Developing an Effective Growth Marketing Strategy

In the ever-evolving marketing world, it’s common to hear about new advertising strategies — technology is constantly changing, and marketers need to adapt to reach their customers with the tools available. One strategy that’s capturing attention is growth marketing.

What Is Growth Marketing?

What is growth marketing, and how does it benefit brands?

Before we define what growth marketing is, it is important to understand that it is different from growth hacking. Growth hacking is an entirely different approach in marketing that may have some similarities but encompasses many different aspects of marketing. It focuses on data-driven experimentation to grow rapidly, and by any means necessary (particularly virality).

On the other hand, growth marketing uses experiments to determine which advertising channels are most effective. Marketers measure the results of each test to decide how to optimize their campaigns to reach the most customers.

Growth marketing reaches past traditional marketing methods to uncover hidden opportunities in advertising. Instead of relying on historical results, it relies on innovative techniques to reach the brand’s target audience and convert them to customers.

The Role of Data in Growth Marketing

Data is helpful for all marketing strategies, but it’s critical for growth marketing.

Most growth marketing techniques apply the scientific framework to identify and test marketing trends with their customers. Naturally, each growth marketing strategy begins with a hypothesis.

The marketer will attempt to posit their strategy’s outcome based on their allocated spend and techniques. They’ll also set specific goals, such as obtaining a certain number of sales or achieving a low cost per acquisition (CPA).

As the marketer implements their strategies, they’ll carefully analyze their results and compare them across channels. The data informs them about which methods work and which don’t.

Developing a Growth Marketing Strategy

Here are some simple steps to follow if you’re considering implementing a growth marketing strategy.

Set Goals and Objectives

You’ll want to set your objectives carefully before deploying a growth marketing strategy. Your goals can be simple, like trying out a new technique to learn how it works, or more extensive, like obtaining conversions.

Once you’ve set your goals, you’ll want to define the criteria for determining whether your experiment succeeded. For instance, achieving a specific ROI from your campaign is something you can validate and track.

Identify Your Target Audience

Your next step is to do some customer research. You’ll need a comprehensive understanding of your clients to design marketing materials that will likely resonate with them.

Once you understand your customers’ key characteristics, such as demographics and behaviors, you can establish a buyer persona. You’ll make use of your buyer personas as you create your marketing strategy.

Create a Unique Value Proposition

A unique value proposition describes what you can give your customers that your competitors can’t. You’ll use your unique value proposition in your messaging to attract your clients.

When creating a unique value proposition, consider what your brand offers and what makes it stand out. For instance, you may sell high-quality goods with a comprehensive warranty, unlike your closest competitor.

Develop a Customer Journey Map

Customers typically undergo several steps before they decide to purchase with your organization. For example, they’ll probably perform research to learn more about your company, make price comparisons, and check out your return policy.

A customer journey map can help you understand your client’s thoughts as they move through the decision-making process. You’ll use the map to identify their pain points and the marketing materials that can smooth their journey, ultimately resulting in a sale.

Creating a Marketing Funnel

Think of your marketing funnel as part of your customer journey. Each step they take with your company will represent another step in the marketing funnel. New customers will start with brand awareness before moving through the funnel to the decision-making step.

Once a customer purchases from your brand, you’ll want to learn about their experience with your company to find out where you can improve. You’ll also want to encourage them through the funnel again for future purchases.

Innovative Growth Marketing Strategies

Since technology is constantly evolving, growth marketing strategies do, too.

The purpose of growth marketing is to capture new customers in innovative ways. Thus, what works today as a growth marketing strategy may change. Here are a few current growth marketing strategies brands are using.

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing relies on word-of-mouth to attract customers organically. To become viral, the business must create compelling and relevant content and share it with its followers, usually through social media. If enough people share the content and convince their followers to do the same, the post goes viral.

You can’t always assume that a post meant to go viral will meet its goals. Viral marketing is unpredictable — some posts receive lots of engagement, while some go practically unnoticed.

Referral Marketing

Referral marketing involves asking existing customers to recommend your brand to friends and other connections. If a new client purchases with you based on a recommendation, the referrer gains an incentive, such as a discount on their next purchase or loyalty points.

Influencer Marketing

In past decades, celebrities were primary influencers, receiving money for supporting a product in commercials or on social media. However, today’s influencers are regular people with large followings on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok.

Companies looking to benefit from influencer marketing search for individuals whose followers closely resemble their target audience. They’ll partner with those who extol the benefits of their products to their followers in hopes that they’ll purchase them based on their recommendations.

Implementing Growth Marketing Strategies

If you want to implement growth marketing into your advertising strategies, start by building a team. Some common positions you may need to hire for include a VP of marketing (if you don’t already have one), a content lead, a project manager, and a data analyst. This team will test new growth marketing techniques to learn which ones work for your organization.

Of course, you’ll need to provide your growth marketing team with the necessary tools to do the job. Depending on the methods they plan to implement, you may need to make some strategic investments.

You’ll want to start with a dedicated testing tool that can help you measure the outcomes of your various growth marketing techniques, like Google Optimize. Google Optimize is entirely free and is great for A/B and multivariate testing. It also integrates directly with Google Analytics, so you’ll be able to see the results of any marketing tests you try out on your website or social media accounts.

Another beneficial tool is marketing automation software. With marketing automation software, you can set specific workflows, like automating a welcome email when a user subscribes to your mailing list.

If you’re considering an influencer marketing strategy, you’ll want to compare the options available to you on various social media platforms. Some platforms, such as TikTok, offer simple tools to help you locate influencers whose audience aligns closely with your customer base and are within your marketing budget.

Teams that are new to growth marketing may want to slowly try out a few techniques to determine what works and what doesn’t. There’s no need to jump all in if you’re not accustomed to growth marketing. Instead, start with a single tactic and see how it performs. You can then slowly layer on new techniques if you feel they can add value to your organization.

If your growth marketing efforts are successful, you’ll see a higher ROI, more conversions, and greater revenue.

Growth Marketing Can Help You Uncover Hidden Opportunities

Through growth marketing, you can test new strategies to attract customers through innovative trends. After a successful test, you can add the latest technique to your advertising methods. If a growth marketing strategy fails your tests, you’ll know not to spend any more money on it.