CXL Institute Growth Marketing Mini Degree Review — 1
Transitioning from Architecture to Brand Management/Marketing has been a journey. Coming from a place that is very design-oriented to where you are allowed to create creatively with functionality in mind. Both professions can be similar in the sense that the end goal is to make your client/customer happy. With architecture, clients are asked alot of questions to make sure their needs are met, unlike traditional marketing which creates a product and then tried to convince the customers that they need the product. Architecture is just more physical while marketing is more hypothetical with alot of experiments.
I am happy to share that I recently got a scholarship from CXL institute to take on the Growth Marketing mini degree program. It is an honour to be a recipient of this scholarship and for the next twelve(12) weeks I will be sharing knowledge learned on various topics. I am very excited about this journey and I am looking forward to what the future holds.
Marketing
/ˈmɑːkɪtɪŋ/
noun
The action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.
What is Growth Marketing?
“Growth marketing is the process of designing and conducting experiments to optimize and improve the result target areas. If you have a certain metric you want to increase, growth marketing is a method you can utilize to achieve that”
The aim of marketers generally is to achieve growth and to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems. A lot of research is gone into defining your target audience and coming up with ways to communicate value to them. Here, we will be discussing the major differences between traditional and growth marketing methods and why companies should lean towards growth marketing.
Traditional marketers focus on building brand awareness and reputation, which not only takes time but a huge marketing budget while Growth marketers focus on experiments. They often set different experiment for a short period to measure results. The purpose of this is to understand which experiments bring the most conversions to the table. Yes, traditional marketing ways could develop local customers and bring results but growth marketing focuses on collecting and analyzing data that can be used to improve products. Growth marketing allows data-backed decisions on future marketing campaigns and strategies.
Traditional marketing takes whatever product they are giving and try to convince the customers that the product is what they need while growth marketers have alot more influence on the products and build a marketing strategy into the product itself rather than working with whatever is given.
Traditional marketing often concerns its self with acquiring customers but what goes on from there? Will they stay, purchase again, and are satisfied enough to refer you to a friend? Growth marketing, on the other hand, takes a more holistic approach and are responsible for all marketing and customer-related operations.
The goals of every stage of the funnel are:
Awareness: To reach as many people and let them know you exist.
Acquisition: To have customers sign up and leave their details.
Activation: To give customers great user experience.
Retention: To keep customers coming back with new products and features.
Revenue: To increase purchase
Referral: To make customers advocates so they share your services with others.
Growth marketing can achieve this because it constantly experiments with different programs, campaigns, product features, increase conversion, create better customer experiences. With this, it generates data that can be used to learn and used as materials for improvement.
Building a growth process and how do you apply it to your organization.
Three important phases of building your growth process are;
Defining your growth model: Basically, a growth model is a way to conceptualize and summarize your business in a simple equation which allows you to think about growth in a holistic structured way. Define what success looks like to your company and how to measure it, defining goals and how to meet them.
Mapping your customer journey: This helps you step into the customer’s shoes and see the business from their perspective. It helps to gain insight on how you can improve customer experience and define what the customers will need in order to make a purchase.
Identify all your growth journey: This could also mean channels. Find out where your customers are and the best possible place to reach them. It could be via Social media, Email marketing or your website’s optimization.
Using a user-centric approach to growth marketing.
User-centric marketing is placing the customer at the centre of your marketing. It is about keeping the customer’s needs and interest at the heart of all business decisions especially in advertising, selling, and promoting the business services and products. It prioritizes having a long term customer success. The user-centric approach does not happen overnight and it requires a series of strategies to implement which require data that growth marketing already provides via experiments. Customizable experiences and products designed for specific lifestyles are other effective methods to cultivate user-centrism.
Now that we know what Growth Marketing entails and why we should implement it, how do you become a great growth marketer?
Marketers are now expected to have skills that encompass different business domains outside marketing but the three main skill sets a growth marketer should possess are; analytical skills, strategy and project management skills, and channel expertise.
Analytical skills: Data isn't useful unless it is actionable. A growth marketer should know how to find the right data, analyze and think critically about it and be able to get useful insights from it.
Project Management skills: This includes knowing how to prioritize the project and creating a flow in which they can be easily achieved and managing expectations.
Channel expertise: This is being able to identify what digital channels work for you, having a good understanding of these channels and how they can be used to achieve set goals.
There are other skills that can be useful to your growth and a Growth marker such as user experience, customer experience, etc. The most important thing is to keep practising and keep learning.
