Growth marketing, simply put, is about rapidly promoting growth in businesses.  The term was spawned from the concept of growth hacking; a methodology developed to assist startups and individuals in building businesses quickly. 

In today's world, growth marketing strategies are used by all kinds of businesses, offering robust strategies for boosting your business growth. 

What is growth marketing?

In a nutshell, growth marketing makes use of an experimental and data-driven formula for boosting customer retention.  The approach uses constant testing to glean various ways of accomplishing marketing goals, with the long-term intent of creating rapid business growth. To better understand growth marketing, we're going to break down its features and how it differs from traditional marketing. 

Data-driven decision-making. 

To induce rapid and scalable growth, marketers need to determine what works and what doesn't. Growth marketers rely on data and reporting tools to gather insights.  All decisions are backed by data, thus making data collection and analysis, two core aspects of growth marketing. 

Testing & experimenting. 

To find which processes work best, growth marketers continuously carry out experiments and tests.  The idea here is to continually try out new strategies to find a single or several great features which can be used to boost growth. 

Let's use Amazon's success as an example. Jeff Bezos states that experimentation plays a critical role in fostering innovation.  Marketers need to push themselves to experiment more to find innovative ways of doing things, new markets to expand into or even fresh products to develop. 

Continual experimentation leads to fast and robust growth. 

Cross-funnel focus. 

With traditional marketing, the focus is on the top-tier levels of the sales funnel. A sales funnel is the marketing term used to describe the various stages a customer moves through before making a purchase. 

• The top level of the funnel is where awareness and interest are found and where marketers do their work. 
• The middle of the funnel has to do with consideration and intent while the bottom of the funnel is where a lead has the intention to purchase, takes action and buys your product or service.

In traditional marketing, marketers are only concerned with the top of the funnel, whereas, with growth marketing, marketers pay attention to the all levels of the sales funnel.

Long-term focus 

Growth marketing goes above and beyond short-term and immediate goals, such as lead generation.  Marketers generally add several additional levels to the aforementioned sales funnel, this being, loyalty and repeat purchases.  

In a nutshell, growth marketers are not solely concerned with customer growth but also customer retention and promoting positive customer experiences.  That being said, growth marketing includes the involvement of various teams and departments. 

Cross functionality. 

Growth marketing is involved throughout the product life cycle and the life cycle of the customer.  It is here where collaboration between various teams and departments occurs. A marketer commonly has a say in product development for the overall improvement of customer experiences. 

By having a robust growth marketing strategy in place the various functions and departments of a business share a common goal of winning customers over and satisfying then. 

Customer centricity.

If you consider the above mentioned points, it's clear that growth marketing is very customer-centric. The goal isn't just extracting value and revenue from customers, but rather giving the customer value. However, these two things are not mutually exclusive, but having the correct focus can create different strategies. 

In layman's terms, your business's focus lies in creating and fostering long-term relationships with customers as opposed to only driving sales in the moment. 

Speed and scalability. 

Growth marketing boasts the dual goals of speed and scalability. It is vital to conduct experiments and test processes at a rapid pace to find strategies which work. Growth marketers rely on the creation of several experiments for data gathering, finding out what works and leveraging what creates fast growth.

These strategies are made possible, thanks to the widespread availability of online tools. The technological advances in AI and machine learning have also played vital roles in improved business intelligence. With the help of data, marketers can experiment with several marketing strategies to gauge which one works,  which can then further be scaled up and promote growth. 

Prioritisation. 

Growth marketing includes cross-functional and cross-funnel efforts and doesn't prioritise all the goals of marketing. It makes use of data to determine the areas which garner the best results and optimises them. 

Skills required for growth marketing. 

Now that you understand some of the aspects of growth marketing, let's tackle the skills you'll need to support growth-based activities. 

Data analysis. Growth marketers rely heavily on data and insights to produce sound marketing decisions. This is why analytics is a vital skill needed in growth marketing. You'll need to be comfortable with quantitative marketing, web analytics, managing data from CRM and more. 

Experimental processes. Growth marketers are continually carrying out experiments of different forms, including A/B testing. They need to know how to conduct various experiments and tests, analyse them and leverage them to promote growth. 

Technical prowess. To conduct multiple marketing strategies, growth marketers need to have knowledge of several tools and technologies.  They need to have the know-how to create marketing campaigns, conduct research for SEO and more. Furthermore, marketers also need to be proficient in UX/UI practices to conduct testing and improve customer touch points online. 

Automation. Automation is a vital part of growth marketing. There are several activities to manage, and it's not possible to do so without specific tools to automate certain tasks. Automation can assist with drip campaigns, chatbots, lead capturing forms, workflows and much more. 

Content writing and copywriting. Writing for the web is an invaluable skill as it is required for several purposes. Your business's brand awareness campaigns, conversion rates, blogging success and much more depend on excellent content writing. Content writing is vital, and companies which publish more than sixteen blog posts per month, get as much as 3.5 times more traffic than brands that post less frequently. 

Essential tools for growth marketing. 

It would be best if you had the correct tools in place to assist with your marketing efforts.  

CRM and CEM tools. Customer Relationship Management and Customer Experience Management both enable businesses with the abilities to manage the customer journey. However, CEM is more customer-focused and geared towards improving the customer experience, loyalty-building, customer retention and more. 

A/B testing tools. As mentioned above, growth marketers rely on A/B testing to refine their digital marketing campaigns. An A/B testing tool can help businesses create variations of their apps and websites and present them to audiences. They can even be used for email marketing campaigns. 55% of marketers don't believe that they are sending out relevant content, with only 14% of subscribers stating that they receive informative emails. With A/B testing, you'll be able to narrow down the best content which aids in boosting traffic or any other marketing goals you might be working towards. 

Analytics tools. Free tools such as Google Analytics and paid premium tools can help track user behaviour and provide additional insights. Businesses can monitor their websites, glean data about visitors, site health and much more. 

Email marketing tools.  You will need to utilise an email marketing tool to aid in nurturing your leads and convert them into paying customers. You can integrate your email marketing with other platforms, such as CRM software to develop robust campaigns. 

UX/UI tools. It's vital to develop your website and app platforms based on current UX/UI practices. The correct tools can aid in the creation of appealing and user-friendly interfaces which can improve overall user experience, which can ultimately impact traffic, engagement and conversions. 

Conclusion

In today's age, it's possible to create rapid business growth thanks to the availability of data, insights and automation. With this guide, you should be able to determine if growth marketing is the correct approach for your business and know what tools you'll need to implement it. With successful growth marketing strategies, your business will see rapid growth in a short period.