If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you’ve likely heard of the term growth marketing.
Because growth sounds great, you may have already tried to apply this form of marketing to your business.
However, to reach your full potential, it’s important to unpack the phrase and fully understand how it works.
In our guide, you will find:
Keep reading!
What is Growth Marketing?
Growth marketing has been defined as many things. These include:
- Growing your business consistently to reach your business goals.
- Growing your business beyond top-of-funnel metrics. Put simply, this means not just getting clicks, likes, shares, and purchases but building long-term relationships to generate repeat sales.
- Continually driving new customers to your brand to increase revenue.
- Finding innovative ways to keep customers engaged and encourage them to promote your brand name.
Put simply, growth marketing is a holistic marketing method that brings in new customers, engages them consistently, and then turns them into long-term patrons and even promoters of your business.
What Are The Differences Between Growth Marketing and Growth Hacking?
Growth hacking is an important aspect of growth marketing. But it’s not all in all.
Growth hacking is experiment-oriented marketing. It involves continually testing your content, message, and site/advertisement design to increase your ROI.
Growth hacking plays an important role in growth marketing because you need to regularly try new delivery and messages to bring in new clients and keep them engaged.
However, there are a couple of important differences between growth hacking and growth marketing.
Fast vs. Long-Term Results
Growth hacking focuses on immediate results. Growth marketing is in it for the long haul. Growth marketers know that it may take time for some of their efforts to bring in results.
Technology vs. Personal Relationships
Growth marketers focus on brand recognition. They know that it costs five times as much to bring in a new customer as it would to retain an existing one.
They also know that the top 10% of your patrons spend three times more than the average customer and that emotional connection increases a customer’s value four-fold.
Growth marketing, on the other hand, focuses solely on reaching certain sales goals rather than how the sales are made.
Growth hacking puts a premium on using technology to bring in sales and profits. Growth marketing, on the other hand, puts a priority on developing personal relationships. Technology is used for this purpose but only as a means to an end.
Put simply, you need both growth hacking and growth marketing to succeed.
How Should A Growth Marketing Strategy Be Implemented?
Here are some step-by-step guidelines that can help you implement a winning growth marketing strategy!
Identify Your Target Audience
You likely have people of all ages and walks of life coming to your store to buy things from you.
However, if you analyze your customer base carefully, you’ll likely identify groups of people who are more likely to do business with you than other groups.
Perhaps most of your clients live in a specific area, are mostly male or mostly female, fall within a certain age or income bracket, or have a particular education level.
Once you identify your target audience, it’s time to identify niche audiences in your target audience.
For instance, maybe most of your clients are women. Among these women, there may be older women, middle-aged women, and young women. Each group will have its own needs and wants.
Get to Know Potential Customers
Once you have a target audience, it’s time to get to know them personally. You could do this by researching trends for particular demographics but the best way to get to know people is to reach out to them.
If you don’t have much of an online presence yet, start with customers in your store. Offer a discount or freebie in exchange for answering a few questions.
If you do have an online presence, read on to see how to find and communicate with potential customers in a way that is likely to generate the right response.
Select Your Platforms with Care
According to recent estimates, there are more than two hundred social networks online.
Thankfully, you don’t need a platform on every single one of them to reach your target demographic. You just need to pick the ones that your target audience is most likely to use.
Check out the following list to determine which platforms are the best fit for your business.
Facebook is by far the largest social network in the world.
Most of its users log onto the platform via a mobile device, which means that any content you upload onto the site needs to be mobile-friendly. Nearly a third of its users are between 25 and 34 years old.
Twitter tends to be most popular with people who live in cities as opposed to suburban and rural areas.
Most users are between 18 and 49 years old. Men tend to use the platform more than women.
YouTube
Teens, adults, and seniors all watch YouTube extensively. More than half of all viewers are women, but the site is very popular with men as well.
Additionally, YouTube, unlike other social media platforms, can boost your visibility in Google as Google indexes and prominently displays relevant video results in its search engine.
As a professional social network, LinkedIn is the platform of choice for B2B businesses. Estimates show that 57% of users are male and 43% are female.
A whopping 71% of Pinterest users are women. Nearly 70% of users are between 18 and 49 years old.
The overwhelming majority of them have a college degree. What’s more, the overwhelming majority of mothers who use the internet also use Pinterest.
Instagram is similar to Pinterest in nature but has a different target audience. Most users are between 18 and 34 years old.
Men in this age range tend to use Instagram more than women. Nearly one in three Instagram users are college students.
We can’t cover every single popular network here, but you get the idea. You need to make sure the social platforms you use are the same ones used by your target audience.
