When it comes to marketing to grow your business, you can sometimes feel like you're paddling upstream. If you're putting in more effort and not seeing the return on your marketing investment you'd like then you need a smarter integrated growth marketing approach tailored to your needs and goals.
Don't worry if you're not sure what growth marketing is or how to implement it. We've got you covered, so keep reading to learn our top tips for scaling your marketing efforts today.
What Is Growth Marketing?
Growth marketing refers to improving and optimizing your digital marketing efforts based on reliable data and metrics. It includes running experiments to see what works and then doing more of that.
First, you'll determine where you want to improve your marketing efforts, such as social media or email marketing. Then you'll run experiments to test your hypothesis and finally analyze the results so you can make the best-educated decision. When your marketing strategies are based on sound data, you'll see marked growth in your lead generation and sales.
While many use the terms growth hacking and growth marketing interchangeably, we argue that growth marketing is based on metrics that matter.
13 Tips for Effective Growth Marketing
So, what metrics should you track? And how can you use data for growth marketing? Based on our own experience and success with past clients, we have our top tips for how you can track the right information and make the right decisions for your business.
1. Focus on the Customer Journey
The customer lifecycle is imperative in growth marketing. Basic marketing stops at awareness and acquisition. However, growth marketing goes deeper to ensure that each of your customers is a customer for life.
This means they are repeat buyers and that they tell everyone they know about you and your company. When you create your content to guide your customers through the customer journey, you'll see that you do more than just acquire new leads. Your new leads will lead to retention and revenue growth that will continue to scale over time.
2. Loyalty and Referral Programs
Another great way to encourage your current customers to tell their friends about your product is to create a referral program. Simply choose something you'll give away each time someone refers a friend and you'll find that your growth will increase exponentially.
Some great ideas when deciding what to give away includes offering a premium add-on to your product that your customers would normally have to pay for. Additionally, if you offer a monthly membership or SaaS, consider offering one month free for every referral. Incentivize your best clients to never again pay for their monthly membership.
Lastly, offer a loyalty program to those customers who've been long-standing customers for life. As mentioned, growth marketing is about keeping great clients for the long run. And loyalty programs help you do just that.
3. Use Social Proof
Nobody wants to feel left behind. And, everybody wants to be part of a growing trend. So use this universal human nature to your marketing benefit with social proof.
Share what others are saying on social media. Ask for reviews on your Google My Business profile. In general, encourage your customers to share online how your product or service has helped them.
This step alone will help increase your marketing efforts at scale. The more happy customers you have the more great reviews you'll get. And the increase will continue exponentially.
4. Go For the Long-Term Relationship
You aren't pushing for a one-time sale with growth marketing. You're building long-lasting relationships that will continue to bring revenue time and time again. The key to keeping your customers for life is to ensure you're offering stellar customer service.
The biggest factor to consider when focusing on the long-term relationship with your customers is retention. Some key data metrics you need to track for this include your email open rates and consistent engagement throughout your sales funnel. Track everything from your ads to your landing pages to your nurture sequence, this is key to building a solid relationship with your customers.
5. Cross-Channel Omnipresence
You must be everywhere your clients are. And your clients are spread across the internet. From watching YouTube videos to scrolling Facebook and Instagram to searching the SERPs. You must ensure that your digital presence is optimized across all the platforms.
This can be overwhelming to even the most seasoned digital marketer or business owners. This is why we encourage you to work with experts who can ensure that you're not dropping the ball on any of the digital platforms.
Your customers want to be able to search for you and get enough information about you before they make any purchasing decisions. If they can't find you, they'll likely go with a competitor who has taken the time to create an omnipresent digital presence. So, don't skip this step, this is important to ensure that your brand is front and center for your clients when they're online.
6. Be a Storyteller
The key to content marketing is storytelling. You must be able to tell a story that resonates with your clients and encourages them to purchase.
And the only way to do this effectively is to know your customer completely. You must know everything about your clients and who your target audience is. Take the time to map out your ideal target audience and ensure that you know everything about them.
When you know this information you can customize your sales copy in a way that will ensure your sales will grow with each new campaign.
7. A/B Testing
Every growth marketer is hungry for more data. And the best way to get reliable data is to run split testing yourself. Don't rely on trends or following what your competitors are doing. Get the raw data yourself so you can make the best decision for your company.
Every time you create a new sales page or write a new onboarding email sequence you must create two versions. Use them both and see which is the clear winner. Then make small and subtle changes to the winner to continue to optimize it for the best conversions.
A growth marketer is never satisfied with their current conversions or with their current amount of data. Continually run small tests and gather more data to improve your conversions over time. And if you can't dedicate enough time to this consider outsourcing, it's that important to growth marketing.
8. Customer Onboarding
You've seen a trend towards keeping customers for the long term. And the one thing that will solidify your loyalty with your customers is a stellar onboarding sequence.
As soon as a new client purchases your product or service they should get an email from you that explains to them what they can expect from you. And once they have your product in hand they should also have a video showing them how to set it up and use it. If they're purchasing a continual service, again they need to have a video explanation of what to expect and how they can benefit the most from your services.
This step will ensure happy customers for the long-term, which is the cornerstone of growth marketing.
9. Optimize Your Nurture Sequence and Email Marketing Campaigns
Again, you want to nurture customers for life with growth marketing. This is why email marketing is a vital component of your digital marketing strategy. Email marketing has historically outpaced every other digital marketing strategy by far.
Whether your potential client just signed up for a free trial of your product or you offered a free white paper or ebook, once you have your prospects' email information they need to receive an automated nurture sequence that shares more about your company with them.
10. Use Data to Create Reports
You can't scale growth without data. You must run reports regularly and then use that data to make decisions based on what it tells you. Growth marketers will spend a large portion of their time gathering data, creating reports, and then analyzing those reports.
This information is what will drive their entire decision-making process. This is why robust reports are vital when creating your marketing strategy.
11. Work With Growth Marketing Experts
If you don't have the capacity with your current inside team, then you need to hire experts immediately. You don't have time to hire and train new marketers. You have a successful business to run.
So if you want to scale your marketing plan to the growth level, you need to work with experts. And working with an experienced agency such as MindVibz will allow you to continue to grow your business while we help you grow your marketing.
We are a full-service digital marketing agency. And we can help our clients see quicker results because our decisions are based on data and sound strategy. Because we focus completely on marketing, we can offer better results than hiring in-house marketers that must be trained and brought up to speed.
Don't wait for others to catch up. Work with experts who can bring you real results quickly.
12. Scale With Paid Ads
Speaking of getting results quickly, the best way to scale your efforts is with paid advertising. However, when done incorrectly you can begin to feel like you're throwing spaghetti at the wall. And that you're wasting more money than you'd like to.
Don't waste any more time and money on ads that aren't based on sound data. Instead,
13. Continually Engage With Your Clients Online
Increased customer engagement will not only show potential prospects that you care about your customers, but it also leads to more satisfied customers who stay for life. And actively engaged, life-long customers is the goal for all growth marketers.
From responding to reviews to answering questions you need to continually engage with your clients online. Everyone wants to feel heard. And if your company can make your clients feel validated and understood you will have clients for life.
The Right Marketing Solutions for Your Business
Growth marketing can feel like a passing fad or trending buzzword. But the cornerstone concepts will give you the best foundation for growing your business and increasing sales. Take these tips and start growing your digital marketing presence so you can see the same growth our clients see every day.
And if you're ready to work with experts in growth marketing so you can get back to your own work, then consider a free, no-obligations connect call with us. We are here to help you create the right strategy that will reach your target audience and grow your business today.
