Growth Marketing with CXL - Review
Once upon a time, I used to think of getting admitted to an MBA institute as I could get placed at a better company doing a better job. Things didn't go well (fortunately) and I did not do it. Gradually, I applied for a Scholarship at CXL and it got approved, and this is nowhere less powerful than an MBA!
Before I jump to my Week 1 learnings, here is a little background, I have spent more than 3 years working for clients for their digital marketing needs! Starting with creating content, making creatives to running advertising campaigns, all organic but involves a lot of time and money.
What I learn with 3+ years of experience in digital marketing is that this fast-paced world needs an advanced way of communicating your product and services, the traditional marketing channels where the result can be felt but can't be measured are not cost-effective anymore.
And hence, I decided to learn growth marketing, build on my skills with an unconventional but powerful set of marketing practice that is backed by data and research.
Traditional Marketing vs Growth Marketing:
The best part of growth marketing I feel is it doesn't restrict you to follow a certain path. There is no book to do things as stated, every conventional and unconventional method that results in the growth of the business and is backed up with data. Traditional marketing, on the other hand, follows certain norms which are being followed for ages, there is nothing new, ever marketer does this, for sure it gives result but growth strategies optimize these results.
Experiments are the backbone of the growth strategies, focusing on what is important, and eliminating the rest makes growth marketing a powerful tool.
Growth Marketing Is Experimental:
Traditional marketers focus on building brand awareness and reputation, which not only takes time but a huge marketing budget. Years of outbound marketing (paid advertisements) and reputation management could develop loyal customers and bring results.
Growth marketing as a tactic was born out of need -- startups didn’t have the time or money to operationalize “industry best practices” to grow.
Instead, growth marketing is decidedly experimental, focusing on untested or unconventional marketing solutions that can result in massive growth.
What does it take to become a Growth Marketer:
1. Mindset:
Growth is not a tool that anyone can teach you, you need to build a mindset around growth. It is a process of questioning every data point and then finding a lean answer to it. Building a growth marketing mindset is no easy task, it needs dedication, a lot of work, and the ability to think.
2. Strategic Thinking:
A growth marketer needs to be a great manager as well, he should be the master of strategies when it comes to marketing. Making befitting strategies based on data helps in the execution of a marketing campaign.
3. Channel level expertise:
There are different channels available in marketing such as SEO, SEM, Email marketing etc, you need to be an expert in one of these that you know anything and everything about it.
4. T-shaped functioning:
A growth marketer does not stick to any one specific platforms to run growth experiments but he uses many. In order to do that he needs to be familiar with the other platforms. For eg: You are good at email marketing and automation, but in order to run a successful growth experiment you need to be good at SEO, content, Messenger marketing, etc as well.
5. Cross channel Marketing:
Cross-channel marketing focuses on building a strategic channel plan to reach your customers, and can include email marketing, SMS messaging, push notifications, in-app messages, direct mail, and other channels, based on your audience’s preferences. When incorporating a cross-channel marketing plan into your growth marketing strategy, you need to focus on the individual user to understand their communication preferences, and then build your campaigns accordingly. A/B testing can help you first understand that a particular user responds to push message offers at a 60% higher rate than email marketing offers, for instance, so you can customize future campaigns to focus on push offers. It's also valuable to build a holistic marketing plan that integrates multiple channels so that you will be able to engage with your audience wherever they are, using contextual campaigns that help you understand their past behavior across each platform.
5. Data:
Data is the heart and soul of growth marketing, it is the data that gives us goals and then ideas to execute those goals. Analyzing the data and making calculated decisions always gives fruitful results and great performance.
6. Unconventional methods and creativity:
Growth marketing needs a creative mind to find ways that are strong, cost-effective, and has the power to deliver amazing results. I think this mini degree will teach me to think of more creative ways of advertising.
Conclusion:
- Growth marketing is a data-driven approach that uses tests to determine how to optimize results. For example, using an A/B test to see which push notification users like better. When something works, it’s leaned into. When something doesn’t, more tests are run.
- Traditionally, marketing efforts have been separated from the product, with the marketing department isolated from other aspects of the business. Today, growth marketing is integrated into product development. Growth marketers must dig in and immerse themselves in the growth metrics that matter.
- Although the name growth marketing implies a strategy based entirely on attracting more users, it’s about more than just that.
- Customer discovery is exactly as it sounds: discovering who is having the problem that your product can best solve, also known as product/market fit. Author and entrepreneur Steve Blank argue, “No business plan survives first contact with customers.”
- A deep understanding of who the customer is can also guide the growth marketing strategy to best address the goals of the company.
So far these 7 days of learning have been a great introduction to the concept of growth marketing, excited about what is yet to come.
