If you’re looking to grow your business, you can’t go wrong with growth marketing. By definition, growth marketing is a holistic and data-driven approach to growing a business. Whereas traditional marketing focuses on acquiring new customers, growth marketing is all about retaining and monetising existing customers. In other words, it’s about turning one-time buyers into lifelong fans. 

Benefits of Growth Marketing

There are a number of benefits that come with using growth marketing to grow your business. 

It’s data-driven

As we mentioned earlier, growth marketing is all about using data to make decisions. This data-driven approach ensures that you’re always moving in the right direction and that you’re not wasting time or money on activities that aren’t effective. 

To get started, here are a few things you should keep in mind when using data for growth marketing: 

  • Collect as much data as possible: The more data you have, the better. Try to collect data from as many sources as possible, including web analytics, social media, surveys, and customer interviews. 
  • Organise your data: Once you have all of your data, it’s important to organise it in a way that makes sense. This will make it easier to analyse and draw conclusions from. 
  • Look for trends and patterns: When you’re looking at your data, try to identify any trends or patterns. This could help you understand why certain things are happening and what you can do to improve your results. 
  • Test and experiment: Finally, don’t be afraid to test and experiment. This is the only way to really see what works and what doesn’t. 

It’s customer-centric

Another great thing about growth marketing is that it’s customer-centric. Rather than focusing on just acquiring new customers, it emphasises the importance of retaining and monetising existing ones. There are a few things you can do to make sure your growth marketing efforts are customer-centric: 

  • Identify your target customer: The first step is to identify who your target customer is. This includes things like their age, location, interests, and needs. 
  • Research your target customer: Once you know who your target customer is, it’s time to do some research. This includes things like reading their reviews, talking to them directly, and observing their behaviour. 
  • Create buyer personas: Buyer personas are fictional characters that represent your ideal customer. Creating buyer personas can help you better understand your target customer and how to reach them. 
  • Develop a marketing strategy: Once you know who your target customer is and what they want, it’s time to develop a marketing strategy. This includes things like creating targeted content, running ads, and offering discounts. 
  • Measure your results: Finally, don’t forget to measure your results. This will help you see what’s working and what isn’t so that you can adjust your strategy accordingly.

It’s results-oriented

Unlike traditional marketing, which can often be quite vague, growth marketing is results-oriented. This means that you always have a clear goal in mind and that you’re constantly measuring your progress. Just make sure you fulfil the following points:

  • Set clear goals: The first step is to set clear goals. Without clear goals, it’s difficult to measure your progress and see if your efforts are actually working. 
  • Measure your progress: Once you have clear goals, it’s important to measure your progress. This will help you see if you’re on track and identify any areas where you need to improve. 
  • Make adjustments: If you’re not seeing the results you want, don’t be afraid to make adjustments. This could mean changing your strategy or trying new things. 

It’s cost-effective

Since growth marketing is so focused on using data to make decisions, it tends to be quite cost-effective. This is because you’re not wasting money on activities that don’t work. To maintain the cost effectiveness of your growth marketing strategy, take the following steps:

  • Set a budget: The first step is to set a budget. This will help you keep track of your costs and make sure you don’t overspend. 
  • Track your spending: Once you have a budget, it’s important to track your spending. This will help you see where your money is going and identify any areas where you can save. 
  • Measure your results: It’s also important to measure your results. This will help you see if your growth marketing efforts are actually working. If they’re not, then you’ll need to adjust your strategy. 
  • Focus on ROI: Finally, make sure you’re focusing on ROI. This is the most important metric when it comes to growth marketing. If you’re not seeing a good ROI, then your efforts are probably not cost effective. 

