GROWTH MARKETING: WHAT IS IT AND HOW TO DO IT? (part 1)

Growth marketing is a trendy term! But what is behind this strategy? What are the principles behind this technique that relies on the customer experience to generate sales in the long term? Let’s take stock!
850 000 companies were created in France last year. For their digital strategy, they spend on average more than 35,600 euros.

In such a competitive environment, it is essential to have a creative and convincing marketing strategy. A strategy that not only acquires customers, but also provides a breeding ground for virality, word-of-mouth and organic growth.

This new and powerful way to build a loyal user base has a name: growth marketing! What principles are behind this strategy? How is it related to growth hacking? But above all: how to use it wisely in your digital strategy?

Growth Marketing: a strategy focused on the customer journey
Growth marketing is about looking at the entire customer lifecycle to drive your strategic decisions. Its goal is to create campaigns with highly qualified prospects at each stage of the funnel.

Rather than focusing on the beginning of the buying journey, growth marketing considers the entire experience. It’s a true multi-channel strategy that can be deployed via your blog, social networks, emailings or paid ads.

Growth marketing pays special attention to the unique motivations and preferences of customers. Instead of offering content focused on conversions and revenue, it prefers to “feed” users with information to help them make a purchase.

It’s a long-term strategy in which authenticity and engagement create a sense of ownership to increase customer longevity.

A growth marketing strategy typically affects customer acquisition rates, conversion rates, retention rates and, as we just said, buyer lifetime value.

The Customer Lifecycle: The Pillar of a Successful Growth Marketing Strategy
The customer lifecycle refers to the journey that buyers take as soon as they express a need. This journey goes from the search engine query to the final transaction, through product/service comparison and interaction with companies.

However, the lifecycle doesn’t stop at conversion, it also continues beyond, when it comes to customer loyalty.

In summary, growth marketing divides its action into 5 major steps:

Acquisition
Action
Retention
Recommendation
Revenue
Each step contributes to the customer experience and requires the implementation of specific campaigns. We’ll talk about them in more detail at the end of this article.

Growth Marketing Vs Growth Hacking: the differences
Growth hacking and growth marketing are two trendy words in the digital sphere. In fact, you may have already heard of growth hacking? Note that they are two different approaches, although complementary.

Growth hacking intervenes to bridge the gap between your product and the market. It is a multi-channel approach whose goal is to promote rapid growth of the company. Its objective is to acquire as many users or customers as possible, with a reduced budget.

It is usually used by start-ups, needing massive growth in a short period of time. Then, growth hacking turns into long-term strategic plans, aimed at keeping the company going. This is where growth marketing comes in.

The 3 main differences between growth hacking and growth marketing are:

1 – Brand design
The most fundamental difference between growth hacking and growth marketing comes down to their vision about branding.

Growth hackers want quick results and usually have ingenious (and sometimes simple!) ideas for growing the business.

Let’s take Dropbox as an example. In its early days, the cloud storage tool offered to “unlock” extra space by sharing a tweet or a post on Facebook. The goal was to get users to promote Dropbox in exchange for a gift.

Today, the application has over 500 million users, including 11 million paying subscribers!

Growth marketing is more about building a community of loyal consumers and brand ambassadors. Its goal is not to have high growth at all costs, but to refine lasting relationships that promote retention and repurchase.

The goal is to sustain the business, while growth hacking focuses on profitability.

One example is Front, a messaging tool for B2B companies. To make itself known, the application first offered to test its service to well-known start-ups. This resulted in 200 registrations. Then Front republished its free trial offer on target communities, such as Betali.st and Product Hunt. These sites are visited by professionals and freelancers looking for tools to improve their productivity.

2 – The growth rate

When a growth hacker needs to increase sales or conversions, he often relies on paid acquisition channels such as Google, LinkedIn and Facebook ad networks. He also finds roundabout strategies, via automation in particular, to acquire and contact new prospects quickly.

His goal is above all to generate immediate sales, without worrying about future sales.

The growth marketing specialist, on the other hand, runs organic campaigns to reach his target. He analyzes and studies customers to develop strategies that will work more slowly, but in a sustainable way.

Their goal is to win AND keep customers.