There’s one holy grail every startup is focused on– growth. But without the right marketing strategy in place to scale organically, it becomes hard to get a steady grip on the longevity of your business.
Growth marketing’s core function is to identify channels, solutions, and ideas that will maximize the lifetime value of a customer at all stages of the sales funnel while minimizing the cost and time it takes to do so. It’s not just a “what’s the latest” type of buzzword in marketing. It’s a strategy that’s changing the way startups are revolutionizing what growth means to a business and how it can be used effectively.
Growing in the Right Direction
The goal of marketing is to generate new leads at the top and push them down for conversion. That’s why over 85% of marketers say that lead generation is the most important goal of their marketing efforts. However, this leads to a whole lot of missed opportunities regarding nurturing and building meaningful relationships with customers. Apart from the acquisition, the entire sales funnel isn’t leveraged for growth with this approach.
Today, customers need to be reminded about a product or service constantly, but in a strategic way. Growth marketers, or “hackers”, look at a business and their marketing activities from a holistic perspective to help figure out what to stop, adjust, or double-down on in their approach. They know how to optimize the entire marketing funnel for maximum business growth, from awareness through to retention. They come in, look at the brand, and figure out data-backed ways to better attract and convert those targets.
This special breed of data-driven marketing requires teams to look for the bottlenecks blocking growth across the funnel and optimize ways that would not only win new customers but maintain those you already have. Growth marketing involves unconventional ways of attracting new customers, testing and experimenting with new ideas and strategies, executing them quickly, and measuring the results.
Growth Marketing Can’t be Siloed
The goal is relatively simple: improve engagement and conversion metrics throughout the full funnel. But it’s no one-person job. Growth is cultural and needs to be ingrained top-down and enabled to flourish bottom’s up – like any cultural tenant in a business.
For most startups, it becomes important to see that all functional areas are playing a role in that growth strategy and execution. The best companies have growth as their core DNA throughout. You must align everyone towards milestones and targets now and for future horizons ensuring everyone is committed and accountable to the success of the business.
Key Takeaways
If you launch a product or service and people seem to like it, great – you know it works. Scaling that growth is the next hurdle. Understanding the data is vital to unlocking growth, and true growth marketing has a wizardly ability to leverage the data that makes strategic decisions.
For meaningful business growth, startups that innovate beyond traditional distribution channels will find sustainable growth. They have to dig deep creatively and relentlessly test new ideas to find the exact target audience they need. If they don’t figure out how to use growth marketing efficiently, they’ll soon realize any hope for a growth spurt will most likely be stunted.
