Originally published 8/4/2022, updated 5/23/2024.
We all hear accounts of businesses that snowballed from garage-based startups to monolithic empires with towering skyscrapers — the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Disney. While it’s easy to believe these companies pulled a rabbit out of a hat, the truth is that each had a customized growth marketing strategy that propelled them to the corporate stratosphere.
You can achieve success, too, if you adopt and implement growth marketing best practices from the get-go. Many marketers refer to growth marketing as marketing 2.0, and rightly so: It augments traditional marketing. Growth marketing blends digital strategies such as content marketing, SEO, email and video marketing, A/B testing, conversion rate optimization and user experience (UX) analysis into one full-funnel strategy focused on supercharging your business’s growth.
While crafting and rolling out growth marketing strategies may feel like a lot to put on your plate, it’s a must if you want to scale quickly and take your business to the next level. Let’s dig in and see why and when you need a solid marketing strategy for growth and discuss six growth marketing tips you can leverage in your business.
Why your business needs a growth marketing strategy
Ideally, you should develop a growth marketing strategy in the early stages of your business so you can transition smoothly as you scale. Even so, you can customize one mid-way if your business is in the following positions:
- Your existing marketing strategies like social media ads and content marketing have no measurable ROI despite having a big budget
- You need a go-to-market strategy for your new product launch
- Your product demand is soaring, but you’re lacking in customer engagement across the sales funnel
- You need an end-to-end strategy for your brand marketing across multiple channels
- You want to lower your customer acquisition costs and boost customer retention rates
How to improve your growth marketing campaign
These six growth marketing tips will help you achieve next-level success in your marketing campaign.
1. Consider outsourcing your growth strategy to a dedicated team
You may have heard that everyone has two jobs, theirs and marketing. While this is true, especially in the ecommerce space, it doesn’t help you achieve the rapid growth you may desire. Say that you have your content manager double up as the growth marketer. In such a case, you may see progress, but not to the expert level you desire.
Conversely, dedicated growth marketers will execute your growth strategy expertly and even course-correct where needed. Because growth marketing is fast-paced and heavily data-driven, growth marketing teams usually iterate your growth strategy continually. This calls for industry expertise and tremendous time investment that only a dedicated team of growth marketers can offer you.
2. Know your entire customer journey and customer acquisition costs
Two key tenets of a growth marketing strategy include reducing customer acquisition costs and increasing customer retention rates. To achieve this, you must evaluate your customer journey across all touchpoints to deliver a positive customer experience. Once you identify the gaps derailing your customer journey, you can customize your growth marketing strategies to address the pitfalls. For instance, if a substantial percentage of potential customers visit your website but fail to convert, your growth strategy may include sending follow-up emails or creating call-to-action videos.
3. Closely monitor and make decisions based on growth metrics
Data is the backbone of every growth marketing strategy. Marketing analytics data comes from tracking your revenue, acquisition and customer metrics. Tracking revenue metrics such as annual recurring revenue (ARR), average revenue per user (ARPU), lifetime value (LTV) and revenue churn will guide your budget allocation. Tracking customer metrics such as activation rate, net promoter score (NPS), retention rate, average customer lifespan (ACL) and repeat purchase rate will show you which growth strategies are working and which you need to fine-tune.
The insights you gather from tracking your marketing metrics will help you make data-driven decisions. Remember, growth marketing takes a test-and-learn approach, so you may need to constantly tweak your growth goals. These modifications must be data-informed.
4. Develop a complete content marketing initiative
According to Semrush’s State of Content Marketing 2023 Global Report, 80% of respondents had a well-documented content marketing strategy. You’ll reach customers across multiple channels faster and more effectively with a complete content marketing strategy. Instead of following a spread and spray strategy, take time to target potential customers with relevant content. Your content strategy should also outline the type of content to post on each channel, guided by the audience’s preference.
5. Focus on your entire funnel by expanding channels
It’s hard to reach customers across your entire sales funnel using one channel. Cross-channel marketing is the remedy. For instance, top-of-the-funnel customers may interact with your social media ads, while bottom-of-the-funnel customers may prefer your company’s website. In such a case, if you only focus on social media ads and neglect your website, your conversion rate would decrease significantly. Your growth marketing strategy should focus on the full funnel.
6. Maintain consistent user engagement across the board
Engaged customers are likely to become repeat customers in the long run. Consistent customer engagement on multiple channels creates top-of-mind awareness (TOMA) for your brand. Staying at the top of minds is one of the key growth strategies you should actively pursue across all your marketing channels. Some of the strategies you may employ to boost customer engagement include:
- Create reward programs for your loyal customers
- Send engaging direct mail to your subscriber base
- Go big on social media and share engaging and informative content
- Optimize your company’s LinkedIn profile
Improve the customer experience and generate real business growth
From a bird’s eye view, your growth marketing strategy should improve your overall customer experience (CX) quality. The most sure-fire path to genuine growth is having happy customers who’ll readily refer your company within their networks. Such customers are a gold mine you must work hard to earn and retain. A full-funnel growth marketing strategy allows you to attract, engage, convert, and retain potential and existing customers.
At Cart.com, we can help you design growth marketing strategies to elevate your ecommerce brand to unprecedented growth. Using our advanced analytics and data science solutions, we are well-positioned to craft growth marketing strategies that’ll bolster your end-to-end customer experience. Book a demo today and experience our growth marketing magic.