What is Growth Marketing?

• Read original article here

You’ve likely heard of marketers specializing ingrowth marketingbut may be unsure what that entails. Or you may be wondering how it might benefit your company and its marketing plan. 

As with most forms of marketing, the ultimate goal of growth marking is the same: To attract, engage and retain your customers. Yet, the growth marketing approach is a little different. It focuses intently on making decisions based on evidence and data. As opposed to some other marketing tactics, it is built upon delivering content and information based on your customers’ changing and unique motives.

These messages are delivered to your customers through many channels, focusing on the ones they most frequent. This allows your targeted message to be in front of them at the right time. This way, your message will reach them when it is most effective. In short, growth marketing can significantly optimize the user’s experience, so why wouldn’t you want to incorporate it into your marketing plan?

Growth marketing is important because it focuses on long-term results essential to keeping your business on track. It takes a comprehensive approach to business sustainability as opposed to growth hacking. Growth hacking mainly tends to be a short-term burst of activity without a focus on the tangible end results of success. 

The reason growth marketing, while a long-term game, is soeffectiveis due to the data collection and analysis. It is an integral component of the process and the foundation behind crafting a tailored plan to advance your company and brand.

Data collection is necessary for growth marketing for multiple reasons. First, it’s nearly impossible to plan a growth strategy without knowing where improvements are needed. Metrics relating to time on pages, acquisition channels and other factors can be compared against average or ideal standards. Once it’s known where you’re falling short, strategies can be devised to bump those numbers up.

Second, consistent data tracking lets companies andgrowth marketing agenciesassess whether or not growth marketing plans are proving effective. Without data analysis, implemented strategies in need of adjustments might continue unchecked.

As previously mentioned, data is the key to strategizing your growth marketing strategy. Two of the most useful resources for this are Google Analytics and a search tool such as SEMrush. While these resources, and especially Google Analytics, are a powerhouse ofdata collection, there are a few areas to focus on first. 

Knowing this factor can let you know if the bulk of your online visitors hits your desired customer base. You can determine what geographic location, tech capabilities, or basic demographics should be more heavily targeted in your efforts. This can also initiate larger conversations within your company about determining a target audience if that focus has been neglected.

Google Analytics can play a huge role in determining how your website functions in achieving your desired goals. For some companies, your goal may be around increasing the percentage of online visitors who make a purchase. Others may be focused on boosting overall traffic. Determine where you want to put your focus and what results you want to see from that as you are building your plan.

Judging the effectiveness of your website as a whole misses out on opportunities for improvement within individual pages. You can track how much time people spend on each section or page of your site and how often they visit. If you have certain web pages that get very little attention, updates may be needed to make them more appealing. If you have a high bounce rate, it could be that you aren’t ranking for the keywords the right keywords. 

An important aspect of growth marketing is the concept that there are multiple components to a customer engaging with you. This is called acquisition. The internet is not a linear place where sites are only found by individuals typing the web address directly into a search bar. 

Users are typically directed to websites by ads, emails, social media, and organic traffic. You can use Google Analytics to determine by what general method they found your site and even specifics beyond that. You can determine that 60% of your traffic originates from social media but also the breakdown between Twitter and Facebook.

Tools such as Semrush can help you perform keyword research,SEOaudits, and competitor technique tracking to figure out exactly how customers are currently finding you, and how you want them to find you. 

By using available data, you can better craft and track a growth marketing strategy that yields long-term results. Doing so ensures your efforts are making steady strides in the right direction with the option to update for optimal effect.

As marketing technology continues to advance, growth marketing is becoming more important. Through testing, multi-channel distribution, and customer lifecycle monitoring, you can better target your customer needs. This will allow you to guide them toward conversion and improve customer retention and satisfaction. 

Using a highly personalized approach will drastically cut your acquisition costs and increase revenue. This will make your marketing significantly more cost-effective and efficient, allowing you to enjoy a higher return rate on a lower budget. Not sure where to start on your own? You may want to partner with agrowth marketing agencyto kickstart your growth marketing strategy.