What is Growth Marketing?

Growth marketing focuses on creating personalized experiences for customers based on data insights.

The term growth marketing surfaced a decade ago. However, the traditional marketers took it for another fad that would soon disappear. Indeed, they were mistaken.

Today, businesses across all industries hire growth marketing firms or individuals to grow their customer base, revenue, and product research.

The digital marketing space is seemingly under constant change. Growth marketers are working to understand what benefits the customers and how companies can retain them longer.

Let’s dive deep into the topic to learn about growth marketing, its core practices, and how it differs from traditional marketing.

Table of Contents

Growth marketing is the optimized version of traditional marketing. However, traditional marketing may not make exceptional efforts for customer loyalty and retention after a purchase.

In contrast, growth marketing is a data-backed method that creates highly tailored and personalized customer experiences, guides them through the marketing funnel, and makes them brand loyal.

The approach intensely focuses on data insights collected through search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, paid advertisements, e-mail campaigns, social media, and A/B testing to make informed decisions based on customer preferences.

Growth marketers follow their customers before and after the purchase to understand

Their demographics
Buying patterns and behaviors, they exhibit online
How do they interact with the product, and what price are they willing to pay
Where and how do they spend their time
What are their pains and desires? How deep down do they run?

Customer data analysis and testing help understand different audiences depending on their immediate needs and preferences. Furthermore, it allows growth marketers to improve products and user experiences to develop micro and macro marketing campaigns fast and often.

Components of Growth Marketing

Like any other marketing plan to succeed, growth marketing requires a team effort. Therefore, every department, from product development and engineering to customer support that deals with customer data, is involved in growth marketing. Everyone shares the same goal – customer retention.

Following are the five core components of growth marketing that almost every company practices.

All Teams are On the Same Page

As mentioned above, growth marketing is inevitable when everyone in the company serves the same goal. Below are the company areas that actively engage with customers and closely work with the marketing department.

Product development is frequently requested for new features, and upgrades suggested or demanded by the customers.
Customer Service is always in contact with the users, and their conversations are meaningful. Customers are quick to highlight their product needs and concerns.
Developers analyze web and mobile traffic and the factors that affect them.
Data Analysts interpret digital data for marketers by observing critical insights of the company’s customers.

Data from the above departments are combined and analyzed for future marketing campaigns. The growth marketing process starts when any data is motivating enough to ignite innovation.

All information gathered through data is used to create and test new ideas through different experiments. Furthermore, experiments that show promising performance are expanded into large-scale projects. Whereas small changes such as tweaking social media content, newsletters, and e-mails are also part of growth marketing to observe product engagement, subscriptions, downloads, and conversion.

A/B Testing

A/B testing is also known as split testing. Depending on the goal, you can create two or more variations of any content type to test them for engagement, open rates, and conversions.

A/B testing is experimenting with two or more variations of e-mails, newsletters, social media content, web and landing pages, graphics and colors, and other features with different audiences. For example, two separate e-mails describing two different product features are sent to a small sample audience to measure click-through rates. The best-performed e-mail will go to a similar and broader audience.

Similarly, two different versions of advertisements are made for diverse audiences. Audience A may get through the ad and may make a purchase, while audience B sees the ad but takes no action. This valuable and crucial data helps growth marketers understand which content format works best for an audience.

Growth marketers use data like this to compare old strategies against new ones to optimize marketing campaigns.

Multi-Channel Marketing

Growth marketers use multi-channel marketing strategies to increase user engagement and earn loyal customers. Multiple communication channels include e-mail marketing, SMS marketing, direct mail, push notifications, social media, and other channels.

Testing marketing strategies on customer-preferred channels gives insights into customer behavior. Through A/B testing, you can understand the content preferences of audiences from those channels.

For example, suppose the results show that your users respond well to e-mail marketing offers than push notifications. In that case, you should focus all your marketing efforts on the best-performing channel for a better return on investments (ROI).

Customer Feedback

Modern marketing has made collecting customer feedback easy. To get valuable information, you direct your customers to

Click on a link.
Like and share a social media post.
Fill out a survey or an opt-in form.

If customers are well engaged, they openly share their concerns and highlights regarding the products they use.

As a growth marketer, you should go above and beyond to get customer feedback. Look for creative ways to engage users on call and online channels to discuss product features and functionalities.

Similarly, you can look for behavioral patterns, such as customers filling in their credentials for a subscription but leaving the site without making a purchase. The solution to similar problems is behavior-based automation triggered when a customer leaves without completing an action. These messages can be in the form of an e-mail or text asking them what went wrong.

Furthermore, you can create messages that show customers the value of subscribing to a paid service or help them eliminate any confusion they face with the product.