It’s flexible

Growth marketing is also very flexible. This is because there are a number of different growth hacking techniques, discussed later in this guide, that you can use, which gives you the ability to tailor your approach to your specific needs and goals. You can stay flexible in growth marketing by: 

  • Being willing to try new things: The first step is to be willing to try new things. This means being open to new ideas and experimenting with different strategies. 
  • Being prepared to change course: The second step is to be prepared to change course. This means being flexible and willing to adjust your strategy if you’re not seeing the results you want. 
  • Being patient: The third step is to be patient. Growth can be slow, so it’s important to have patience and not give up too easily. 

Types of Growth Marketing

There are a number of different types of growth marketing, which we’ll explore in more detail below. 

A/B Testing

A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a type of growth marketing that involves comparing two different versions of something (such as a website or an email) to see which one performs better. Here’s what you will need to do in A/B Testing: 

  • Set clear goals: The first step is to set clear goals. This means being clear about what you want to achieve and setting measurable goals. 
  • Create two versions of your campaign: The second step is to create two versions of your campaign. This means that you’ll need to create two different versions of your ad, email, or landing page. 
  • Test your campaigns: The third step is to test your campaigns. This means sending each campaign to a small group of people and then measuring the results.
  • Analyse the results: Finally, analyse the results. This will help you determine which campaign performed better and why. 

However, make sure that you don’t fall into the fallacies of A/B testing. To learn more, check our blog:

The Misdirections of A/B Testing in Marketing Analytics

Customer Segmentation

Customer segmentation is another important aspect of growth marketing. This involves dividing your customer base into different groups based on shared characteristics. Use customer segmentation in growth marketing by: 

  • Defining your segments: The first step is to define your segments. This means identifying the characteristics that will be used to segment your customers. 
  • Researching your segments: The second step is to research your segments. This means understanding their needs and wants. 
  • Creating targeted campaigns: The third step is to create targeted campaigns. This means creating campaigns that are specifically designed for each segment.  
  • Measuring the results: Finally, measure the results. This will help you determine whether or not customer segmentation is effective for your business. 

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is a type of marketing that relies on social media and word-of-mouth to spread awareness about a product or service. There are a few things you can do to create a viral marketing campaign: 

  • Create compelling content: The first step is to create compelling content. This means creating something that is interesting, funny, or useful. 
  • Use social media: The second step is to use social media. This means posting your content on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. 
  • Encourage sharing: The third step is to encourage sharing. This means asking people to share your content with their friends and followers. 
  • Measure the results: Finally, measure the results. This will help you determine whether or not your campaign was successful.

Referral Marketing

Referral marketing is a type of growth marketing that incentivises customers to refer others to your business. Make sure that you create a referral program, i.e. offering incentives for people to refer their friends and followers. The rest of the details here come quite naturally once you know the ins and outs of your business, and measuring what kind of response you get back.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is another important type of growth marketing. This involves creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content in order to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience. Create a content marketing campaign within your growth marketing plans by: 

  • Creating interesting and informative content: The first step is to create interesting and informative content. This means creating something that is useful, entertaining, or both. 
  • Sharing your content: The second step is to share your content. This means posting it on social media, sharing it with your email list, or publishing it on your website.  
  • Promoting your content: The third step is to promote your content. This means using paid ads, social media, or SEO to get people to see your content. 
  • Measuring the results: Finally, measure the results. This will help you determine whether or not your campaign was successful.

To learn more about content marketing, check out our guide:

Content Marketing: A Comprehensive Guide

Search Engine Optimisation

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a type of growth marketing that focuses on improving the visibility of a website in search engine results pages (SERPs).

For more detailed information, check:

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): A Comprehensive Guide

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a type of growth marketing that uses social media platforms to promote a product or service. The kind of social media platforms and the associated content then depends on your business needs and wants.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a type of growth marketing that involves sending promotional emails to a list of subscribers. Here is a direction you can take: 

  • Create email newsletters: The first step is to create email newsletters. This means coming up with interesting and informative content that will get people to engage with your brand. 
  • Send out promotional emails: The second step is to send out promotional emails. This means using platforms like MailChimp or Constant Contact to promote your product or service. 
  • Measure the results: Finally, measure the results. This will help you determine whether or not your campaign was successful. 

