Growth marketing is a comprehensive approach to marketing. Unlike traditional marketing, which starts with a company and its offerings, growth marketing begins with the customer. It uses data-driven decision-making to decide how a company’s products and services can meet its target audience’s needs.
Growth marketing isn’t a short-term play. That’s growth hacking, and while it may lead to rapid growth initially, it can be hard to reach sustainable growth using these tactics. Growth hackers often use tactics that lead to shallow, unstable results in the long run.
Growth marketing considers the long-term. It simultaneously courts new customers and retains existing ones. When done well, this leads to sustainable growth and a larger market share. To engage in growth marketing the right way, though, you need a growth marketing strategy in place to guide you over time.
Traditionally, a marketing strategy is defined as a high-level plan that outlines how a business will turn prospective consumers into paying customers. It functions as a roadmap detailing how to turn your promotional ideas into reality.
This works for a basic definition. But if you want to develop an effective strategy for growth marketing, in particular, you need to keep two things in mind above all else: the data and the customer experience.
A growth marketing strategy expands on the new customer emphasis of a basic marketing strategy. It includes both potential and existing customers. In fact, growth marketing strategy considers the various needs and pain points that consumers have along the entire customer lifecycle.
This customer-centric approach allows a growth marketer to align customer needs with their brand’s mission and product benefits and features.
Once a strategy is created, they can also establish KPIs. These key performance indicators provide benchmarks that they can use to gauge success and make adjustments over time.
The most important differentiating factor that sets growth strategy apart is its unique use of data. Growth marketing uses market research to make data-backed decisions at every point, whether developing a strategy from scratch or adjusting it as you go along. This use of data makes every aspect of your strategy clear and precise rather than driven by gut instinct.
By prioritizing data, growth strategies can intricately weave various marketing “sub-strategies” together. Things like creating content and back-end technical SEO become symbiotic elements of a larger strategy that work together toward the same goal: generating sustainable growth.
Most sub-strategies fall under one of three primary pillars of growth strategy. These are:
A good growth marketing strategy uses data to take all three of these pillars into consideration.
A growth channel refers to the flow of consumers to a brand. The term includes the way businesses engage in customer acquisition and customer retention.
In other words, a growth marketing channel won't just focus on the top of the sales funnel. They consider acquisition and retention across the entire customer journey.
There are several different growth channels a brand can use to build its customer base, including:
These aren’t mutually exclusive, either. As you develop your growth marketing strategy, you will find ways that they can overlap with one another. SEO and content marketing, for instance, often go hand in hand. Social media marketing and influencer marketing are also two peas in a pod. This opens up the doors for cross channel marketing opportunities, which lend synergy to existing growth marketing activity.
A growth marketing strategy maps out a holistic approach to marketing. It considers a brand’s customers and uses the data available to align customer needs with a business’s products, services, and overall marketing goals.
An effective growth marketing campaign focuses on three key areas: authority, credibility, and visibility. At the same time, it uses a wide variety of different channels and growth marketing tactics to address these three core areas
Growth marketing strategies are a critical piece of the marketing puzzle. They set your brand on the right path and help your team stay focused and on track over time. Whether you develop a growth strategy on your own or work with a growth marketing team, make sure you invest the time, effort, and resources required to set your brand’s growth marketing efforts up for long-term, sustainable success.
