We’ve all heard of the term “growth marketing” by now. It has been circulating the web since the early 2010s, when the tech industry sunk its teeth into this seemingly new, hip marketing model. It was, at one point, ‘all the rage.’
And yet, many of us are probably still wondering what the heck “growth marketing” is. Also, how do we do it?
“The term has been thrown in a laundry machine a couple of times over the last couple of years,” says Kevin Indig, an advisor to some of the fastest-growing startups like Snap and Nextdoor (and a board member of Wix’s SEO Advisory Board, we might add).
Today, growth marketing is best described as a mindset. While its roots lie within the Facebooks and other tech giants of the world, many of its founding principles can benefit business leaders across all industries. We talked with Kevin for his advice on how to think like a true growth marketer. Here’s what he had to say.
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What exactly is growth marketing?
Growth marketing is a very systematic, testing-heavy approach to growing a product or marketing channel, summarizes Kevin.
“A lot of that methodology came from Facebook,” he says. “Companies like Facebook had enough data to run tests. For example, [they could test an idea like] ‘if we onboard new users and suggest them a couple of friends on Facebook, they're more likely to stick on the platform.’”
In the context of marketing, a growth experiment can range from testing an element of a webpage to launching a whole series of landing pages to improve organic discovery.
“In my opinion, growth marketing is often used in the wrong context,” notes Kevin. In recent years, growth marketing has been used interchangeably with performance marketing. “What it actually should be is to say, ‘OK, we can scale our approach to ads or SEO—but we're going to do it in a very systematic testing-heavy way.’”
Kevin elaborates on how the term "growth marketing" has evolved over the years.
How to assess the health of your current marketing approach
Of course, like all marketing strategies, a growth marketing strategy can’t survive without a clear target audience, product differentiation and other factors.
Prior to drafting out a marketing plan for any client, Kevin makes sure to ask three key questions:
Is your company achieving the goals that you set out to achieve? “First, of course, I’m curious [to know if your existing marketing strategy] works.” Are you seeing the results you predicted and wanted to see?
Do you have a clear strategy already? “Marketers love to confuse strategies with tactics. But a true strategy means doing things in a different way than your competitors. I'm really looking for a clear strategy for the company.”
Is your product differentiated and well-received (i.e., product-market fit and market penetration)? “I'm looking for pointers that tell me that this product is something people like—maybe love—[and seeing] what people are saying about the product and whether the company leans into that.”
Only after you’ve assessed the health of your current strategy can you start plotting out a course for improvement.
Growth marketing for small businesses vs. enterprises
The elephant in the room: it helps to have a lot of data and a large website when running classic growth experiments. “I don't think small companies can do growth marketing in the same way as big companies—they just don't have enough data,” says Kevin.
“[But] the benefit that small companies have is that they can move much, much faster and they can build a direct relationship with their customers that is maybe equally as powerful,” he adds.
“If you are a small local business, you might know a lot of customers by name and that is…something that people value. The advantage is you can be fast [plus] you know your customers on a much more personal level.”
“Instead of building these big-scale systems and experiments, you can run experiments at very small scale—and maybe in person. Like what happens if you pitched on product B instead of product A. Or what happens if you test a new discount, a new offer, a new package or a new membership program?”
Kevin talks about how growth marketing differs between large versus small businesses.
A small business marketing plan can thereby be just as impactful despite looking different from the playbooks of larger businesses.
Tips for hacking together your own growth strategy
If you’ve identified room for growth, Kevin offers four key pieces of advice.
Adopt a meta-thinking approach
No matter the size of your business, it’s always a good idea to take a structured approach to decision-making. Kevin dubs this “meta-thinking”—the practice of being “very precise in how you approach your business.”
“Way too often we run on autopilot,” observes Kevin. “[People] often do a lot of things implicitly and they learn what is called ‘tacit knowledge.’ They don't write down, ‘Today I tried this and that was the result.’”
“So, my advice for small businesses is to be very, very clear in your approach to winning new customers…and developing a hypothesis for [what you think will work], then testing it systematically.”
He continues, “We're very quick to repeat what we hear and take on the opinions of others…I think it's critical to be honest with yourself about how you know something, [even if the answer is that it’s just a hunch or an idea you got from a book]. Just be honest with yourself about how you know [something] because then it's easier to question, and you don't identify yourself with that opinion and you can be more systematic.”
Use AI to scale while retaining a personal touch
AI has opened up a path to scaling and reacting to experiments faster and better than ever before. It has, at the same time, allowed small businesses to scale without losing the personal touch that they’re known for.
“These days, you can customize videos at scale with AI,” says Kevin. “You can, for example…record a video and then change the name of the customer across hundreds of videos [with AI]. So, you can personalize that touch a little bit.”
The same idea can be applied to multiple channels and marketing assets, be it graphics for an email or dynamic copy on a webpage.
Talk to your customers
One lost art in marketing: talking to your customers.
“I very rarely work with companies where the marketing team talks to customers on a regular basis,” says Kevin. “It almost never happens and everybody knows it’s important. This is one of the few mysteries in marketing.”
The best research strategy? Go straight to the source. Avoid jumping to your own conclusions based on generic data points or by simply looking inward and letting personal biases drive your perception of buyers. Ask your top customers—or the customers you have yet to engage—what they’re seeking and where they go to find answers.
Invest in channels where you can share one-to-many
If you’re a small business owner, you’re especially pinched for time and resources. Some of the most creative strategies stem from having this type of pressure—which may subsequently force you to be more selective of the channels you work with.
This is a good thing, according to Kevin.
“I already mentioned video. I think email is another one of these channels,” he muses.
“I've come across [a fashion store] in Germany where the owner basically records a video…where she just walks through new inventory and new pieces that she has gotten, and she sends that out to her followers on social and via email. [It’s a] really cool way to address a lot of people and keep them up to date in a very personalized style—and you do it at scale.”
Understanding and tracking success
So, when all is said and done, how can you track success? This question has eluded many marketers since the dawn of time. One simple place to start, according to Kevin, is to look at three core variables:
Sales patterns. “You have to understand where most of your business comes from and if that's in line with where you want most of your business to come from…One mistake that I see a lot of business owners making is that they look too much at vanity metrics…Organic traffic doesn't matter if if it doesn't transfer into sales. So, I think a good start is to monitor sales, maybe on a daily or weekly basis over time, and then break that down into all the different ways that you get sales.”
Top channels.“Sometimes [your top marketing channel is] going to be word of mouth and maybe some social. Other times, maybe it's 50% SEO and 50% direct traffic. Split sales up by channel or source. And then figure out how to move the needle on some of these things.”
What drives progress on these channels? “[You might find that] more campaigns [could] drive word of mouth. It could be [that] a referral incentive system [could] drive more referral sales. There are different ways to grow your presence and sales on channels. You want to identify what drives that—what are the inputs?”
Track your success with the help of Wix Analytics.