Growth hacking or growth marketing? We are talking about a marketing strategy aiming for growth. If you have not started yet, develop your 2022 growth marketing strategy now. Here is the roadmap you can follow step-by-step…
Influencing almost every aspect of our lives, technological advancements transformed each industry and brought about new business models. Many concepts such as speed, quality, customized service, and accurate and reliable communication are now routine necessities for consumers. These necessities also included some new concepts in the marketing world: “Growth Hacking” and “Growth Marketing”
No matter the industry they operate in, brands that want to reinforce their position in the market explore marketing methods focused on digital marketing and growth. Meanwhile, we can also observe that especially COVID-19 has pushed brands to develop new marketing strategies.
The differences between “Growth Hacking” and “Growth Marketing” sometimes provoke serious debates. In this blog post, we will focus on Growth Marketing strategies. Before moving on to this blog post’s topic, let’s touch upon what Growth Hacking and Growth Marketing are and the primary points of differentiation between the two concepts.
“Growth Hacking” or “Growth Marketing”?
As a matter of fact, the main differences between these two approaches are sustainability, brand orientation, and long-term strategic planning.
Growth Hacking, which aims to get the quickest result and high profitability in the shortest amount of time with the minimum investment and puts the sustainability aspect on the back burner, stands out as a marketing approach mostly preferred by start-ups in industries, such as technology and computing, where the competition is accelerating every day.
On the other hand, Growth Marketing or “Growth-Focused Marketing” is a marketing approach that aims for sustainable profitability and covers the long-term strategies developed to enable a brand to achieve its objective.
In short, Growth Hacking serves for short-term high profitability and speed and outcome orientation. However, Growth Marking enables moving towards the growth target with solid and safer steps, provides a basis for long-term healthy growth strategy, and focuses on sustainable profitability and customer loyalty. Before anything else, the brand itself is at the basis of the Growth Marketing approach.
Of course, both of these approaches contribute to brands significantly. At this point, however, you need to determine your brand’s basic needs accurately and set the relevant marketing method. To do this, you need to analyze the expectations and needs of your customer in the most effective way and set the short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals in your brand journey rationally.
Step by Step Growth Marketing in 2022
Since we have covered the fundamental differences between these two marketing approaches that have been on the rise in recent years, let’s get back on our topic, the Growth Marketing strategies that will enlighten our road in the upcoming period… Firstly, brands seeking to create their Growth Marketing strategy need to set some basic steps. Here are 12 key recommendations for brands that plan to operate with a Growth Marketing strategy in 2022…
1. Create Your Persona Accurately
Persona means “personality card”. Prior to the marketing process, you need to create a persona based on your objectives. The Growth Marketing strategy is developed based on what a persona needs. Thus, creating your persona beforehand plays a highly significant role in forming marketing activities. Here, it would be best if you first considered your customers’ gender, marital status, age, monthly income, city of residence, and similar details. Then, you need to observe for which purposes your customers make purchases and analyze their complaints and their reasons if any. Most importantly, you need to record each data you obtain.
2. Use AI Actively
AI is often used in marketing processes as well. Accelerating particularly digital marketing greatly, AI predicts what customers can buy in the future based on their past purchasing transactions and browser history. Thus, companies seeking to rank higher in search engines such as Google should make their AI model usable with SEO and other digital marketing strategies.
3. Always Be Mobile-Compatible!
Most of today’s consumers use tablets or smart phones rather than computers. With the pandemic, we are also not only more mobile but also more dependent on the internet. Thus, consider the target audience that your brand addresses and maybe put the mobile customer experience you offer on top of your job list, let alone include it. That’s because we are becoming more “mobile” and “online” each passing day!
4. Add Voice and Value to Your Brand
According to research, the voice-based shopping market is estimated to hit 40 billion USD in a short time, while consumer spending via voice assistants is expected to reach 18%. This marketing field offers the ease of purchasing and accessibility for visually disabled persons and opens up the horizon for numerous digital marketing opportunities. If you want to expand your brand in the fastest way, you need to invest in voice technologies that are growing rapidly.
5. Do Not Rule Out Marketing Automation
Offering the opportunity to automate repetitive tasks in real-time, marketing automation has become the lifeline of businesses in recent years. Some of the tasks to be automated are data research and collection, pre-planning and sharing of social media posts, and which information will be provided to the consumer via which channel in which time frame based on the consumer characteristics. Thus, brands should use marketing automation actively to allocate more time to strategic tasks.
6. Follow the Trends
Will robots take over our jobs? No, they will not. Don’t be afraid of automating some tasks. Thus, you can use the extra you will have time to follow the trends and sniff around the market. While doing this, you should have a solid grasp of the trends in your industry and marketing, newly known as Growth Marketing. Is it difficult? Of course, leaving the work to the professionals and collaborating with a digital marketing or growth marketing agency can sometimes be necessary.
7. How Many Channels Do You Have?
Today, everything is multi-channel. First and foremost, the customer experience. Moreover, customers want to have the same experience across channels! Thus, expecting your Growth Marketing practices to run smoothly via a single channel would not be a wise move. However, diversifying your communication channels and maintaining communication via various channels such as websites, social media, local communication networks, or mobile communication tools allow you to reach new markets, attract various audiences, and access new information about your target audience. Therefore, you should discover and try each communication channel and create new and customized ones when necessary.
8. Focus on Getting to Know Your Target Audience Better
You need to know your brand’s target audience thoroughly to develop the right Growth Marketing practice. Thus, focus on utilizing each channel to receive feedback about your customers in the most efficient way. Remember, every communication channel you interact with them will provide you with golden tips for your brand’s future strategy. This approach allows you to optimize the target audience of your brand.
9. Content is Everything!
Content is the basis of a solid Growth Marketing strategy. You need to produce creative content based on the unique dynamics of all communication channels you utilize. However, you can also adjust a single content you have created to various channels. Instead of creating new content each time, you can reshape the creative content in your portfolio based on the agenda and save time and money. For instance, you can create an infographic using a short video when necessary and turn an infographic into blog content with a powerful story. With this approach, content alternatives are infinite!
10. Engage with Your Customers Instead of Just Communicating
The ability of your customers to engage with your brand directly is among the significant components of Growth Marketing. You can achieve this in many ways. For instance, you can organize face-to-face events, create simple surveys, make phone calls, create interactions on social media, and deliver fast responses to their messages varying from requests, suggestions, and complaints to achieve this engagement.
11. Data, data, data!
Growth Marketing is not possible without data. Monitoring the data closely provides you with real-time insights regarding your fields of development or optimization. By utilizing a range of online tracking mechanisms, such as website analytics, social media measurement, and SEO tracking, you can track your success thoroughly.
12. Conduct Simple Tests for the Right Approach
You can readily measure the success of your Growth Marketing strategy during an ongoing marketing campaign and revise it in the meanwhile. The only thing necessary for this is to change only a single element of the campaign you are running and pay attention to the comments that your target audience will deliver. For instance, you can use two separate images or titles for the same product and track which version generates better outcomes.
Growth Marketing is Far From Over
The only constant is change itself, isn’t it? Growth Marketing is constantly changing as well. As technology evolves, the world and consumers change, too. Accordingly, Growth Marketing continually clears up new areas for itself. Remember! With solid planning and the right strategy, you can always stay one step ahead of the competition. While following your product and industry, however, you may not pursue the developments in Growth Marketing as much as you are comfortable with. You may also think about focusing on your work and leaving this responsibility to be handled by professionals.
You are right, though. Collaborating with a professional growth marketing agency not only always facilitates your job but also secures it.