To learn more about email marketing, check our guide:

Email Marketing: A Comprehensive Guide

Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is a type of growth marketing that involves paying for ad space on a variety of platforms, including search engines, social media sites, and websites. Similar to social media, the key with paid advertising is to choose the right platforms.  

How to Implement Growth Marketing

If you’re interested in using growth marketing to grow your business, there are a few things you need to do. 

Set clear goals

First and foremost, you need to set clear goals. What exactly do you want to achieve? Do you want to increase your customer base? Boost sales? Improve retention?

There are a few things you can do to set goals in growth marketing: 

  • Set realistic goals: The first step is to set realistic goals. This means setting goals that are achievable and not too ambitious. 
  • Set specific goals: The second step is to set specific goals. This means being clear about what you want to achieve and setting measurable goals. 
  • Set a timeline: The third step is to set a timeline. This will help you track your progress and ensure that you’re on track to reach your goals. 

Once you know what your goals are, you can start planning your growth marketing strategy. But first, take one extra step to improve your chances of success.

Do your research

Next, you need to do your research. This means learning about the different growth hacking techniques that are available and figuring out which ones will work best for your business. Conduct research for growth marketing by: 

  • Being clear about your target market: The first step is to identify your target market. This means understanding who your ideal customer is and what they’re looking for. 
  • Researching your competition: The second step is to research your competition. This means understanding what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. 
  • Identifying your USP: The third step is to identify your USP. This means understanding what makes you unique and why customers should choose you over your competition. 

Create a plan

Once you’ve done your research, it’s time to create a plan. This plan should outline the specific steps you need to take in order to achieve your growth marketing goals. Create a plan for growth marketing by: 

  • Defining what success looks like: The first step is to define what success looks like. This means setting clear goals and objectives. 
  • Researching your options: The second step is to research your options. This means looking into different growth strategies and seeing what has worked for other companies. 
  • Creating a timeline: The third step is to create a timeline. This will help you track your progress and ensure that you’re on track to reach your goals. 
  • Making a budget: Finally, make a budget. This will help you allocate resources and ensure that you’re not overspending. 

Implement your plan

After you’ve created your plan, it’s time to put it into action. This means implementing the different growth hacking techniques you’ve selected and tracking your progress along the way. 

Adjust as necessary

Finally, you need to be prepared to adjust your plan as necessary. As we mentioned earlier, growth marketing is all about experimentation. This means that you’ll need to be flexible and adaptable in order to achieve success. 

Growth Marketing Techniques

There are a number of different growth techniques that you can use to achieve this. Some of the most effective of these techniques include:

Create a great user experience

If you want people to keep coming back to your product or service, you need to give them a reason to do so. Creating a great user experience is one of the best ways to do this. Make sure your product or service is easy to use and provides value. If it’s not, people will quickly lose interest. A few key things you should keep in mind when creating a great user experience are to: 

  • Keep it simple: One of the most important things to remember when creating a user experience is to keep it simple. You don’t want to overwhelm users with too much information or too many options. Instead, you want to make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for and take the desired action. 
  • Make it easy to use: Another important thing to keep in mind is that your user interface should be easy to use. Users should be able to navigate your website or app with ease and find the information they’re looking for quickly and easily. 
  • Pay attention to detail: The details matter when it comes to creating a great user experience. Everything from the colour scheme of your website to the wording of your call-to-action buttons should be carefully considered. 
  • Test, test, test: Always test your user experience before you launch it. Make sure to test it on a variety of devices and browsers, and get feedback from users to ensure that it’s as effective as possible. 

