Half of the value of your entire enterprise is determined by the effectiveness of your marketing activities. The business marketplace is forever changing and business leaders must evolve to meet consumer demands and remain profitable.
What’s more, you must reevaluate how much you want and need to devote to marketing your enterprise. However, how do you know when you’re devoting the right amount of resources to marketing?
In the modern marketplace, it’s all about consumers. As a result, personalization for every touch point is the new status quo. Also, consumer-centric service is the standard operating procedure.
All the while, you must meet your prime objective of generating revenue. This new marketing environment has generated a sharp demand for growth management.
Historically, business units operated as their own enterprises within organizations. Today, an increasingly competitive business landscape demands collaboration.
During disruptive change, however, teams need a mediator. Growth managers optimize company resources from the perspective of finding and retaining consumers.
Like any other executive role, growth managers and CMOs demand a hefty salary. However, small- to medium-sized businesses (SMEs) have an alternative. Growth management agencies and consultants are there for you when you’re ready for disruptive expansion for your SME.
Keep reading to learn more about how to get started on your growth journey
Defining Your Journey
Growth managers operate in a scope of practice known by names such as growth marketing and growth hacking. The simplest explanation of the field is that growth managers, in a sense, replicate coveted viral media.
Large corporations continuously manufacture viral media. However, these coveted prizes come with hefty marketing budgets. Well-known identities and extensive consumer loyalty networks help their cause. In addition, big brands benefit from an occasional bout of good luck.
SME growth managers, however, take a different approach. They leverage the power of information to find hidden opportunities to promote your brand identity.
Growth hacking is a special subset of data-driven marketing. The goal of the discipline is the same as traditional marketing – to promote a good or service. However, the desired outcome of growth hacking is disruptive audience expansion.
This ultimately leads to conversions. Depending on your needs, a conversion could occur when consumers sign up for your newsletter or trial subscription as well as make a purchase.
Bringing in an Expert
Growth managers combine promotions, consumer endorsements, search engine optimization and inbound marketing services to deliver quantifiable marketing results. They leverage data to create ideal consumer experiences. They also drive brand ambassadorship by “getting it right the first time.”
Growth managers use data to find opportunities for sustainable business development. Another distinct trait of growth hacking is relentless testing. The end goal is to acquire as many new consumers as possible and keep them for as long as possible.
This is one area where traditional marketing falls short. It’s well-known that existing consumers are the most profitable ones. Still, brands invest minimal resources toward retaining existing business.
With growth hacking, however, continuous testing of all marketing activities is the norm. This is an inherent part of the discipline, as is focusing equally on retention and acquisition. This, in fact, is the secret to growth hacking.
Read on to learn agency growth secrets that will start you on the path toward disruptive business expansion.
Dive Deeper:
- Our growth agency has directly driven over 20 million in revenue for our clients, here are my top lessons
- Mastering performance marketing: the power of ROI measurement and attribution
- The CMO’s Role in Creating Enterprise Value: Everything You Need to Know
- How we help HR-Tech SaaS Scale-ups overcome growth challenges
- How to Work with AI as a Marketer: Our Top Team Advice
Before You Begin Your Growth Journey
Before seeking the services of a growth hacking agency, you should have a good understanding of your current situation. You have to take a moment to consider the true influence of your brand. Also, you need to think about your current customer retention practices. Do you put effort into customer retention? If so, is it effective?
Next, if you’re in the market for growth management, you seek change, but is your organization ready for it? Finally, you need to make an honest assessment of whether your current marketing strategy is working.
Today, many marketing executives struggle to justify spending. When assessing your current situation, you must think about how you’re willing to reallocate resources for a new growth initiative.
Also, you must consider the current environment in your industry. You should use this information to prioritize the importance of growth for your organization.
Preparing the Team
Before you begin working with a growth marketing agency, you need to prepare organizational leaders for contributing to the development of baseline metrics. You will use them later to gauge success.
Stakeholders will also need to establish benchmarks for future comparison. The benchmarks will serve as vital indicators for decision-making. You’ll test new marketing practices, evaluate them, revise them and repeat the cycle over again. All the while, the benchmarks will help you to gauge your success.
It’s important to understand your current marketing performance. This way, you’ll be empowered to evaluate your growth journey. Also, you can justify spending on your new marketing initiative. Furthermore, you can effectively weigh risk and rewards when making key marketing decisions.
The terms growth management and growth hacking make the discipline seem simple. However, growth managers work with a range of moving parts.
They’re there by your side the entire time that a new campaign unfolds. For instance, growth managers optimize performance in real time as your audience expands. They ensure compliance with ongoing progress monitoring for every stage of the sill funnel and at every consumer touch point.
Also, growth managers optimize the marketing productivity of all relevant business units to make the most of available resources. Most importantly, however, they bridge the divide between hype and tangible proof of marketing success.
A Journey Worth Taking
During your growth journey, your growth manager will assume many roles. They will serve as advocates for your brand. Also, they will decipher the needs and wants of your ideal buyers.
Internally, growth managers will coordinate activities between all business units. Externally, they will manage the effectiveness and use of your digital assets.
At the onset of your growth journey, your growth manager will develop a digital roadmap. Furthermore, they will serve as a sounding board for change.
