Beginning with the experimentation of Dropbox with growth marketing in 2008, it’s become a buzzword in the industry. Startups and businesses have adopted and innovated similar strategies for rapid growth, particularly in the software industry.
Now, brands like Facebook, Hubspot, and Airbnb have achieved incredible growth, taking customers from zero to hundreds of millions or billions – and all through growth marketing.
Defining Growth Marketing
Growth marketing is the process of designing and running a series of experiments to optimize results. These tactics can be used to increase numbers of virtually any goal, from brand awareness to number of customers.
The components of growth marketing are:
- Fast and consistent experimentation for growth options across the buyer journey
- In-depth data analytics on customer experience
- A tailored, step-by-step approach
This follows scientific methods to conduct testing and focus on the data aspect of marketing for sustainable growth. Most importantly, growth marketing may mean failure, and these marketers are comfortable with failing and learning from the mistakes for future success.
Top Growth Marketing Examples
Google+
Google+ may not be the most popular social media platform, but it used impressive growth marketing strategies to build its brand. In the beginning, the platform only offered accounts to select people. This invite-only format created a sense of exclusivity that had people scrambling to get in and gave the platform time to grow after launch.
PayPal
Now a go-to payment option for many, PayPal began as a small company and used a referral system that paid people to sign up. Through this strategy, PayPal achieved 10 percent daily growth and acquired a user base of over 100 million people. The company also partnered with eBay, one of the largest marketplaces in the world.
Slack
Slack was a revolution for internal communication. It’s not a software solution, but a promise to provide better organizations and better teams through an all-in communication platform available on multiple devices. The focus is entirely on customer satisfaction, rather than bells and whistles.
Dollar Shave Club
At its launch, Dollar Shave Club was going up against Gillette, the giant that dominated the market for decades. Starting with a video that went viral, Dollar Shave Club offered an affordable, real-life solution to the problem that people had, though they didn’t know about it. The video marketing campaigns also leveraged stereotypes and sarcasm, making it unique in the market.
Best Practices for Growth Marketing
Expand the Active Channels
Focusing on one channel limits your brand exposure and doesn’t give you the variety you need to reach your audience or learn what works and what doesn’t. It also limits your insights into the full customer journey.
Modern consumers spend time on a variety of channels and platforms, so you need to be there with them. Diversify your marketing channels to reach your ideal audience and gain an entry into new markets.
Repurpose Content
A well-rounded growth marketing strategy should involve multiple channels and complex marketing funnels, which will take a lot of content. Creating new, quality content all the time is labor- and time-intensive, but you can repurpose old content into updated formats or include new information to lessen the burden.
Not sure how to do that? Consider turning a blog post into a video or podcast to reach different audiences and make it accessible for all. Or you can take an older article and update the stats, insights, or best practices to reflect the most current information, then republish it.
Focus on Full-Funnel Marketing
One of the key differences between traditional marketing and growth marketing is the emphasis the latter places on the whole customer journey. It can take multiple touchpoints for a customer to turn into a sales lead.
Growth marketing makes the most of each touchpoint, no matter how small it may seem in the grand scheme of things. This may include a landing page, email, push notification, or social media post. All of these touchpoints need to be considered as part of the full-funnel journey.
Bring the Customers into the Process
Brands that had success with growth marketing understand the deep connection between the brand and the audience’s pain points. All of your content and messaging needs to resonate with the audience to get a conversion.
You should know your audience already, but it’s smart to take time to interact with potential customers and learn more about them. Ask for feedback, conduct a forum, or build a brand community to engage customers and learn more about what they need from you.
Track and Measure
Growth marketing is scientific in its approach – it’s all about data. Every campaign, activity, asset, and interaction needs to be tracked and measured to understand ROI and learn what to improve.
Measure your marketing efforts with SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Bound) goals and determine the applicable KPIs. From there, track your marketing activity to see if you’re accomplishing what you set out to do.
Get Started with Growth Marketing
Growth marketing differs from traditional marketing, but it’s a powerful tool to achieve long-term growth and profitability. Use these techniques and best practices to incorporate growth marketing into your business and achieve your goals.