Growth marketing is new-age marketing that enables businesses to acquire as many clients/customers as possible to achieve rapid growth. This marketing strategy is usually necessary for startups in the survival stage. Focused on creating sustainable and long-term growth over the complete customer lifecycle, growth marketing is a holistic approach to growing your business.
India is emerging as a hot destination for investors, creating a favorable environment for start-ups. According to research conducted by IBEF (India Brand Equity Foundation), "India has registered nearly 63 million MSMEs till date, which can be seen heavily contributing on marketing tactics every year for some outstanding results."
The report further said that the Indian marketing industry is expected to surge exponentially, reaching the total value at the USD1.2 billion mark by the end of 2022. As a result, India will be a more crowded ecosystem for start-ups. This will lead entrepreneurs and marketers to invest more in new marketing tactics that are equally compelling and ROI-driven for getting through the cut-throat competitive markets.
This becomes inevitable for me to introduce 'Growth Marketing' — a trendy and powerful way of creating a brand image, thus retaining and growing it for an enhanced loyal customer base. So, whether it is a budding or an established entrepreneur, this new-age marketing strategy can be a boon to your business, and that’s for sure.
But how?
Before answering this "how," let's understand what growth marketing is all about.
So, what exactly is growth marketing?
Popularly known as the new-age marketing strategy or 'Marketing 2.0', growth marketing is an evolved version of the existing traditional marketing model that business owners have widely used to date. In other words, it's the newest form of approach that marketers are adopting to attract, engage, and retain customers for growing their businesses. The strategy is less of any experimentation, emphasizing majorly intensive focus depending on the ever-changing customer's preferences.
Growth marketing is considered a highly-tailored approach, informing and aligning marketers to act as per the customer's requirement through different channels or platforms. To name a few, some of the new layers of this latest marketing strategy are:
- A/B testing
- Value-additive blogs
- Data-driven marketing campaigns
- SEO optimization
- Creative ad copy
- Cross-channel marketing
While traditional strategies clearly emphasized just the top of the marketing funnel, growth marketing, on the other hand, is quite powerful that can easily add value to your brand if done correctly. So, from attracting the users to transforming them into your loyal customers, growth marketing is clearly what you'll be thinking or planning for elevating your business.
Mentioned below is the top to bottom marketing funnel that can be holistically covered through growth marketing.
The AAARRRs approach to growth marketing
Awareness: This is the first step towards growth marketing that focuses on awareness of your brand. It aims at letting your potential customers know about your brand through social media marketing or SEO optimization. Also, there are some other components such as the website, and logo that affects brand awareness. Growth marketers can use DIY tools such as online logo makers, Youtube video maker and website builders to have the perfectness of their choice in these components. They can conduct A/B testing to identify the frequency and timing of posts that would effectively drive traffic to your blog and find out what content gets the most engagement. This could be a game-changer for your brand. So you must pay due attention to it.
Acquisition: Acquisition gives the growth marketers a broader ground to experiment with different copy ads or the CTA present on the ads. The growth marketers can also try to increase the number of form submissions by testing the messaging, the page orientation, and/or the button orientation. This gives marketers an idea of which option can be used to achieve new clients and what new strategies need to be incorporated to retain the existing customers.
Activation: At this stage of growth marketing, you need to persuade your prospects to consider purchasing your products or services and use them. Once the customers are on board, you should interact with them and make them go for your offerings. Chatbots, for instance, can be used to provide your customers with helpful information about your products or services.
Going further, growth marketers can offer a tour of your website, focusing on the beneficial insights for customers and keeping them hooked. Also, they can provide a free demo of your services. These tricks can do wonders in trust-building.
Retention: Conducting surveys is an essential aspect of growth marketing. It helps gather information about the target audience and learn their likes, dislikes, and what makes them leave. As a result, this practice has become an inevitable business requirement for companies looking forward to expanding their business.
For example, loyalty programs can prove to be an excellent bet for attracting new customers to your business. Such programs will help you maximize the lifetime value of a client by providing them incentives to spend more and buy more. Many companies have such loyalty programs to help them retain their customers.