Remember, growth hacking is all about disruption. More than likely, your growth journey will feel awkward. That’s ok. Change forces you to step outside of your comfort zone.
Advocacy for change is essential for success. Growth hacking, after all, is a collaborative process. The growth manager serves as the pivot point that ties everyone’s activities into a singular goal – expansion. Therefore, one of the most important tasks of growth managers is to get your disparate business units working as a team.
There’s a signature trait of growth hackers. It’s their uncanny ability to deliver phenomenal results via digital marketing.
These experts accomplish this by establishing accountability early on during your growth journey. By defining who is responsible for given tasks, growth managers always have an understanding of what’s working, what’s not and how to fix it.
The growth manager role has become increasingly important. Now, business leaders demand to see a quantifiable return on investment for resources devoted to marketing. Today, however, it’s not enough to show vanity metrics such as increased site visits, for instance. Effective growth managers show how that traffic creates real value.
Setting Standards for Success
Here is where accountability is key. Accountability will immediately empower you to maximize the contributions of organizational stakeholders. First, however, you need an honest assessment of the competency of your bench-marking procedures.
To do this, a growth manager will assess your brand marketing practices against industry standards. In this beginning stage, they will find your biggest opportunities for improvement. These improvements are the easiest to deploy.
This initial stage in your growth journey will ensure the marketing competence of all your various business units. When executed properly, you should see an immediate improvement in marketing performance.
Defining a Starting Point
Now, you need to establish the value of your brand. To do this, a growth manager will analyze the economic impact of your corporate identity.
With this evaluation, they will help you see the top performing features that drive value for your organization. This will give you better insight into the power of your business identity. Moreover, it will help you understand where you need to reallocate resources to create value.
Now you know your company’s brand value. You also know who’s responsible for building that value. Now, your growth manager will present a plan for disruptive expansion.
This is where it’s essential that your internal stakeholders are prepared for change. If your team’s not on board for disruptive growth, you will waste time and resources.
Part of getting everyone on board involves a consensus about what outcomes dictate success. In fact, this is a sticking point for many SMEs who start the growth journey toward disruptive change.
To avoid this problem, it’s important to include all organizational leaders in the planning process. This way you can ensure that your entire team is working toward unified goals.
Previously, you went after the low hanging fruit. Now, your growth manager will help you find where your organization fell short compared to your competitors.
It’s now time to go for the next prize. The growth manager will lead you through the process of identifying underperforming assets. These are digital assets that are highly productive, but poorly managed.
Choosing Your Path
A recent survey reveals that 50 percent of marketers want to use social media to increase brand awareness. At the same time, 71 percent of consumers are more inclined to recommend a brand because of a positive social media experience.
Social media is your answer to competing with local opposition as well as large brands. Clearly, social media is immensely more effective than traditional marketing channels. It empowers you to address your ideal consumer directly and intimately.
Using marketing channels such as cold calls and emails does land a small percentage of new business. However, these traditional methods pale in comparison to social media marketing.
Content marketing, search engine optimization and social media advertising reach out to consumers. They are messages that they desire, when they desire them. While this is advantageous, however, it’s equally as important to develop an ongoing conversation with your consumers.
For businesses, social media is more than another channel for advertising. You can use it for customer support, brand promotions and marketing analytics. In fact, you can use it for a host of other activities to effectively communicate your messages.
Studies show that 30 percent of consumers prefer to engage with brands using social media. Also, 59 percent of surveyed respondents express that it’s easier to connect with businesses using online platforms.
Nearly 70 percent of United States adults use Facebook, but you can’t rely solely on Facebook to spread your brand message. You have to choose your platforms. Different platforms resonate with different audiences. Therefore, you must choose your playing fields.
Dive Deeper:
- Our growth agency has directly driven over 20 million in revenue for our clients, here are my top lessons
- Mastering performance marketing: the power of ROI measurement and attribution
- The CMO’s Role in Creating Enterprise Value: Everything You Need to Know
- How we help HR-Tech SaaS Scale-ups overcome growth challenges
- How to Work with AI as a Marketer: Our Top Team Advice
Choosing a Guide for Your Journey
You must also evaluate the consultant or agency who’ll guide you on your growth journey. Different agencies and consultants possess different skills.
You can start your research by checking out the potential manager’s website. There, you’ll see what affiliations and endorsements that person or entity has earned.
Once you narrow down your choices, you can ask for references. Of course, you can check online reviews as well.
Try to assess how their methods will impact your organization. Do you need a social media consultant or a mobile growth agency?
Furthermore, will they be able to meet your needs? Do they work as outside advisors, or can a consultant come on-site to work side-by-side with your in-house marketing team? Will they help you restructure your marketing processes? Also, what new tools will they bring to your organization?
Finally, what does your potential agency growth expert have to say about key performance indicators (KPIs)? What is their interpretation of success? Is it sales or market penetration? Does your potential growth consultant have experience in improving specific KPIs?
Growth hacking is more than an intriguing buzzword. In the purest form, it means using data to deliver results. Growth managers analyze data to find improvement opportunities for your organization. What’s more, they make sure that that growth is sustainable.
