Master Growth Marketing: 10 Best Principles

In less than a decade, growth marketing has significantly impacted the overall goal of marketing. Effective marketing is no longer exclusively about the top of the sales funnel and merely getting new customers; it now entails getting customers who are going to stay for the long-term. After all, growth is not possible if you cannot retain the customers.

So, what exactly is growth marketing? It is a type of marketing that intends to attract more engaged customers. Growth marketing focuses on the entire funnel (awareness, acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, and referral) , thereby distinguishing itself from traditional marketing that focuses solely on the top of the funnel ( awareness and acquisition).

To explain the concept better, here are quotes from leading marketers.

“Growth marketing is removing the boundaries of marketing to enable every aspect of the customer experience to focus on attracting more engaged customers,” CEO at Lola. com, Mike Volpe.

“Finance owns the flow of cash in and out of a company. Growth owns the flow of customers in and out of a product,” Partner at The App Solutions, Andy Johns.

“Growth starts with a deep understanding of product value and is about moving new users to the Aha! moment as quickly as possible, measurable in seconds,” Founder and CEO, Social Capital, Chamath Palihapitiya.

How Growth Marketing Helps Your Business

Facebook is one of the companies whose success is attributed to growth marketing and is credited with making this approach famous. It was among the first companies to have a team that focused solely on growth instead of marketing. This tactic is undoubtedly one of the critical reasons behind Facebook’s ability to reach 2 billion active users each month in the space of 13 years.

In another case study, Tam Al-Saad, Principal Consultant – Strategy and Growth at Web Profits, reported a 150% improvement in monthly performance after his company made adjustments that saw their internal team become more growth inclined.

These examples make a good case for growth marketing. So, how do you implement this all-important strategy? Here are 10 tips to help you carry out effective growth marketing in your business:

Understand the Fundamentals of Growth

Knowing the fundamentals growth will enable you to solve any problems you might come across. That said, it is essential to note that the fundamentals for growth are not email marketing, content, search, or Facebook ads. Instead, they are the following:

Data Analysis

For success in growth marketing, you need to be in a position to analyze and understand the meaning of data. This way, you can identify and comprehend new solutions and ideas.

Quantitative Modelling

You need to be capable of translating your past data into a model that can effectively simulate the future. In turn, you will get a clearer picture of what you should be doing in the present.

User Psychology

Understanding the psychology of users goes a long way in ensuring success in growth marketing. User psychology boils down to comprehending your audience, their problems, and the solutions they seek from you.

Storytelling

You should be capable of bringing data analysis, user psychology, and quantitative modeling to life using stories. With compelling accounts, you will engage your audience, thus ensuring growth.

Copywriting, Facebook ads, social media, conversation optimization, and so forth build off from the foundation of these four fundamentals. As such, it is imperative that you get them right from the start.

Dive Deeper into the Concept

Anyone can learn the basics of growth marketing, but this is not enough for success. The proven way to get better at growth hacking is solving actual problems, thus enabling yourself to acquire essential skills. You need to spend enough time implementing various growth tactics to identify those that work and those that don’t.

Choose the Projects to Work on

You need to choose your growth projects wisely. High impact, low popularity projects remain the best way forward because they enable you to do the following:

• Learn a lot along the way because they are challenging.
• Get at the center of your organization, given that such projects have high visibility and significance.

Maximize Learning by Having a Foot in the Unknown

If you want to maximize growth, you will have to ensure that you have one foot in the known and the other in the unknown. Let’s elaborate. When you know everything, you will not keep learning, and as such, you will become obsolete as the industry evolves. On the contrary, when you are too far in the unknown, it is quite possible for you to feel overwhelmed and thus incapable of making any significant progress.

So, what’s the perfect balance? Well, there is none. Nonetheless, you should always be keen to identify the signs that show when you are inclined to a specific end and work your way back to around the midpoint.

Focus on Accomplishments Instead of Credentials

Having educational credentials is not guaranteed to make you an expert at growth marketing. This process is about testing, and as such, only your present skills and accomplishments so far matter. You will have to tap into your history when developing tests that enable you to determine what will work and what will not.

Create a Platform

“Platform” here means things such as videos, podcasts, images, blogs, speaking gigs, and so forth. These things go a long way in spurring growth because they provide you with a chance to show off your thoughts, creations, and plans. When you do this, the following happens:

• More opportunities come your way because more people recognize your effort/work.
• You get more leverage as more business opportunities come to you.
• You create a strong brand that accrues your company more advantages.

Find a Coach

You need to find an excellent coach to guide you through the entire growth marketing process. Typically, a coach will provide you with the following forms of guidance:

• Honest opinion: A coach is more likely to provide you with useful, unbiased information because they do not have a direct interest in the outcome.
• Excellent questions: The better the quality of a question, the better the answer. With a great coach, you are assured of unique questions that can help you view issues in a new light, thus enabling you to come up with innovative solutions.

Be Proactive

As you implement various growth marketing strategies, you are bound to come about multiple issues that demand a suiting reaction from you. While it is easy to be reactive, it is best to be proactive. Before you make any decision, do the following:

• Develop a hypothesis for your situation.
• Create an appropriate experiment.
• Experiment.
• Assess the results.

If you get positive results, then it makes sense to keep going, but if you get negative results, it makes sense to factor in what you have learned when developing your other hypothesis.

Stay Current

Staying updated on growth marketing issues is essential. Some tactics worked years ago but won’t today, and there are newer channels of growth that yield higher ROI. It is up to you to keep up with strategies that offer great results.

Narrow Your Focus

When you narrow your focus, you become an expert in your area, and thus, customers will associate your brand with a specific good or service. When customers and prospects associate you with something, it becomes cheaper to acquire and re-engage them; hence, contributing to growth.

Have Proof

Use social proof, testimonials, and media proof to make your brand stronger and improve your brand’s trust factor. Tools such as Proof show site visitors that others have purchased from your website or taken specific actions on it.

Final Word

To conclude, you are now aware of the things you can do to ensure success with growth marketing. If you have other techniques to share, feel free to continue the conversation started with this post right below on the comment section.