We also see businesses offering 24/7 customer support services where a sales representative is always online to guide customers through the purchase. It builds trust and puts the customer at ease when navigating the buying process.

Data from customer feedback is incorporated into marketing campaigns as product benefits and highlights.

Agility and Flexibility

Growth marketing is all about showing flexibility and responding fast to rising opportunities. Growth marketers often devise mini-marketing campaigns to observe and analyze the results.

They are nimble enough to understand that the same type of content cannot work forever. It constantly needs tweaking to make better decisions based on customer feedback and data analytics. They keep testing and solving new problems that require creative and logical problem-solving skills.

Growth Marketing Vs. Traditional Marketing

Let’s compare how growth marketing differs from traditional marketing.

Growth Marketing	Traditional Marketing
Growth marketing is an extension of traditional marketing that nurtures the customer through all the stages of the marketing funnel.	Traditional marketing focuses on customer awareness and acquisition as part of the marketing funnel.
Growth marketing is data-backed, and marketing decisions are based on collecting, analyzing, and testing data.	Traditional marketing is not data-driven. Instead, it is opinionated and relies on gut instincts.
Growth marketing is flexible. You can stop or change your advertising campaigns anytime.	Traditional marketing is not flexible. The paid campaigns, once started, cannot be stopped due to the high cost.
Growth marketing believes in building and nurturing long-term customer relationships after purchasing.	Traditional marketing follows temporary sales-boosting tactics, leaving their customers in the dust after purchasing.
Growth marketing is customer-centric. It solves customer problems by constantly improving the products and services for them.	Traditional marketing is company-centric. The company does everything to increase its sales and revenue.
Growth marketing makes short-term (quarterly) marketing plans due to evolving market conditions.	Traditional Marketing creates marketing plans annually.

Implement Successful Growth Strategies

For the implementation of a successful growth marketing strategy, growth marketers take a series of steps, including:

Collect data on potential customers, including any prior feedback.
Analyze the gathered data to develop content variations for split testing (A/B testing).
Create and run small test campaigns of e-mail marketing, social media, SMS marketing, podcasts, and other types of creative content.
Track the performance of the various versions of A/B testing and analyze the information.
Adopt the tactics that are performing well and add to your company’s library of best growth marketing practices.
Reach out to the departments again and gather new information and feedback to repeat the cycle.

Growth Marketing Examples

Growth marketing allows big and small businesses to grow constantly in the dynamic digital space. Let’s look at some incredible examples of phenomenal growth marketing tactics that made the following six companies stand out.

Airbnb: The Best User Experience

Airbnb has earned the reputation of “The Best Host” by providing its customers with a fantastic user experience. Guests prefer staying at Airbnb homes because of their ease and value. Their impeccable service offers a home-like feel, also reflected in their company slogans.

Airbnb is the perfect example of how customers become product advocates and refer them to others. The star rating system of Airbnb creates social proof for new customers and brand loyalty for existing ones. Airbnb offers its customers to be listed as a “Super Host” by providing its tenants with excellent service and exceptional amenities.

Netflix: Influencing Through Social Proof

Netflix has achieved an empire of success by influencing the behaviors of others through the power of social proof. Social proof is a valuable tool to increase your customer base. Customers buy from companies that have satisfied customers.

Netflix also creates a personalized watching experience for its users based on their prior watch. It tells them about the best-rated shows and popular movies and suggests different genres of stories.

Apple: Growth through Social Media Engagement

Social media marketing plays a vital role in the growth of Apple company. They use the A/B testing method of growth marketing to test various content versions regularly. Like social media, their website is a fantastic blend of captivating graphics and copy.

You often see customers engaging with the brand on social media, where the company posts real-life customer experiences.

Drop Box: Growth through Referral Programs

Dropbox uses referral programs to attract new users by incentivizing its existing customers for “more storage space.” Growth marketers often use referral programs to increase their customer base by providing valuable incentives to current users. Many companies also offer cash incentives in exchange for referrals.

HubSpot: Seamless Website User Experience

HubSpot’s website provides an amazing self-service user experience for its customers. The company also has a feature called “Growth Hack” that allows all company departments to collaborate on a single platform for data analytics and product launches of the clients.

HubSpot provides well-researched content and valuable tools for its customers that help them reach their goals and return for more.

LinkedIn Personal Branding Platform

LinkedIn is one of the largest and most professional social media platforms that help people build their brand to set them apart from the crowd. The social network is known for connecting professionals to do business with like-minded people or get hired by their favorite companies.

LinkedIn provides opportunities for its users to monetize their social efforts by promoting products and services through valuable content or advertisements. You can also sponsor your posts to reach thousands of users on the platform.