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Everything You Need to Know About Growth Marketing

Growth Marketing

What is growth marketing?

If you’re looking for a quick summary of the definition of growth marketing, here it is:

Growth marketing acquires and retains customers by utilizing various marketing channels such as search and email to target each stage of the purchasing funnel. It is based on creative, data-driven tactics that consider users’ individual wants, pain points, and questions throughout the purchasing funnel.

What Distinguishes Growth Marketing?

Growth marketing is a new challenge for many marketers. Because it differs from other social media strategy agencies, marketing departments continue to wonder, “What is growth marketing?” This section will teach you what distinguishes growth marketing from other marketing approaches.

Growth Marketing vs Traditional Marketing

Your company, like most, is probably using some traditional marketing.

Your team uses television, radio, and print to reach and convert people to your target audience with traditional marketing. Despite being one of the oldest forms of marketing, traditional marketing tends to underperform as more consumers rely on digital channels to research their next purchase.

On the other hand, growth marketing takes a more broad approach to reach and convert your target audience and increase client retention rates. It engages with potential and current clients through various channels, ranging from traditional to digital.

Check out this comparison for a quick overview of growth marketing versus traditional marketing:

Traditional MarketingGrowth Marketing
Uses traditional, non-digital channelsUses digital and non-digital channels.
Focuses on converting usersFocuses on converting and retaining users.
One of the oldest forms of marketing.One of the newest forms of marketing.

Growth Marketing vs Growth Hacking

While growth hacking is a term that many startups are familiar with, many businesses are unaware of it. Growth hacking is a method of aggressively growing a company’s business and revenue. This strategy places a strong emphasis on rapid experimentation across marketing channels. Companies want to find the most profitable strategies as soon as possible, so the speed is critical.

While growth hacking and growth marketing aim to help businesses grow, they are not the same. Your team develops a data-driven strategy to support and improve your company’s growth, revenue, and client satisfaction with growth marketing. While your strategy may include various experiments for conversion rate optimization, it does not rise to the level of growth hacking.

Discover the key distinctions between growth marketing and growth hacking:

Growth HackingGrowth Marketing
Adopts an aggressive approach for growth.Adopts a data-driven approach for growth.
Focuses on rapid experimentation and testing.Focuses on strategic experimentation and testing.
Emphasizes revenue and sales growth.Emphasizes revenue and client retention growth.

Growth Marketing vs Digital Marketing

Digital marketing, like traditional marketing, is distinct from growth marketing.

Your company’s digital marketing strategy focuses on attracting, converting, engaging, and retaining customers via online marketing channels such as search, email, and social media. It, like growth marketing, makes strategic decisions for your digital marketing campaign based on data.

As opposed to ROI-driven digital marketing, growth marketing places a strong emphasis on converting and retaining users. Marketers can also use traditional methods to reach users in your target audience in addition to digital channels.

Digital MarketingGrowth Marketing
Uses digital channelsUses digital and traditional channels.
Emphasizes conversions and client retention.Emphasizes conversions and client retention.
Leverages data for strategic decisions.Leverages data for strategic decisions.

Digital and growth marketing have several similarities compared to traditional marketing and growth hacking. They both take a short- and long-term approach to your company’s success and client relationships, making them valuable tools for businesses today.

Why is Growth Marketing Important?

For many businesses and marketing teams, growth marketing necessitates a complete reevaluation of their approach to reaching, converting, and retaining potential and current clients. It’s both a time-consuming and difficult process.

Growth marketing, on the other hand, is worthwhile for the following four reasons:

  1. Consumers Take Non-Linear Buying Journeys

Previously, consumers followed a linear path to purchase, progressing from awareness to purchase at a predictable rate. That has changed with the rise of the Internet and technology, and users now take a non-linear purchasing journey across desktops, tablets, and smartphones.

That is why companies such as Google, for example, have created alternative purchasing funnels. Google’s model focuses on micro-moments, which occur when someone wants to buy, do, know, or go.

If you want to succeed in today’s market, you must adapt to modern consumer shops. By focusing on every step a user takes before and after purchase, you can keep moving your company forward (and your sales up) with growth marketing.

