Growth Marketing is a relatively new term and not to be confused with the trendy phrase “growth hacking” which has been over-used and become rather synonymous with marketing agencies who over promise and under deliver.
When you hear a term like Growth Marketing you could be forgiven for thinking that it sounds pretty self-evident – surely all marketing is about growth?
Well, not exactly, but before we can explain Growth Marketing it is probably a good idea to first define Growth Hacking so we can clearly demonstrate how Growth Marketing is different, better and more suited to most businesses.
Growth Hacking – What is it?
Growth Hacking is a phrase coined in the US by a marketer who had achieved huge success with Dropbox and a number of other companies.
His explanation of it was rather convoluted and believe me, you can find an awful lot of convoluted ways to define growth hacking with a quick Google search. In simple terms, Growth Hacking relates to an expedited marketing campaign designed to rapidly grow the business’ customer base. However, it typically only works with tech products, or tech-based products, which by their nature, are able to service a surge of customers into the thousands of percent without it having a major impact on their supply chain.
A company that delivers a physical product or one that requires human resources to scale up in the face of higher demand cannot really benefit from growth hacking in the same way. This is because companies such as this have to control their rate of growth based on external factors. Tech companies can deliver a software to millions of customers with very little in-house resource growth required.
It is often used in well-funded start ups with the finances to make a huge impact quickly.
Growth Marketing – What is it?
Growth Marketing is basically a marketing technique aimed at utilising all marketing channels at your disposal and to tweak, adjust and shift them for optimal growth.
It is about identifying which if your marketing and/or conversion channels are performing the best, or worst, and making constant and continual adjustments to them so you can grow your business exponentially over time.
In simple terms it is the obvious marriage of traditional marketing with digital marketing.
How do you introduce growth marketing into your business?
There are a number of key things to remember when you consider improving your marketing and look at how you can move to a growth marketing model. For simplicity, we have broken these down into a few primary points to remember.
Never Neglect Brand
Brand strength is one of those things that can often be seen as intangible, impossible to quantify and almost as difficult to measure as something as abstract as happiness or contentedness.
However, your brand is the most important thing, the most valuable asset your business possesses. Ignoring brand to focus on the purely measurable, short-term, attainable activity is a big risk which rarely pays off. Your brand is how you are perceived, the thing that stays with customers and influences their buying decisions. Love them or hate them, Apple have a brand that is incredibly strong and allows so many people to bypass any thought process when considering whether to buy from them or not.
Optimise Your Entire Funnel
A true growth marketer must have relationships and understanding across the entire business. This is the only way it is possible for them to uncover ways to improve the product, delivery and customer experience at every touchpoint.
This is a crucial activity in establishing long-term growth and really helps to identify possible weaknesses or areas for improvement. All of which add to your brand experience and thus your brand perception.
Aim to Wow
Customer experience will ultimately be the making or breaking of any brand. But if you are able to wow your customers then you can generate a huge amount of growth, just on word-of-mouth and customer retention alone. New customers will want that same wow, so make sure you maintain it once you’ve achieved it.
Measure, Measure, Measure
Any marketing agency worth their salt will want to measure as much as possible. This can range from your social media mentions to your customer’s behaviour on your website and everything between. Your conversion rates will change each time you adjust your marketing, your website, your social media, your content etc. measuring and understanding this is crucial to growth marketing.
It is not enough to simply analyse data. A true growth marketer will extrapolate from it, read it, see its trends and lean into what is working.
Expect Some Failure
As with all forms of marketing there is going to be some things that are tried which don’t work. Some may even have a negative impact. None of that is wasted efforts. Thomas Edison, when asked about the 10,000 failed attempts to create the light bulb once famously said, “I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Give your marketers a little freedom to fail and, if they are good, they’ll learn from those failures and deliver success in the future.
Constant Improvement, Not Perfection
Growth Marketing is about endless adjustment, improvement and optimisation. There will never be perfection, there will never be a marketing campaign that wastes absolutely no money at all. Adapt, learn and adapt again. It is evolution, not utopia for which we are striving.
How to Get Started
If you’re interested in getting started on growth marketing, then the first thing to know is that your social media intern is not going to be the person able to do it. Growth Marketing by its nature requires someone with business experience, someone with more than just marketing activity in their locker.
Someone with experience, someone with the knowledge of numerous disciplines and someone with the big picture mindset who can take your business on the journey. Someone a bit like us.
Please do get in touch today and we would be happy to discuss your marketing needs and how we may be able to help.