Use data to make decisions

Data should be at the heart of everything you do in growth marketing. After all, how can you grow your business if you don’t know what’s working and what isn’t?  Use data to inform all of your decisions, from which growth hacking techniques to use to how you allocate your resources. This way, you can be sure that you’re always moving in the right direction. When using data to make decisions: 

  • Set clear goals: Before you start collecting data, you need to set clear goals. What do you want to achieve with your growth hacking efforts? Once you have a goal in mind, you can start collecting data that will help you achieve it. 
  • Collect the right data: Not all data is created equal. When making decisions, you should focus on collecting data that is relevant to your goals and that will help you make informed decisions. 
  • Analyse the data: Once you have collected the data, it’s time to analyse it. Look for trends and patterns that can help you make better decisions about your growth hacking strategy. 
  • Make decisions: Based on your analysis of the data, it’s time to make decisions about what growth hacking strategies to pursue. Remember to always test your hypotheses before making any major changes. 
  • Iterate: The beauty of growth hacking is that it’s an ongoing process. As you collect more data, you can continue to refine and improve your approach. 

Foster a culture of experimentation

In order to find the best growth hacking techniques, you need to be willing to experiment. Try out different things and see what works best for your business. Of course, you can’t just experiment blindly. Make sure you’re using data to guide your experiments so that you can be confident that you’re on the right track. Foster a culture of experimentation by: 

  • Encouraging creativity: One of the best ways to encourage experimentation is to encourage creativity. Create an environment where people feel free to share their ideas, no matter how crazy they may seem. 
  • Encouraging risk-taking: Another way to encourage experimentation is to encourage risk-taking. This doesn’t mean that you should encourage people to take reckless risks, but it does mean that you should create an environment where people feel comfortable taking risks. 
  • Encouraging collaboration: Collaboration is key to fostering a culture of experimentation. Encourage people to work together and share ideas. 
  • Encouraging learning from failure: Finally, it’s important to encourage learning from failure. Failure is inevitable in any experiment, but it’s important to learn from your mistakes and use them to improve your next experiment.

Focus on retention

It’s not enough to just acquire new customers; you also need to focus on retaining them. After all, it’s much easier (and cheaper) to sell to existing customers than it is to find new ones. There are a number of different ways to improve retention, such as providing great customer service, offering discounts or rewards for loyalty, and sending personalised communications. Focus on retention by: 

  • Identifying why customers leave: The first step to reducing churn is to identify why customers are leaving in the first place. Are they not happy with your product? Do they feel like they’re not getting value for their money? Once you know why customers are leaving, you can start working on ways to keep them. 
  • Offering incentives to stay: One way to keep customers from leaving is to offer them incentives to stay. This could be anything from a discount on their next purchase to early access to new products. 
  • Improving your products and services: Another way to reduce churn is to improve your product. This could involve adding new features, fixing bugs, or just making your product more user-friendly. 
  • Staying in touch with customers: Finally, it’s important to stay in touch with your customers. This means reaching out to them on a regular basis and keeping them updated on what’s happening with your company.

Delight your customers

In order to turn one-time buyers into lifelong fans, you need to go above and beyond their expectations. This is known as delighting your customers. Based on your business, you will have multiple ways you can delight your customers. For the sake of sharing here, some ways to delight your customers include: 

  • Sending them a personalised gift: A great way to show your customers that you care is to send them a personalised gift. This could be anything from a mug with their name on it to a box of chocolates with a special message. 
  • Giving them early access to new products: If you have a new product coming out, why not give your loyal customers early access? This will make them feel special and appreciated. 
  • Going the extra mile: Sometimes, all it takes to delight your customers is to go the extra mile. This could be anything from delivering their order early to throwing in a freebie with their purchase. 
  • Saying thank you: Finally, don’t forget to say thank you! A simple thank-you note can go a long way in making your customers feel appreciated. 

No matter what you do, just make sure it’s something that will put a smile on their face. 

Challenges of Growth Marketing

Despite its many advantages, there are also some challenges that come with growth marketing. 

