Businessman analyzing growth chart
getty
Generating awareness to bring in new customers or prompt existing ones to make additional purchases lies at the heart of marketing. Without sustained growth, a product or service line will start to fade away. While a traditional marketing funnel turns awareness into purchase decisions, growth marketing takes it a step further.
As a practice, growth marketing uses data and experimentation to optimize each stage of the funnel. Although the goal is to figure out ways to turn more leads into purchases, growth marketing techniques help determine what works with certain audiences.
Content marketing, for instance, is often used as a top-of-the-funnel strategy. A/B testing might determine that posting a blog twice a week attracts the most traffic. But it’s specific topics that end up bringing the target audience to the business.
While content marketing is a critical part of a growth marketing strategy, there’s much more to it. Growth marketing strategies also leverage data for client retention or bottom-of-the-funnel efforts. Many businesses are relying on growth marketing to build long-term success. Here are some of the upcoming developments in growth marketing that brands will want to consider.
Deeper Dives Into Data and Analytics
As noted, effective growth marketing strategies are built on using data and analytics to test a hypothesis and determine whether more experimentation is necessary. But if that data isn’t used to make improvements or there isn’t a goal post, the results won’t mean much. It doesn’t make sense to keep testing email subject lines if open rates aren’t the problem.
What’s emerging in analytics practice is the examination of what’s improving and what’s not within defined periods. If switching to a new email template leads to higher engagement rates, marketers dive into what aspects consumers engaged with. For instance, did leads click more on the social media icons or click multiple times on the CTA button? Did the color of the CTA button drive clicks, or was it the copy or another design element?
Diving into smaller details like these helps businesses identify development opportunities and determine whether particular marketing tactics are working. Narrowing down date ranges also lets marketers observe whether targeted consumers respond differently to ongoing and recurrent promotions. Discovering that there’s a specific topic or a way of communicating a message that garners high interest each time enables marketers to double down on successful tactics.
Increased Focus on Retention
Even the practice of seeing the customer’s journey through the lens of the traditional marketing funnel is changing. While the conventional journey moves in a single direction, growth marketing strategies are moving toward the flywheel concept. The flywheel concept doesn’t perceive converted leads—customers, that is—as an afterthought.
Instead, customers are at the center of a company’s growth efforts. Although it seems obvious, businesses need to keep current clients happy. Furthermore, meeting or exceeding customers’ expectations isn’t just to garner repeat purchases. The ultimate goal is to turn existing clients into …….