Growth marketing is a powerful new way of establishing a loyal user base. In this guide, we will explain growth marketing from a startup perspective.
So let’s get started.
What is Growth Marketing?
The process of designing and experimenting in order to improve and optimize the results achieved from the targeted area.
If you have a certain metric that you want to double up, growth marketing is your best bet to achieve that.
Growth marketing individuals handle:
- Areas that need testing and improvements
- Develop and conduct experiments which will optimize processes, identified in the testing earlier
- Further experimentation of the tested improvements to draft a hypothesis
- And lastly, analyze the outcomes of all the experiments undertaken to assess if any area requires further testing and/or improvements.
In simple words, growth marketing also called ‘growth hacking’ is the 2.0 of marketing. It takes the conventional marketing paradigm and introduces layers such as A / B research, value-additive blog posts, email marketing strategies powered by results, SEO optimization, innovative ad copy, and strategic review of any part of the experience of a customer.. Through applying these tactics, the experiences obtained provide a roadmap to improving those areas that allow the company to expand sustainably.
What’s the Need?
Marketers use a rather scientific method when implementing a growth marketing strategy that helps them carry out these experiments. It’s focused more on the data side, rather than the creative aspects of the marketing strategies of any organization. You may call it an analytically minded function.
But be sure to handle failure while planning on carrying these experiments. Not all growth marketers achieve scalability and growth while conducting trials to improve their strategies.
On the plus side, you are one step closer to the right growth marketing formula. The best way to do that is to have a workaround of an experiment that you implement from each of its angles. If it seems like failing, you have another one on standby!
You may also like: 2019’s top 5 growth marketing strategies
Twitter’s User Growth Strategy – How it Used “Top People to Follow” to Power Onboarding Users
Twitter came up with an excellent user growth (marketing) strategy was to encourage users to follow more users during their onboarding phase on the platform. They tested a feature called “ten people to follow” which quickly ignited users from onboarding to the product to actually using it as it was meant to be.
How?
Users didn’t have to look at empty and boring newsfeeds. Instead, they began interacting with people of their interest and their interactions kept their interest in the site and to stay further.
suggestions tailored for my account
This strategy was implemented in 2010 when twitter had 30 million active users, which is great just FYI. But the Product Manager Andy Johns thought it was too slow. After several trials and errors, the team was finally able to get a massive shift in their graphs by gaining up to 60,000 users to onboard in a single day. With the help of growth marketing including the aforementioned strategy.
What’s the takeaway for you?
Provide your onboarding users with a nice and secure footing into the platform so that they feel welcomed. It can be anything from connecting with their friends, sharing files, sending broadcasts.
Another Great Example
A similar (but not same) user-driven strategy could be Botsify’s “10 minutes to become a pro” strategy. This chatbot platform provides a bunch of baby steps. New users can feel like they’re able to use of the product right away. While you can also engaging them into using multiple features provided.
The progress bar shows how far to go and checks-off actions that have been taken.
This strategy was implemented keeping non-technical users in mind, who require a little push from behind to fully enjoy the swing rides.
This works on the individual level but will generate mass level results for you!
Enough with the theoretical explanations, its time to talk about the real stuff! Growth marketing isn’t as difficult as you may assume it to be. But there are certain tactics that need to be put out on the table.
Beware! These tactics may require you to get out of your traditional marketing comfort zone. So, if you are ready for it, just fasten that growth marketing seat belt of yours and let’s get right into these…
Similar to this: Achieve Hypergrowth with the right strategy
5 Ways of Growth Marketing Your Business Needs
1. Become Data-Driven
If you are someone who makes decisions on the basis of gut feeling or anything your marketing head says is the word of god – also known as the HiPPO (highest paid person’s opinion) strategy – then you need to get rid of these approaches altogether. Growth marketing requires you to dive deeper into data yourself. Figure out the right strategies and get used to working with the tools and techniques needed for these analyses.
2. You Must be Product Focused
In the modern sales world, you cannot really sell your product if you do not understand what you are selling. Similarly, in growth marketing, your business requires you to be the evangelist and seller both and not trick people into buying your product when they don’t.
Growth hacking is more truly believing in helping people with a product. It is about illustrating the real benefits and value of your product out there. And then let the buyer make its own decision – not as much of a hacking right?
3. Growth Marketing Requires a Hacker Mentality
When stepping into the crazy world of growth marketing you need to gear up with a jack that does everything. When we say everything, we mean it. You may expect to edit a video, optimize an advertisement copy, do some coding or implement another A/B testing.
In other words, you need to possess a wide array of skillset when putting the badge of growth marketer on your shirt. Especially, if your strategies are at the early stages!
4. Be Able to Handle Multiple Responsibilities
Again, you need to be able to cater to multiple tasks and domains. And be comfortable adapting new techniques and using tools that enable your strategies. Growth hacking is detail-oriented but the focus never goes away from the big picture. Is result-driven but being ambiguous isn’t the end of the world either. It requires data for decision making but values human intuition as well.
5. Stop Fearing Failure
Growth marketers must be able to understand the fact that failure is just a part of experimentation – until you finally achieve the goal you will encounter many of them. After all, failure is the stepping stone of immense growth.
Growth marketing allows you to become bold enough to try out new things and see what works best for your business. This will eventually lead you to the right path for success.
