You may have heard the term Growth Marketing, but what exactly does it mean? How does it differ from traditional marketing? What is the science behind Growth Marketings' success? Who can implement and execute Growth Marketing practices to achieve extraordinary results? Cough, cough.. the Growth Team at WillowTree. Who is the Growth Team, you ask?
Let's break it all down.
Growth Marketing Defined
Growth Marketing is an approach to attract, engage, and retain customers through experimentation, focusing on your audience's unique and ever-changing motives and preferences.
Key factors of Growth Marketing:
- Growth Marketing uses hardcore data to draw patterns and insights
- Growth Marketing uses rapid experimentation to identify and capitalize on various opportunities
- Growth Marketing focuses on optimization across the entire funnel
Growth Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing:
Traditional marketing relies on a "set it and forget it" or "make a product, then market it" technique; think display campaigns with basic copy. Traditional marketing's primary focus is on how you can convert to a lead as quickly as possible. But, that isn't always the most effective. Traditional marketing strategies can be great for building traffic at the top of your sales funnel, aiding a goal such as brand recognition, but that's where the value diminishes. Traditional marketing focuses solely on acquisition, whereas Growth Marketing focuses on retention.
Growth Marketing goes beyond the top of the funnel where traditional marketing stalls. Growth Marketing aims to guide your audience through each stage of the marketing funnel; it is consumer-centric, ideally turning customers into champions for your brand.
Growth Marketing executes this by taking the traditional marketing model and adding layers of practices that can be hypothesized, tested, analyzed, and optimized. Marketing strategies such as A/B testing, conversion rate optimization (CRO), email marketing, etc., become pillars that brands routinely test. The insights gained from these strategies are data-driven, taking out any guessing games. This allows for the company to make informed decisions that, in return, provide long-term sustainable growth.
The Science Behind Growth Marketing Success
There are many parallels between Growth Marketing and the scientific method. You may be thinking - what? But think about it - Growth Marketers are hypothesizing, conducting controlled tests, pulling insights from data, problem-solving, and experimenting.
Let's take a peek at the parallels following along with the structure of the scientific method.
Formulate a question
This question could be anything related to a measurable business goal (i.e., how to increase conversion rate on web push notifications?)
Construct a hypothesis
In Growth Marketing, a Growth Marketer will hypothesize/try to come up with a solution to the client's question.
Structure a Test
Growth Marketing is rooted in testing. To understand what resonates best with sub-segments, Growth Marketers can use tactics like audience segmentation, multivariate testing, etc. A test at the core of the Growth Marketing practice is the A/B test. An A/B test involves deploying an "A" and a "B" test to understand which content variation has a higher engagement and conversion rate with your audience. This is an example of how testing can provide data that can be utilized to optimize future campaigns. In Growth Marketing, you are constantly improving, re-testing collecting data finds gaps and implementing a scalable approach for the overall growth goal.
Analysis and Reporting
The practice of Growth Marketing utilizes analytics which provides factual data for businesses to make informed and actionable decisions.
Refine and Implement
Growth Marketing is happening in real-time and agile.
Growth marketing is about moving toward objectives with confidence from experimentation.
Who is the Growth Team at WillowTree?
The magic behind the practice of Growth Marketing is a Growth Marketer. Growth Marketers are the individuals analyzing the data to see what's working and what isn't. They attempt to understand what will benefit the users and keep them coming back. They are focused on the whole customer journey to improve customer activation, retention, and referral efforts.
At WillowTree, we have a Growth Team of over 40 individuals. We can bring together the right team for any need - drawing from our experts in marketing, analytics, data science, product development, test engineering, research, strategy, design, and content.
