Growth vs Traditional Marketing: Setting the right template for guaranteed business scaling ( A CXL REVIEW 1)

Every firm has heard the battle cry. In developing countries, COVID-19 has had it forcefully enshrined on our playbooks. "The need to GO DIGITAL".

Obviously, this cliche seems to be rapidly gaining traction in all sectors of businesses.While the fusion of traditional marketing and digital marketing has proven to be a beneficial design, the need to treat digital marketing with a unique approach still remains imperative.

Digital Marketing is different from other channels of marketing because of 2 main characteristics. DATA and CONTROL.

Yes!

We can easily see the click through rate,open rate, engagement rate, conversion rate, reach and many other metrics present in a digital campaign unlike in a mundane format of using billboards, radio,etc.

We can even decide to control our campaign by running multiple of them at same time, stopping them halfway, making corrections,etc.

Digital Marketing birthed a flexible form of marketing that has increased the knowledge business have about it’s customers.

But then, many firms have rushed in blindly!!!!

Traditional marketing has always been premised on hypothesis by the team lead or manager.

Coming up with a singular campaign that would take us from point A to our desired point– and If you are wrong, you might not get a second chance.

The penalty for using this startegy is that time and resources will be wasted almost all the time.

For years, traditional marketing has been the go-to-approach for the entire advertising industry and business practitioners. With the availability of multiple technology platforms, marketers can reach out to customers at any stage of the marketing funnel, create more value for their customers and hence, be more successful.

But this doesn’t always work. The need to find a definite solution to the low confidence level of startegies gave birth to GROWTH MARKETING.

WHAT IS GROWTH MARKETING/HACKING?

Growth Marketing utilizes continual testing to know the best startegy or mix of strategies that converts more. You will understand what works best and minimize the risk of losing time and money.

It can be simply said to be fusing something as quickly as possible to see if it’ll work. Just like a lean startup methodology where a minimum viable product (MVP) is built fast to see if customers will like it. But the concept is not about setting MVPs but setting strategies that’ll make continual learning possible (experimentation).

While our known traditional marketing brings potential customers into the funnel through awareness and acquisition, growth marketing approaches every tactical decision strategy first.

It helps a company scale quickly through a steadfast focus on growth in revenue & customer lifetime value across the whole funnel.

EXPERIMENTATION: The mother of growth hacking
Experimentation is the process of choosing a goal and defining a series of experiments that you can use to achieve your goal and gather learning along the way.

An e-commerce store like Jiji is having a 40% weekly retention rate and would like to increase it to 60%. Conventionally, an email marketing strategy can be used to reinforce the brand for top-of-mind effect.

But who gave me the impression that it’ll work?

Why will I risk resources and time in something I think would work?

In growth marketing, you need to come up with different possible solutions and not be wasteful like the traditional way.

The idea is to come up with ideas I think will work and place them as hypothesis for further testing.

What if they don’t need an email? What if they just need discounted offers? Or probably another thing entirely? We need to know the right startegy, and testing them at a macro level before personalization.

Testing strategies against strategies, patterns vs patterns, personalized experience vs unpersonalized experience,etc.

We must brainstorm the best possible solutions and test continually to achieve the necessary results.

WHAT MAKES A SUCCESSFUL GROWTH MARKETER?

To be a successful growth marketer, one must be T-shaped. He must be knowledgeable in a vast array of digital.

A normal digital marketing expert is limited in the scope of growth Marketing because he uses traditional marketing approach to carry out his digital marketing activities.

There are basically 3 main components for evaluating a growth marketer/hacker;

Channel Expertise:

Understanding how marketing core technologies work. From search engine optimization, email marketing, social media ads, push ads, search engine marketing, copywriting, content marketing, content marketing systems, web tech, etc.

Your ability to know how key components of digital tools is what really makes you a digital marketer.

So growth hacking must have a foundation knowledge of all digital marketing technologies plus other things.

Analytical Capabilities: Your ability to gather and analyse data. Data is the lifeblood of growth and constant testing/experimentation is required in this field. Knowledge of sql, excel, Google analytics,data studio,etc will all come in handy.

Being a growth marketer you need to be an expert data analyst.

A growth marketer wears multiple caps, so you need to be a jack of all trades in this case. Know your numbers, know your insights!
One of the major part of Growth Hacking is the process of designing and validating your business' growth strategy.

It can be done through a process of collecting data, experimentation, and rapid iteration. It’s like comparing formulas in a lab to see which one offers the best balance of cost, time and confidence.

The validation of the marketing strategy happens on a cyclical process based on testing, tracking, and progressively optimizing the results.

Strategic thinking/Cross-functional Relationship/Leadership: Understanding how to take on leadership of every startegy as well as key phases like the prioritization of the roadmap process, picking right startegies, collaboration skills, etc.

You must have expertise in one or more of the 3 but must utilize the 3 of them for success. They work as a pack to sell the concept of growth marketing.

THE MOST COMMON FRAMEWORK FOR GROWTH MODEL.

David M Clure’s Pirate Metric for startups (the AAARRR FRAME WORK) is the most widely used growth model.

THE AARRR (PIRATE) METRICS
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Referral
Revenue

Growth hacking involves the careful analysis of each step in the customer journey/funnel and know how to deploy a mix of startegies and testing to get things moving well.

Think about the ways and tools that will make it easier for the customer to take desired action.

Remember, each stage requires a tool or group of tools to maximize what your goals are.

This is my entry for the CXL Mini degree program I was admitted into. I'll be posting more about my journey so far and what I've learned going forward.