  1. High Turnover Rates Decimate Revenue

Earning a new customer is expensive and has been for decades. Even though acquiring a new client costs ten times more than retaining an existing one, many businesses fail to prioritize client retention, resulting in a high customer turnover rate.

A high turnover rate can harm your business in a variety of ways, including

  • Reducing your annual revenue
  • Slowing your growth rate
  • Lowering the value of your company

If your company is having difficulty retaining customers, you can also acquire more customers. People read and listen to reviews whether you’re in the business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) market. To succeed, you need raving reviews as well as brand advocates.

With growth marketing, your company can begin focusing on its current customers. You can devise strategies to increase their loyalty and trust, as well as their continued investment in your business. This proactive approach may lead to word-of-mouth recommendations, online reviews, and other benefits.

  1. Merchandising and Marketing are Now Inextricably Linked

Companies nowadays frequently combine their merchandising and marketing efforts. It’s especially common in eCommerce and technology companies that use user data to recommend related products, resources, and more.

However, the combination of merchandising and marketing introduces a new challenge. Businesses must consider where users are in the buying funnel when browsing a product or reading an article to provide the best follow-up action.

If you stick with traditional marketing, it will be difficult to reap the full benefits of this integration because you will be focusing only on users at the bottom of your funnel. However, you can begin to consider consumers at all stages with growth marketing.

This new approach can assist your team in recommending products and services to current and potential clients, thereby increasing sales and revenue. Even better, accurate recommendations to current customers can boost their loyalty and satisfaction.

  1. Data Provides Unparalleled Insight into Consumers

Whether your company operates offline or online, data can provide your company with invaluable insight into your target market. It can also provide valuable information on consumers at various stages of the purchasing funnel, which can help inform your growth marketing efforts.

Companies can acquire user data in a few ways, including

  • Website analytics
  • User account activity
  • Digital marketing
  • User surveys

You can take advantage of this data by using growth marketing. You can use data from your website, ad campaigns, and email marketing strategy to build a detailed approach to targeting future and existing customers, from tracking new customers’ conversion journeys to monitoring the actions of current clients.

How to Make a Living as a Growth Marketer?

If you want to incorporate growth marketing into your business strategy, you must adopt a growth marketer’s mindset. Even if you work with a full-service digital marketing agency, they should agree with you.

The following are some characteristics of growth marketers:

  1. Make Data-Driven Decisions

Growth marketers do not rely on hunches or educated guesses. They base their decisions on data. As a growth marketer, you or your agency must use the tools and technology at your disposal to learn about your target audience, develop your strategy, and track your progress.

However, keep in mind that your company will need to interpret this data. While data provides the content, the context is provided by your team or agency, and they can figure out what that data means for your campaign and how to change your strategy to improve the data.

  1. Understand Your Company’s Product or Service

It’s not uncommon for businesses to have a schism between their product development and marketing departments. This lack of communication and understanding frequently results in marketing materials that fail to convey the value of a product.

Encourage your product development and marketing departments to work together. Attend product development meetings with your marketing team. Alternatively, organize a training session so that marketing personnel can learn about the product or service firsthand.

When you work with an agency, it’s even more important for them to understand your company, products, and services. That is why, like ROI Minds, it is advantageous to select an ROI-focused digital marketing agency that provides a dedicated account manager and custom plans.

  1. Focus on Benefits Rather Than Features

For the best growth marketing results, your company should emphasize the benefits (rather than the features) of its products or services to users. When you concentrate on the benefits, your product or service becomes more tangible to users, and they see how your company assists them in resolving a problem.

Consider the plumbing company example from earlier. Most customers are unconcerned about the features of a toilet, such as its fill time, finish, or flush system. People will understand the benefits of your product if you highlight how the fast-fill time saves users time or how the finish prevents marks or scuffs.

Consider how your company can communicate the benefits of your products or services to consumers, whether you’re launching a PPC campaign or developing a content marketing strategy. It is also critical for your team to emphasize the most significant benefits to your target audience.

