The term growth marketing sounds very much like growth hacking. But those are two different concepts, both of which your business needs if you're looking to grow. In fact, growth marketing is different from traditional marketing.
When you're looking to create a marketing growth strategy for the long term, you will need to take a different approach than your traditional marketing strategy. With growth marketing, you're aiming at research-based decision-making, improved brand perception, scalability, long-term growth, and higher revenue. This is not growth hacking or traditional marketing.
It is a different marketing approach that focuses on growth rather than just customer acquisition, strategy instead of tweaks and rapid growth tactics, and research instead of random experimentation. The results obtained form the basis of a long-term marketing campaign that attracts and retains more clients for your business over more extended periods.
In this article, we'll delve deeper into the meaning of growth marketing, what it entails, and strategies for successful growth marketing for your business.
Growth Marketing vs Growth Hacking
To help us put growth marketing in proper perspective, let's look at growth hacking.
Growth hacking focuses on rapid growth and short-term results, while growth marketing focuses on the bigger picture. The idea of growth hacking encompasses everything that produces accelerated growth, and it is not limited to the organization's marketing department. At best, it relies on experimentation and continuous changes to bring faster results. In other words, growth hacking is about more and more acquisitions.
Practical examples of growth hacking are the success story of DropBox and Slack. You can find out more details about growth hacking from here.
Now, growth marketing focuses on developing and implementing strategies that bring long-term growth. Growth marketing is not just about more acquisitions but higher retention. It is about creating a system that attracts, retains, and upsells customers. It moves the game further from just acquiring the customer and moving on to the next lead to creating the experience that keeps the customer and even offering more value to the customer, which in the long run yields more revenue.
Growth marketing looks at data to identify customer behavior patterns, then uses these insights to refine existing marketing strategies. This means that growth marketing employs automation and algorithms for better results. One similarity between growth hacking and growth marketing is that they focus on the customers’ pain points.
Growth Marketing Strategies
Now that we have the meaning of growth marketing nailed down let’s delve deeper into the growth marketing strategies that make for actual growth.
The AARRR framework best elaborates growth marketing strategies. This framework simply divides growth marketing into five different categories or steps:
Acquisition: Converting your leads into customers.
Activation: Create experiences that make your customers appreciate signing up for your products or services.
Retention: Keep customers subscribed to your business
Referral: Turn your customers into your brand ambassadors.
Revenue: Enhance customer lifetime value
Acquisition
The main goal here at the acquisition stage is to find the right leads and convert them into paying customers. There are several strategies to help you achieve that. Also, you want to aim at reducing the cost of customer acquisition by targeting customers with the potential of generating reasonable revenue for your business.
For successful customer acquisition, you’ll need to engage several marketing strategies and channels. Here are some excellent suggestions to get you started:
Use content marketing (blogs, infographics, etc.)
Improve your website SEO
Offer free tools and products, such as ebooks, white papers, free downloads, etc.
Create a community of consistent users around your brand
Leverage social media marketing
Use paid ads on YouTube, Facebook, Google, etc.
Activation
The activation stage in growth marketing is about providing your new and existing customers with the best customer experience. They should use your products and service and appreciate the value you’re offering them. You want to ensure that you retain that experience throughout the customer’s journey.
Use personalization technology to communicate with customers and offer more targeted services
Leverage email campaigns
Leverage marketing automation to enhance customer experience
Use chatbots and video chats
Implement conversion rate optimization. This is useful for both the acquisition and activation stages.
Retention
The best growth marketing strategies for customer retention are those that continuously improve the experience of the customer. Offer freebies, helpful content, newsletters, and informative downloadables. Additionally, you can implement the following:
Use email marketing tools like MailChimp to stay in contact with your customers and keep sending them back to your site
Retarget old customers with re-engagement campaigns
Invest in your employees and get them to be brand ambassadors of the company
Offer informative and educative content to your email subscribers and blog readers
Create a customer support knowledge base
Offer efficient and inclusive customer support service
Referral
Here, the focus is leveraging your customers' loyalty to promote your brand and bring in more customers. Here are important referral growth marketing strategies you should consider:
Create a referral program to promote your products. You need your own local customer base to make your referral program work.
Use influencers and thought leaders in the industry. If possible, get them to use your products/services and endorse your brand
Offer promos or incentivized offers to your customers.
Revenue
An increased customer lifetime value and reduced acquisition cost are a perfect combination for growth marketing. The focus in the growth stage is to grow your customers’ loyalty by delivering better experiences to them.
Focus on repeat customers. Review your analytics and identify the repeat customers to enhance their experience. This is an excellent way to establish brand loyalty for increased revenues.
Look at your competitors and develop unique products that grab users’ attention
Review your pricing and see the results you get. However, you want to be strategic about this. Consider the value of your offerings compared to the competition and review your pricing up or down depending on what you think is best.
Take Action Today!
Now that you understand the unique dimension of growth marketing, it is time to put what you’ve learned to the test. Remember that growth marketing takes a different trajectory than growth hacking and traditional marketing.
Need help getting started? You can speak with a professional. We are happy to work with you at The Mission. We specialize in helping small and mid-sized businesses get their marketing growth strategies right. Feel free to contact us today.
At Mission, we use our profound market insights and expert guidance to help you improve your marketing results and business productivity. Also, as a leading partner in the PEO, HR, payroll, and benefits outsourcing marketplace, we provide result-oriented services for small and medium-sized organizations and government contractors.