It takes a lot of time and effort to build a successful social media platform so choose your sites wisely to get the best return on your investment.
Additionally, there are two platforms not mentioned above that we highly recommend to every single business owner. These are email marketing and a company blog.
The difference between these platforms and social media platforms is that you have full control.
You can put up any type of content you want. Additionally, with email marketing, you can create targeted content for different audiences.
Create the Right Content
Once you’ve selected your means of communication, it’s time to create winning content.
As the old saying goes, variety is the spice of life. Experiment with different types of content to see what works best.
Long blog posts, short blog posts, listicles, infographics, white papers, ebooks, audio content, and video content all have their place.
Look over your statistics to see what content is driving sales. Once you’ve identified a winning topic, cover it in various formats.
Use it in a YouTube video, cover it in various blog posts, collect the blog posts, and compile them into an eBook, etc.
There are also several forms of content that aren’t typically considered “content” but are equally important. These include:
- Discount coupons: Everyone loves a discount. Use coupons from time to time in your email marketing, on your social media page, or on sites such as Groupon.
- Competitions: Hosting one on your blog is a good way to collect email addresses. Alternatively, you could host one on the social media site you want followers on. Just about everyone loves competition, but be sure to research prize options to offer something your target audience would love to win.
- Surveys: Surveys are a good way to get to know your target demographic. Make yours easy to fill out to encourage the maximum number of responses.
Regularly Test Results to Measure and Improve ROI
Growth marketing, like growth hacking, puts a premium on data analysis. You have to have stats you can measure to see if your marketing strategy is working.
At the same time, you also have to realize not all successful forms of marketing generate immediate sales and profits.
You’ll need professional help to test results and gauge what’s working and what’s not. We’ll cover this below when discussing growth marketing for firms of various sizes.
How Can Different Companies Use Growth Marketing?
Growth marketing will look different for different sizes and types of companies. Here, we will show how you can use this strategy on startups and established businesses.
How Can Startups Use Growth Marketing?
New business owners would do well to follow the tips outlined above. Identify your target audience, select the right channels, and then create content that will bring in customers.
If you don’t have data to show what your target audience wants, there’s an easy remedy for the problem: analyze your competitor’s data.
Check out which pages rank well for them, what platforms they use, and how they communicate with potential and current customers. Don’t copy them, but glean ideas to kick-start your marketing campaign.
Additionally, you’ll need a team that understands how growth marketing works and is able to use it to its full potential.
However, that doesn’t mean you need to hire a roomful of experts. Outsource aspects of your growth marketing such as:
- Content creation.
- Social media marketing.
- Data analysis.
- Search engine optimization.
Outsourcing frees you to focus on communicating personally with current and potential customers. It also gives you time to think about your overall business direction and strategy.
How Can Established Companies Use Growth Marketing?
Established companies that have the budget to bring in full-time growth marketers should do so. Following are some invaluable team members you may want to have on board.
Branding Expert
A branding expert to define your brand and ensure your name and logo are easily recognizable across a wide range of channels.
Content Creation Team
A content creation team to create engaging content on a wide range of platforms.
Acquisitions Experts
Acquisitions experts who know what your audience is looking for and who can bring in new clients regularly.
Social Media Marketers
Social media marketers who are familiar with the platforms you use and can create audio, video, image, and text content that will bring in customers.
SEO Expert
An SEO expert to help you boost and then retain a high placement in Google and other leading search engines.
Customer Service Experts
Customer service experts to engage with current patrons. Your customer service team will also be tasked with handling PR issues such as negative online reviews or complaints about your products and/or services.
Data Analysts
A data analysis team continually collects data, analyze it, and makes recommendations based on what the data shows.
CIO (Chief Information Officer)
A CIO to determine the overall direction of your marketing campaign and ensure everything is running smoothly.
As an established business, you already have invaluable experience to help you create targeted, personalized marketing campaigns. However, that doesn’t mean you can rest on your laurels.
Many large corporations have gone out of business because they failed to keep up with the times.
Regularly analyze your data and stay in touch with customers to keep abreast of market trends that could impact your business.
Final Remarks
Remember, growth marketing isn’t something you can leave on autopilot. It’s a way of life.
Would you like to see long-term, exponential business growth? If so, growth marketing is your best path to success.
Use the above tips as a springboard to find what works best for your firm, partner with in-house and outside experts, and enjoy the process of making your professional dreams come true.
To accelerate your growth marketing efforts and achieve remarkable results, consider leveraging the power of tools like WriterAccess.
With a community of top writers, they can help you create high-quality content that resonates with your audience and drives growth for your business.
Try WriterAccess for free and unlock the potential of content marketing in your growth strategy today!