Six Common Growth Marketing Objectives

If you want to incorporate growth marketing into your business strategy, you must first determine which goals are appropriate for growth marketing. Growth marketing allows your company to set and achieve various goals, making the strategy even more appealing.

The six most common (and useful) growth marketing objectives are as follows:

  1. Client Retention Rates

Companies that adopt growth marketing often focus on their client retention rates. When you decide to improve your client retention rates with growth marketing, you make it possible for your business to increase its revenue and optimize its customer acquisition costs.

If your company focuses on client retention rates, you can use a few strategies, including

  • An email marketing campaign to build loyalty and engagement
  • Loyalty rewards program to encourage repeat purchases and a brand loyalty
  • Survey system to receive customer feedback and gauge customer satisfaction

It’s also essential for your team to create a S.M.A.R.T. goal to improve client retention rates. A S.M.A.R.T. goal is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. For example, you may set a goal to increase client retention rates by five percent in 12 months.

  1. Customer Satisfaction

While some businesses combine customer satisfaction and customer retention goals, it is beneficial to keep the two separate. Even though they are similar, they measure two different things, which is why you should set separate goals for each.

Customer retention is concerned with the number of loyal people to your company. Compared to customer satisfaction, you assess how satisfied people are with your company, products, and services.

In most cases, companies use surveys to gauge customer satisfaction.

Businesses, for example, commonly use the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to assess customer satisfaction. On a 10-point scale, NPS assesses users’ willingness to recommend your company to a friend or colleague.

The goal is to get ratings of 9 or 10, which will make the user a promoter of the product.

A score of 7 or 8 indicates a passive user, which means they’re likely to switch to a competitor if provided with a better offer—users who score six or less qualify as detractors and are unhappy with your business.

Once you receive your NPS score, your team can draft a plan for improving your ratings.

  1. Brand Awareness

As growth marketing focuses on every stage of the buying funnel, brand awareness is another common goal. Your business wants to build user familiarity with your brand, services, or products to move them through the buying funnel with brand awareness.

A few ways you can use growth marketing to boost brand awareness include

  • Social media marketing and advertising campaigns to reach current and future followers
  • Influencer marketing to reach users in your target market
  • Content marketing to connect with top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) users
  • Infographics to reach a broad audience

When setting brand awareness as a goal, it’s important to remember that it is difficult to measure. That’s why your team needs to get creative when building your S.M.A.R.T. goal. You want something measurable but also accurate.

  1. Company Revenue

Businesses use growth marketing to increase quarterly and annual revenue in addition to customer acquisition rates. A revenue-related goal can assist your company in developing an effective pricing model and targeting users who provide the most financial value to your company.

You narrow and refine your target audience with this growth marketing goal. Once you’ve identified your target audience, your team can create a growth marketing campaign to reach, convert, and retain them.

For example, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company may shift its focus from all users in its market to users who spend at least $800 per month. This move enables the organization to increase revenue by focusing on users who provide the most financial value.

  1. Customer Acquisition Rates

While growth marketing emphasizes client retention, it also focuses on customer acquisition. Your business can drive additional sales and revenue with improved customer acquisition rates. Both increases can help your organization expand its operations, hire more team members, and more.

Some common strategies for increasing customer acquisition rates include:

  • Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to reach bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) users
  • Search engine optimization (SEO) to improve product and service visibility in search results
  • Content marketing to reach top- and middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) users
  • Web design to enhance website usability for users in every stage of the buying funnel

If your company uses multiple strategies to improve customer acquisition rates, creating an integrated approach is essential. Your web design efforts and PPC campaigns, for example, should coordinate with one another to support your overall goal.

For example, you may measure the brand awareness of an influencer marketing campaign by monitoring how many of that influencer’s followers began following your company before, during, and after the campaign.

  1. Conversion Rates

A conversion encompasses several different actions, including

  • A contact form submission
  • A sign-up for an email newsletter
  • A follow, like, share, or comment on social media
  • A purchase

When you incorporate growth marketing into your business strategy, you can increase conversion rates for various actions. All of these actions can help you achieve your larger goals, such as increasing revenue, client retention, and so on.