  • It can be difficult to measure results: One of the biggest challenges with growth marketing is that it can be difficult to measure results. This is because growth hacking techniques often involve experimenting with different strategies and tactics, which makes it hard to track progress and determine what is working and what is not. 
  • It can be time-consuming: Another challenge with growth marketing is that it can be time-consuming. This is because growth hacking often requires trying out different things and seeing what works best for your business. And of course, tracking your progress along the way takes time as well. 
  • You need a good team: Finally, it’s important to note that growth hacking requires a good team. This is because growth hacking is all about experimentation and trying new things, so you need a team of people who are creative and open to new ideas. 
  • It can be expensive: Growth marketing can also be expensive. This is because you often need to invest in paid advertising and other marketing tools in order to reach your target audience. 
  • You need to be patient: Last but not least, it’s important to remember that growth hacking takes time. So if you’re looking for immediate results, then growth hacking may not be the right approach for you. 

Potential Pitfalls to Avoid in Growth Marketing

Like most strategies in business and marketing, even with the best of intentions, you can hit a snag by falling into pitfalls. In the case of growth marketing:

  • Don’t forget about your existing users: One potential pitfall to avoid in growth marketing is forgetting about your existing users. It’s important to remember that growth hacking is all about acquiring new users, but you also need to focus on retaining the ones you already have. 
  • Don’t neglect other aspects of your business: Another potential pitfall to avoid is neglecting other aspects of your business in favour of growth hacking. While growth hacking is important, it’s not the only thing that matters. You also need to make sure that other aspects of your business, such as product development and customer service, are up to par. 
  • Don’t get too caught up in the numbers: Finally, don’t get too caught up in the numbers. It’s important to track your progress and see how your growth hacking efforts are paying off, but don’t get so fixated on the numbers that you lose sight of the bigger picture. 

Useful Tools for Growth Marketing

Once your campaigns are in full flow, you need to be following your progress. To do so, there are a number of useful tools that can help you with growth marketing. Here are just a few: 

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool that allows you to track your website traffic and see where your users are coming from. This is important information to have when you’re trying to determine which growth hacking strategies are working and which ones are not. 

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a tool that allows you to see the most popular content on social media. This is useful because it can help you come up with ideas for new content or campaigns that will be popular with your target audience. 

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management tool that allows you to schedule and publish content, track who is talking about your brand, and more. This is useful for growth hacking because it can help you save time by automating some of the tasks associated with social media marketing. 

MailChimp

MailChimp is a tool that allows you to create and send newsletters, email campaigns, and other types of email marketing messages. This is useful for growth hacking because it can help you reach a larger number of people with your message. 

LeadPages

LeadPages is a tool that allows you to create landing pages and pop-ups. This is useful for growth hacking because it can help you increase conversion rates by making it easy for users to sign up for your email list or download a white paper or e-book. 

Growth Marketing Case Study: Airbnb

Airbnb is an online marketplace that allows people to list, find, and rent vacation homes. The company was founded in 2008 and has since grown to become one of the most popular travel websites in the world, with over 150 million users. So how did they achieve such incredible growth? 

Well, Airbnb used a variety of growth marketing techniques, including virality loops, freemium pricing models, and referral programs. For example, initially, when a new user signed up for Airbnb, they were given a certain amount of credit that they could use to book a vacation rental. This encouraged people to try out Airbnb, with a significant number of users sticking around to continually use Airbnb as an option.

Airbnb also had a referral program that gave users additional credit for every person they referred to the service. This not only helped them acquire new users, but it also helped them retain existing ones. 

What is a Good Result in Growth Marketing?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, as the definition of a “good” result will vary depending on your goals and objectives. However, some common measures of success in growth marketing include an increase in website traffic, an increase in conversion rate, or an increase in the number of leads or customers. 

What is a Good ROI in Growth Marketing?

Again, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. The definition of a “good” ROI will vary depending on your goals and objectives. However, a good rule of thumb is that you should aim for a return on investment (ROI) of at least 3:1 initially. This means that for every pound you spend on growth marketing, you should expect to see at least £3 in return. Your aim then needs to get more value out of the clients you have captured and grow from there.