goes beyond the top of the funnel. When done correctly, it adds value to the marketing funnel by attracting users and engaging them. Eventually, this helps turn the acquired cast into champions for your brand. Growth is programmed to focus on the full funnel, traditional marketing fares better on top of the funnel. Every data driven marketer aches to develop a strategy that works, without comprehending the pros and cons of each aspect.
Keep in mind that growth marketing does not guarantee rapid success. It is also a stochastic process, much like biological evolution. There will always be an element of randomness to the strategies that might or might not work. To be certain of what will be a fruitful road to go down, start throwing things at the wall and see what sticks.
Why Does Growth Marketing Work?
Our world is ever changing relying on convenience and progress. From multinational corporations to local businesses, the internet paves way for customer relationships, promoting products and selling goods. Two-thirds of businesses invest in online advertising. Any business whatsoever, regardless of the industry, must adopt the digital marketing aspect to stay competitive. But there is another dilemma, every business nowadays faces an abundance of competition online. Whether it’s the basic posting on social media or scheduling a few ads on Google Display Network. It’s almost never enough to scale. This is where growth marketing comes into play.
To summarize, growth marketing helps businesses scale to an unprecedented level. It’s highly critical when planning rapid development in the current environment. Before the internet was a common theme, companies would have to wait a month to publish a new ad in the next edition of a magazine. Nowadays, online marketing tools are readily available, meaning new ads can be published in mere seconds. Due to the technology at our disposal, it would likely be a better ad than before. Since companies can use data from previous campaigns.
Growth marketers have one great advantage. They can easily access sophisticated data about their campaigns and their customers’ online activities in real-time. This is because of an ongoing feedback loop that enables agile work and increases its effectiveness. Given the tools to adjust their digital marketing activities at any moment, growth marketers are blessed at adept experimentation to yield quick results.
5 Core Elements of Growth Marketing Campaign
Now that we have covered the importance of growth marketing, it’s time to understand the concept and its essential elements. Growth marketing is the process of experimentation and optimization with the set aim of growing a company’s revenue. In order to be successful, marketers interested in this field need to have a data-driven growth plan. They need to focus coherently on engagement and retention and experiment constantly, paying attention to the customer journey. Keeping these things in mind, you’ll be well on your way to designing a successful growth marketing campaign.
Data-Driven Growth Plan
A successful growth marketing plan rests on a specified growth report to reach the pinnacle of success. It’s imperative to keep this document updated on a regular basis as companies experiment with fresh ideas and receive extensive feedback. The growth plan needs to include critical information such as your hypotheses, goals, target market, channels, and budget. Only track data that are acquisition related. This includes how people find out about a product and the engagement rate as well. Questions like if they are actually using it/ taking it, and conversion numbers are also important.
A/B Testing
A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a popular concept in the marketing industry. In this, growth marketers compare two versions of an item and track the results. Usually, this entails sending traffic to both versions (the “A” and the “B”), after that, they observe which one converts better. Through A/B testing, it’s easier to gauge different elements on a company’s website or app, and it becomes easier to optimize your growth plan for maximum efficiency.
Focus on Engagement and Retention
A successful growth marketing campaign does not appear out of nowhere. There are aspects to work on, mainly like prioritizing engagement and retention from the start. Instead of only concentrating on acquiring new customers, work on how you can also make them loyal return visitors. You can track engagement and measure success by looking at data such as time spent using the product. Along with the number of consumers who come back regularly.
Constant Experimentation
Growth marketing is a risky game. Experimentation is necessary in this high octane field. To successfully experiment, take the fearless approach and try new things. Afterwards, use data interpretation to see what works best. Always remember that experiments should always center around changes that are acquired by data. The growth plan is the driving force behind these experiments, and A/B testing can assist in fine-tuning them for better results.
A Focus on the Customer Journey
The customer journey is extremely important. This is because they interact with your brand, from awareness to purchase. As a growth marketer, it’s imperative to understand how something as critical as target customers progress through the customer journey. By doing this, marketing efforts can be optimized at each stage. When mapping out the customer journey, it becomes easier to identify opportunities for growth and create a more seamless experience for your customer.
Best Growth Marketing Campaigns
Acquisition-Focused Growth Marketing Campaign
Normally, growth marketers who are focused on acquisition often think about how they can bring new customers to their brand. They are known to use various techniques to acquire the target market. This includes paid advertising, search engine optimization, social media and email marketing.
Lets suppose a growth marketer creates an SEO optimized blog post that ranks high in search results and drives traffic to a website. The real goal of an acquisition focused growth marketing is to reach out to as many potential customers as possible, getting them interested in the product.
Engagement-Focused Growth Marketing Campaign
Moving onto another popular growth marketing strategy, we have engagement-focused growth marketing campaigns. They are all about keeping your existing customers happy and engaged. It’s a universal truth that retaining a customer is better than acquiring a new one. Growth marketers are known to use a variety of tricks to increase engagement. The more well known ones are in-app messages, push notifications, email campaigns, and even good old-fashioned customer service.
A prime example of a growth marketer might be to set up an automated email campaign. It can be programmed to send a coupon code to customers who haven’t used their product in a while. They could also create a pop-up message for first-time visitors. People who do engage to their website would be offered a discount for signing up on the newsletter. The goal of an engagement-focused growth marketing campaign is to keep the customers hooked.
Revenue-Focused Growth Marketing Campaign
Coming onto the last but not least, we have revenue-focused growth marketing campaigns. They are all about increasing the money that your customers spend with your business. This is achieved through a variety of means, such as upselling, cross-selling, and even discount codes.
A great example of this could be a growth marketer who might be creating an upsell offer for customers. Especially those who add a certain product to their cart. They could also send out a discount code to customers who have not made a purchase in a while. The goal of a revenue-focused growth marketing campaign is to drive up the revenue by customer engagement.
The Crux of Growth Marketing
For marketers, it’s important to understand that growth marketing is wholly dependent on marketing metrics and data. But, at the same time, it’s primarily concerned with the metrics that pave the arduous path to growing the business. Contrary to popular belief, It is not the number of likes or impressions that count. Rather, growth marketing is all about the cost per acquisition, sales data, and other metrics. These have a direct effect on the bottom line of your business. A video can get 20,000 views, but if there’s only one click, then it is not a growth marketing success.
Is Growth Marketing For Everyone?
Even for experienced marketers, growth marketing may be a concept full of confusion. It often seems like there is no definite answer. The online world is full of complexities and there are now endless tools, channels or tactics that come under the concept of growth marketing.
But the truth is, some core aspects of growth marketing incorporate traditional marketing methods as well. A commercial is still a form of media, whether it is printed in a magazine or on the TV. This is why it’s critical to keep an open mind. Growth marketing is not the gung-ho ticket to success for every company. It’s a blooming work in process that requires a solid foundation to grow from. If a company is still classified as a startup, establish it before investing in growth marketing.
In 2023, the rise of data enrichment and development of HubSpot CRM are enabling more companies to adopt this strategy. For those whose main goal is scaling their companies, or tweak your marketing efforts to get more ROI. Baby steps are important, this is why consider implementing some growth marketing experiments to improve the pirate metrics.
So there you have it, this was our take on growth marketing and how it impacts the mind hives of every business today. Feel free to comment and reach out in case of any query!
Featured Image: SalesForce