Revenue: This stage includes all the actions taken by the company for revenue generation. By experimenting with the pricing strategies, growth marketing can be used to address metrics related to revenue. Growth marketers can also explore upselling tricks by sending existing customers reminders to renew their subscriptions by providing attractive discounts.
Referral: Referral is an excellent tool that growth marketers use to attract new customers. This tactic involves getting your existing customers to act as your brand ambassadors by referring your products or services to new potential customers. It impacts any business to a great extent. Your satisfied customers are the prominent brand ambassadors that always help you get new customers. Besides, you can also run online referral programs to incentivize it.
Importance of Growth Marketing
By now, you must have understood what growth marketing is all about. Now, it's time to move ahead, answering the question left unanswered at the start of this article, how can growth marketing be a boon to your business?
Cost-Efficient: Having and utilizing the newest and most highly-advanced marketing strategy can certainly help you save a lot of money. Once the approach is scaled up post knowing what's working for your brand, you don't really have to spend a vague amount of money. Instead, the budget gets constricted, turning it into an ROI-driven and cost-efficient method.
Super-Fast Method: Time is currency, and it seems that the elements of growth marketing understand it. The overall marketing method simply boosts up compared to the traditional way, allowing you to save lots of time and encouraging you to focus on areas that require attention.
Data-Driven Method: Growth marketing strategy simply bids farewell to depending entirely upon your gut feeling. Adopt this marketing strategy, measuring the entire marketing efforts and pinpointing where the campaign or marketing tactics are heading.
An Automated Method: Just imagine your manual tasks being replaced by some automated tools, bringing in amplified results with less workforce. Doesn't it sound amazing? Indeed yes. With a growth marketing strategy, you get to witness the same experience where most of the tedious manual tasks are automated, easing your workload and offering you time to capitalize on other vital areas.
Mentioned above were some briefly discussed statements highlighting the critical aspects of growth marketing. So, if you have any queries related to these newest marketing tactics, contact our professionals for some magnificent experience and assistance.
Essential Qualities of a Successful Growth Marketer
There are certain traits that a growth marketer must have to be successful. Let’s see those traits one by one.
Data-driven
Gone are the days when gut feelings were essential parameters to make business decisions. The same goes for decisions made using the highest-paid person's opinion. Today's growth marketers believe in data insights to determine what strategies are doable, practical, or working. They are ready to use all the tools that render such analysis features.
Creative
Another trait that today’s growth marketers possess is — creative thinking. They focus more on the “let’s try it attitude” than “why try when it’s never been done” approach.
That's the reason Airbnb, during its initial growth phase, adopted the idea of facilitating free professional photography services to everyone listed on their site! Some people, at that time, thought that it was a pointless idea, but it turned out to be a super-hit idea for accelerating their growth!
Product focused
There is a famous saying in the sales world that if you don’t understand a product inside out, you cannot sell it. The same rules apply to growth marketers involved in selling. Here, you don’t need to trick customers into buying something they don’t require, but to explain the beneficial side of your product that you believe will help them.
Jack of all trades
A growth marketer is an all-rounder. You may require creating a video, implementing A/B testing, optimizing an ad copy, or even doing some coding work on any given day. It means that growth marketers need to have varied skill sets that they can use to accelerate the company’s growth.
No fear of failure
Successful growth marketers don’t fear failure. They keep on experimenting. According to them, a failed experiment isn’t bad. It is the easiest way to get valuable insights.
Nobody is the mind-reader. One has to be open to everything to find out what works and what's not. You will even find things that lead to success, and based on your insights, you can optimize them to continue the process.
Know the storytelling
All the data available in the world won't tell you how to connect with your target audience. You must be capable enough to combine both qualitative and quantitative data into a compelling story that resonates with your target audience.
Manage multiple responsibilities
A successful growth marketer has to be a challenge taker. They must be obsessed but focused on the big picture. Being result-driven is required, but they also have to be comfortable with uncertainties. Growth marketers need not let anything go without passing the trust factor. They must be data-driven but also assess human intuition.
Conclusion
Now you know everything about growth marketing and why it matters to your business growth. Let us know your views on it in the comment section.
