Still no clue what Growth Marketing is about? No worries, you’re not alone! Our Yearly Marketing Survey revealed that more than two-thirds of all Belgian marketeers are not yet optimizing their marketing actions by applying Growth Marketing initiatives. Rearing to get started yourself and become part of the winning team? Let me introduce you to the ABC of Growth Marketing.

1. What is Growth Marketing?   

Sometimes labelled as a buzzword, Growth Hacking is defined as “a constant test & learn process with the aim of increasing the impact of your current marketing actions”. At The House of Marketing, we look at Growth Marketing as an evolution in traditional marketing. Joining forces with Upthrust, our experts are taking this Growth Hacking mindset one step further. Growth Marketing is about linking all your growth tactics with your overall marketing strategy. The process of rapid experimentation across all different marketing channels should always support the overall strategy. The art lies in institutionalizing what works and dropping asap what doesn’t work so you focus your efforts on the most effective strategies for sustainable growth.

2. Why Growth Marketing? 

In an ever-changing environment where consumer habits and needs are shifting faster than ever, Growth Marketing is a way of keeping up with the trend. Live by the Growth Hacking mindset and test till you rest. The only way to discover what works is to try out your different ideas, scale those that work and kill the ones that don’t move the needle towards your overall business objective.

To survive in the marketing jungle, marketeers no longer have time to work for months on 1 single solution. In today’s market, speed & agility are needed to serve your consumers at their demand. 68% of the Belgian marketeers in our Yearly Marketing Survey pointed out that their organizations often come up with new ideas or initiatives in response to this challenging market context, but are slowed down when it comes to the actual execution. Looking for an innovation toolkit that will ease you over this hurdle? Take a look here to get you started.

3. Who is a Growth Marketer?

The Growth Marketer is typically described as a T-shaped marketer, meaning that he has shifted away from a traditional marketing mindset where the plans are built on an annual base, starting from a company centric approach with a focus on acquisition only. A Growth Marketer preaches customer centricity and believes in full AARRR funnel focus from acquisition till revenue. By working in sprints, he’s capable of running various experiments within a limited time frame. Obsessed by data and always curious about the possibility of alternative solutions, Growth Marketers are not afraid to get their hands dirty to find that one insight themselves to put to the test.

4. When to use Growth Marketing 

As mentioned before, Growth Marketing should be an always-on mindset for all your marketing activities. Keeping the finger on the pulse of your consumer, collecting relevant insights and testing them quickly to learn what helps you to outperform the competition is a daily challenge for every marketer.

Having the Growth Hacking mindset and applying the principles of fast testing, scaling or killing initiatives, provides guidance for all our marketing initiatives. Testing different pictures or CTAs in your content strategy to improve the lead & traffic generation, validating different value propositions with quick feedback loops to discover what triggers your target group or collecting direct insights by running small surveys on your website to discover which barriers your visitors are facing today, are only a few examples to illustrate that Growth Marketing should be your way to g(r)ow!

5. Where to start in a corporate environment

At my firm, we work without a structured approach for innovation processes and decisions are taken top-down, driven by policies and gut feeling. Our planning & validation processes are too long, we focus on the perfect product, and the lack of teamwork caused by a silo structure keeps us from starting up quick test & learn loops. Sounds familiar?

It is often  said that Growth Marketing is something which can only be applied at start-ups or within smaller companies. Another problem is that marketeers often have the best intentions to start off with but give up the ghost very quickly because of the time it takes to reap those motivating rewards that keep you going. Well, to help you on that – let me end with some tips to get you on the path towards that first victory.

• Work in sprints to maintain focus on one specific challenge with a pre-defined timing. Set-up a small core team and determine the one metric that matters*.
• Build MVPs to test and accept that failure is part of the process. Define from the start which data you need to support your hypotheses and build towards a product-market fit in multiple steps.
• Share learnings internally, celebrate successes and inspire others to get started. Just like traditional marketing, Growth Marketing is all about teamwork and nothing beats good vibes to keep your team going!
  
  *💡The One metric that matters (or MTM) 

• To make sure everyone has the goal in sight and to avoid decisions being driven by gut feeling rather than the bare facts, it’s important to determine the game-changing metric. This OMTM quantifies the added value delivered to all customers and provides a lens for measuring sustainable, quality growth. Defining your OMTM ensures that everyone in the team works towards the same final objective and provides the justification you need to stop all experiments that don’t support this objective.

Have we piqued your curiosity? Here are some more articles to feed your marketing appetite. Looking for more personalized support? Don’t hesitate to reach out! The House of Marketing is here to help: check out our page dedicated to Growth Marketing!