If you decide to include conversion rates in your growth marketing strategy, your team must establish specific goals for each conversion. For example, suppose you want to increase email sign-up conversion rates by 2% and purchase conversion rates by 12%.

To Try, Here are Five Growth Marketing Strategies

To ensure the success of your growth marketing initiative, you must employ the appropriate strategies. While you can use a variety of traditional and digital marketing strategies, a few provide consistent performance and results for businesses.

These five strategies include

  1. SEO

When it comes to growth marketing, you want to reach users at every stage of the purchasing funnel, which makes SEO the ideal tool. For example, SEO can help you improve your visibility in search results on Google, Bing, and Yahoo!

It makes sense to appear in these search results if you own a plumbing company, for example:

  • “nearby 24 hour plumbers”
  • “plumbing maintenance plans”
  • “toilet won’t flush”
  • “When should I replace my toilet?”

You reach users in your target audience when you appear at the top of search results for these queries. You also reach people at various stages of the purchasing funnel, from the top to the middle to the bottom. Not to mention that the top spot in search results receives 33% of all search traffic.

Even better, the close rate for search engines (the percentage of users who converted by buying a product or service) is eight times higher than traditional marketing channels. This fact makes SEO services even more valuable for businesses.

  1. PPC

There is fierce competition to reach users ready to buy, whether through offline or online channels. PPC is one way for your company to compete and outperform competitors. You can engage your target audience by searching and browsing the web with PPC.

Companies can also use PPC to reach users at the beginning of the purchasing process.

For example, your company could launch a PPC campaign to drive email sign-ups, online guide downloads, and social media interactions. While these actions do not directly result in a purchase, they position your company as a stop along the buyer’s journey.

Because ads can increase brand awareness by up to 80%, these micro-conversions can serve as a springboard for converting a user into a customer. Signing up for your email newsletter, for example, allows your company to send relevant and helpful content to a user, potentially moving them down the funnel.

  1. Email marketing

Many businesses already use email marketing. This growth marketing strategy provides a fantastic return on investment (ROI), with a $44 return for every $1 invested. As a result, more than 80% of businesses include email marketing in their marketing strategy.

Your company can connect with a wide range of users through email marketing, including

  • MOFU users
  • BOFU users
  • Current users, or clients

The versatility of email marketing is what makes it so valuable to growth marketing, which emphasizes targeting every stage of the buying funnel. Plus, email marketing often provides your company with valuable user data, which you can use to personalize and improve your campaigns.

  1. Content Marketing

You can expect your company to use content marketing if it invests in SEO. Content marketing is a valuable strategy that focuses on creating relevant content for your target audience. It also targets different buying funnel stages, allowing you to reach every user.

A content marketing strategy, on the other hand, necessitates some effort.

Your team must conduct extensive research on your target audience to create unique and valuable content, learning about their problems, concerns, and desires. It’s also critical for your company to optimize this content with relevant keywords to appear near the top of search results.

That is why many businesses collaborate with full-service digital marketing agencies like ROI Minds.

We can provide SEO and content marketing services as a full-service agency. Even better, we provide copywriting services, allowing you to streamline your growth marketing strategy. Not to mention, in the last five years, we’ve generated more than $3 billion in revenue for our clients.

  1. Social Media Marketing

While many strategies, such as PPC and SEO, concentrate on your website, social media marketing focuses on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other popular social media platforms. It’s an efficient way for many businesses to reach TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU users, as well as current customers.

You can use social media to share useful and relevant content with your audience, such as a blog post. You can also respond to comments and questions, which will improve customer satisfaction. Companies can also advertise on social media, extending their reach to more users in their target audience.

Advanced targeting options are available when advertising on social media platforms like Facebook. For example, you can target your ad to lookalike audiences who share characteristics with your current followers.

The vast number of social media platforms can make growth marketing for this channel difficult. As a result, many businesses invest in social media marketing and advertising services such as ROI Minds.

Need a Head Start on Growth Marketing?

Now that you know what growth marketing is, are you ready to use it? ROI Minds can help your business get the most from growth marketing.

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