Everyone knows what marketing is. It’s the purposeful promotion of a business to create awareness, attract customers, and increase sales.
One phrase that has been buzzing in business circles for a while now, though, is growth marketing. Of course, the goal of all marketing is to spark growth. So how is growth marketing different from traditional marketing — and how can your business use it to scale your success?
Let’s dig in.
Growth Marketing Vs. Traditional Marketing
The difference between traditional marketing and growth marketing is subtle but important. This makes a definition the best place to start.
Recruitment site Indeed defines growth marketing as “a long-term marketing goal, ” which “focuses its efforts on the consumer, specifically by reaching new customers, retaining current customers and finding ways for these customers to help you grow the business. It is, in effect, a method of observing measurable marketing growth.”
Email marketing site MailChimp defines the term by saying, “Growth marketing is the process of using data gained through marketing campaigns and experimentation to drive growth.”
In other words, traditional marketing is often a vague activity that is difficult to measure. In comparison, Growth marketing uses things like data and customer acquisition and retention to create clear long-term marketing strategies. These have measurable metrics to track their effectiveness and make improvements over time.
Key Components and Benefits of a Winning Growth Marketing Strategy
Growth marketing can take many forms, including:
- Public relations
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Email marketing
- Social media marketing
- A/B testing and other data analysis
Together, these growth marketing tools provide a way to execute and monitor your marketing campaigns. You can track how well each activity performs and ensure you’re taking advantage of opportunities for synergistic crossovers (such as repurposing on-site content for social posts or press coverage for an email campaign).
Critically, growth marketing also gives you the insights required to make adjustments over time. For example, a well-executed growth marketing strategy could reveal that you aren’t getting the organic traffic you expected from your website content. As a solution, you might find a tool like Moz or SurferSEO to improve your content optimization.
Another example could be working with an external marketing agency to expand your marketing campaign. Many smaller, growing companies can cover basic content creation and email activity. But partnering with a third-party marketer like TruLife Distribution can help them assemble more comprehensive social media initiatives and create digital PR campaigns to improve their brand authority and credibility. Whatever the specifics look like, it’s worthwhile for businesses to use growth marketing as a way to up their marketing game. The targeted approach to promotion provides a sense of purpose and holistic synergy to each marketing activity that you engage in. It also creates parameters and metrics to measure the effectiveness of each campaign. That way, you can rest assured that your marketing is helping you scale your business not just now but for the long haul.
